Note: I am answering here on the Delphi List, however all future
discussions in this area should be sent thru the Delphi-Talk List. The
Delphi List is primarily meant for technical threads.
I've been asking the same questions...again...myself! When BDS 2005
was released I nearly threw in the towel because it exhibited problems much
as you describe and I spent more time trying to get the IDE to behave then I
did coding. In fact I lost an important contract I had been looking
foreword to because I waited too long before re-installing D7.
BDS 2006 was a big improvement, at least for me. I had no
installation problems and during use only minor annoyances that I could
easily overlook. But based on the many posts in the Borland newsgroups I
saw that my experience wasn't as common as it should be and I know of many
who finally gave up and moved to another IDE.
The whole routine Borland went thru in giving up the development
part of their business, then re-opening it under a new name brings to mind
the same kind of money-robbing escapades one can read in the Wall Street
journal almost every day, and the release of the Turbo versions was in my
estimation a step backwards. Borland has never seemed very interested in
good marketing methods, nor in priming students to become professional users
of their products, and as of yet, CodeGear hasn't done anything concrete in
those areas either.
So when you add it all up, it really doesn't look good for Delphi
down the road. And especially not for Delphi NET which is already behind by
two versions. Microsoft recently released NET 3.0 and there's no indication
the next version of Delphi NET will even handle NET 2.0!
No one can ignore the fact that NET is the future of Windows, and
Microsoft has in its employ a great marketing machine making sure the larger
commercial clients will want to use it. That opinion, no matter what we may
think of it will trickle down to even the smallest customer. Even I, who
only does work for very small businesses am being asked if my apps will
provide them with the benefits of NET. And it matters not that they haven't
a clue what these benefits might be!
All I can say is that for the first time since D2 I will not be
buying the next Delphi version sight unseen. I'll wait until I have the
opportunity to see what everyone else has to say about it and even then will
only buy if it has some outstanding features and abilities over its
predecessor! I'm spending the majority of my time now learning NET via VS
2005 and Chrome, which allows me to work in Object Pascal, and along with
another RemObjects package, Hydra, to mix managed NET and unmanaged Win32
code together as I find it necessary to until I have the knowledge and
components to do it all in NET alone. And I'm trying to pick up a little C#
as well.
I can see now that it's dumb to know only one language or understand
how to use one IDE because the future is always changing. And as big a fan
as I've been of
Delphi, being a fan doesn't get the work done or impress those whom I work
for. So I am going to continue straddling the fence until it becomes
obvious that one side or the other has won out!
from Robert Meek dba Tangentals Design CCopyright 2006
Proud to be a moderator of "The Delphi Lists" at elists.org
(["An unused program is the consequence of a higher logic!", nil]) As
written in The Compendium of Accepted Robotic and Surrlogic Theorems Used in
the Self Analysis of Elemental Positronic Pathways...1st Edition Revised
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Michael
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2006 10:40 PM
To: Borland's Delphi Discussion List
Subject: Delphi - current status and future?
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.
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