>> Just someone mentoned adjusted prices and I wondered if
>> perhaps the somewhat unrealistic 3.5K Upgrade price for
>> some thing that apperntly has little new to offer, but
>> supposedly addresses the bugs in D4. Considering that D4 is
>> only one year old, its one hell of a price!
>> Guesse I'l sit this one out.
> We decided to sit on 3 and wait for 5 because of just such outrageous
> prices for D4. After hearing of D4's problems, I am glad we did. Given
> D3 stability, its still hard to work up a business case for D5 C/S. The
> things in D3 C/S that made it sound attractive turned out to be mostly
> 3rd party stuff that worked badly. The exception being SQL-link. With
> so many BDE alternatives for native access, that is no longer an issue.
> I think we have to look hard now at just D5 professional with add-ons
> for specific functionality that I need.
Whilst I agree that the pricnig was (and is perhaps) a trifle steep, I don't
know that I agree with the view that D4 offered no improvement over D3...
We've found the enhancements in the IDE to be substantial enough to
improvement ease of development and extensions like the Dynamic Arrays
and Overloading have eased the class development slightly. Inheritable
forms have worked well (once you're aware of a couple of Gotchas)...
The BDE suppotr for ORACLE 8 (nested tables?) has yet to be exploited
but improvements in several classes which aid subclassing have made
life easier too.
Nicks list of what Delphi 5 offers (at the enterprise level at least) is quite
substantial (IDE, ADO, OLE, CORBA and Frames) and though the price
MORE than reflects that, it's not by much.
(I would've expected closer to 50% of full price for upgrade given how
quick the short the development phase was and that Delphi4 wasn't practically
useful until 4.03)
Improvements I would like to see (That are not in D5 AFAIK) would be:
* A javadoc type system (standardised) to facilitate documenting
Classes in delphi in such a way that students learning delphi will
have all seen the same documentation format.
* A scripted macro system instead of code templates to extend the
useability
EG Popping up an input box and asking for classname and then filling
a template with entered information...
* Class Template support. This was usefull in C++ and when combined
with inheritance can benefit the developer a great degree when
developing classes whose differences are systematic but sub-classing
is not possible whilst maintaining compile-time typesafety.
* Improving Set notation integration into the language particularly around
iteration
EG
var
I :String;
begin
for I in ['One', 'Two', 'Three'] do showmessage(I);
end;
* Extending Constant initialisation to include autosizing of constant
arrays based upon number of initialisers.
EG
const
MyArray :Array of string = ('One','Two','Three');
Compiler would form MyArray :Array[0..2] of String = ('One','Two','Three');
* Code Completion extended to Class interface creation by listing all
virtuals from parent class(es) and creating the override method
declaration.
* Adding a runimage maker feature into Project manager and allowing
adding dependant files into the project manager which are not delphi
files. This would then allow a feature to generate a run image prior to
installation packaging (currently done through a batch-file)...
* AutoConstant generation at compiletime for Special constants like
__UNITNAME:String -- The name of the current Unit
__LINENUMBER:Integer -- The current source line number
__METHODPATH:String -- The current procedure function prefixed
by class (unless it's global).
These had all been passed on to inprise but I guess they don't think
that they'd be that useful :(
--
Aaron Scott-Boddendijk
Jump Productions
(07) 838-3371 Voice
(07) 838-3372 Fax
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