Hi all, Please forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this topic.
I have been out of action for quite a long time due to ill health and am trying to get back into the saddle. Things have changed. I love Delphi but not so much that I ignored bad releases. Just before I became ill, I purchased D8 Studio Architect thinking, as I recall quite some time later), that it would handle both WIN32 application development and let me explore .Net application development safely. The installation was an appalling process which after calling CodeGear tech support was well known. I ended up having to copy installation disks to my hard drive and run various sections of the installation from there. The 'pre-requisit' check (a proram on the install disk and supposed to be part of the automated installation) considently caused the computer to hang (again a known problem to the tech people). So I'm not 100% certain my PC environment is correct. The program 'installed' but was completely unable to run any demos or examples in the help system. Not even a 'hello world' help example worked. The techo also told me that this toowas known to them - a minor detail that you couldn't actually create a .Net application because of a change (at that time) from version 1.0 to 1.1 of the .Net Framework. You needed to be able to install the application to apply the update. So I got the updates (apparently 3 general releases and other stuff). I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that you would need install each in order 1 through 3. General updates 1 & 2 could not find the program (legal / licenced) but update 3 did. Unfortunately, I can't make any example work and tech are looking into it for me. I have no problem with the tech person - very helpful and friendly. If I was not a Delphi lover I would have returned it and demanded a refund. I'm back at uni now and can't find any Academic versions of Delphi available for students while Microsoft provide free copies of Visual Studio Pro (Australia). I know of no course teaching Delphi. And although assured by the Australian CodeGear sales people that an academic version of the latest Delphi studio product is available I am unable to find it here. I think I saw it available in the US at (what would be to a student here) an utterly unrealistic and unaffordable price. BTW - I am not suggesting Borland / CodeGear give things away. My concern is that I do not see any evidence here (Australia) of new generation programmers being groomed towards Delphi. As current developers move to other products (Microsoft for example) there is no new crop to work with this excellent tool. I do have a lot of money invested in third party tools so a version change means a far greater expense than just the cost of the upgrade. In Australia the cost of the upgrade is not much less than that of the full product. .Net is now up to version 2.0 and according to the sales people here the current 'latest' version of Delphi studio won't support it and they don't know if the new one will. Not encouraging stuff to hear So while I have been away, has Delphi been slowly dying? Does it have a future? What versions work and what don't? You folk continue to use it obviously .... is the Delphi community shrinking? Realistically, how does it rate against Visual Studio? I want to stay with Delphi but am worried that I might be making the decision on emotional grounds rather than valid professional ones and because I have been out for a while, I'm in no position to know what is hyperbole and what is true. Advice - pro / con gratefully accepted. Kindest regards, Mike PS Moderators ... sorry for long post ... trying to catch up. _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list -> [email protected] http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi
