Marco Tech Blog

January 2, 2013

2013: A Great Year for Delphi

My prediction is that 2013 will be a great year for Delphi: the product will be turning 18 and getting a mobile brother.

posted by marcocantu @ 11:27AM | 60 Comments [0 Pending]

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I am still deeply in love with Delphi, but - without 
rehashing all of non-tech - there are some trust 
issues after some fairly major let-downs in the recent 
years.  

My advise for the next versions, is:

- Make sure you never again release technology that 
has not been properly matured and dogfood'ed.  Want to 
draw us into FM2?  Build some FM2 based tools that we 
actually will be using on a daily basis (such as a new 
QC).

- Take a close look at some of the newer units that 
have been added.  There is quite a bit of sketchily 
documented and - IMO - poorly written code.  Ensure 
that all code has proper peer design review and code 
review before unleashing it onto us.

- Unit dependencies - Some of the core units pull in 
way too much luggage which the linker can't get rid 
of.  If necessary, split up the core units even more 
and perhaps move some of the initialization sections 
into explicit procedures that can be invoked from 
another unit's init section - so that people have more 
control over what gets bootstrapped into their 
project.

- Spend more time knocking off more of the long time 
standing issues in the QC system.  There are a LOT of 
niggles and annoyances that should be put to rest.

- Revamp QC with a better UX and make it more 
accessible. Expose ALL known issues, not just those 
that have been reported externally. You might even 
find volunteers that would be willing to do the UX 
part.

- IDE stability.  Any larger size project will 
eventually produce an out-of-memory situation. Why?

- Debugger stability under 64-bit.  Need I say more?

I am very much looking forward to see what the future 
holds for my favorite bread and butter tool.

Comment by Lars Fosdal [http://plus.lars.fosdal.com] on January 2, 11:54

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Hi Marco,
I would like to believe on that, but first we have to see it,
If i look on the quality of the actual FM i have my doubt.
I would like to see more quality in the product and not only in the 
marketing. Im on board since tp 3.0 and at moment i'm not realy 
happy with actual state of Delphi.

Comment by Fritz on January 2, 13:47

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

We will be right there to cheer on Delphi.
Really looking forward to the mobile development add-
ons. I never liked any of the tools out there. Always 
wondered why it couldn't be a simple as Drag-n-drop with 
code behind. Best wishes to the entire Embarcadero team 
and Happy new year to all Delphi/C++ Builder 
developers. 

Comment by Wilfred Oluoch [http://www.ideaz.co.ke] on January 2, 13:59

2013 A Great Year for Delphi? 

Marco, please explain better - is FM the UI for 
mobile platforms only or well FM become the UI for 
all platforms? Is VCL dead?

Because if so Delphi here is dead as well.

Moreover Embacarcadero should tell in advance what 
changes are planned for the language and compiler, so 
developers could plan their code and changes as well 
to limit porting issues. Waiting for the release will 
just bring a lot of rage.

Many of us work on large applications with planning 
covering months if not years. We can't work in the 
dark and try to guess what's next. That alone would 
be another reason to drop Delphi.

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on January 2, 14:08

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 We'll try our best to work on pending issues, I know it is a real problem. 
But we also have to move forward (that is, to new platforms) at the same 
time. It's a balancing act.

FM is the UI for mobile and for cross-platform. VCL is the UI for Windows 
only and it not going away.

About the language changes, I'm working on a several documents 
(probably one ore more white papers), but quite a few are visible in XE3.

-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 2, 14:18

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I am equally excited about the forthcoming mobile 
extensions to Delphi...

The mobile applications development space reminds me 
of the early days of software development... The days 
of Turbo Pascal, dBase, Clipper, Paradox, 
PowerBuilder, and Visual Basic were filled with small 
ISVs, developing really fantastic software. Large 
corporations did not care how big your "garage" 
operation was, as long as one could deliver.

Now I am senior executive in a large global Bank, and 
for the first time in many years I am seeing the same 
kind of spirit of "just find some kids somewhere who 
know how to get this kind of stuff done quickly" beginning to permeate. Those making the investment to 
build multi-platform solutions (read: industrial 
middle-ware, web-centric desktops and native mobile 
apps) will find their services to be in the most 
demand.

Mobile is the new frontier... and those who have the 
tools to expose all those legacy systems to the new 
mobile-centric world without necessarily rewriting all 
those back-ends will be the masters of this this new 
world... for a while anyway.

-Ngoni

Comment by Simelane on January 2, 14:32

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Given the large amount of issues and the (already 
incredible) pricing I kind'of doubt Delphi is in for a 
good year.

But all the luck to you indeed.

Comment by alex [] on January 2, 15:10

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I am still sitting on Delphi 7 here. Since .net is
dead please strip off the .net dependency of the IDE.
Moreover MS-Doc-Explorer is a mess. Please move to a
working Help system.

Comment by Peter on January 2, 15:25

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Marco

I am really looking forward to the release of Mobile Studio.
Being able to build apps re-using the classes we've already built in 
systems, is going to potentially expand business.

I am on a daily basis using Delphi, started with Delphi 1 in 1995, 
and now Delphi 2010 (old project just keeps on going), and Delphi 
XE3.
I've been using X++, ObjC and other languages too, but Delphi is 
just to cool!!

Thanks for your passion in the product, and I'm looking forward to 
see what will be accomplished with you as Product Manager

Regards
Jens Fudge

Comment by Jens Fudge on January 2, 16:02

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Excellent! It's great to see more features for 
Delphi. I hope more visual features will be the main 
focus for 2013.

I know many people are code driven. But, remember 
there is always code behind the visual features in 
Delphi so we get the code and the visual. If Delphi 
just get code features then we miss out on the visual.

Comment by ObjectMethodology.com [http://www.objectmethodology.com] on January 2, 16:21

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

There are a lot of new things which were added to 
Delphi or going to be added soon (Fire Monkey, Mobile 
Studio etc).

However, it is hardly possible to find anything 
published these days:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=delphi+xe3

This situation is bad not only because it is hard to 
find information but also it creates perception that 
nothing new is really happening with Delphi and the 
product is pretty much dead.

I hope Embarcadero realize that adding new great 
features without a serious effort to make a larger 
audience (not only current Delphi developers) aware 
about them makes it really hard to bring new people 
onboard.

I realize that would be huge undertaking for a single 
person to try to write something like "Delphi 
Developers Guide" which is complete enough to 
describe the current state of the product but it is 
certainly possible for a group of people to do that 
("Professional C# 2012 and .NET 4.5" is an example of 
that). 

I do believe that well written book (or two) which 
describes the latest version of the product is a 
great way to advertise the product itself. I think it 
would be great thing if Embarcadero decided to play 
more active role in that area and maybe even use a 
portion of their marketing budget to bootstrap and 
coordinate publishing of new Delphi books 
under "Embarcadero Press" banner.

Happy New Year for everyone!

Cheers,
Zenon

Comment by Zenon on January 2, 17:04

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Hi Marco

I believe in you, I believe in Delphi

I am sure that 2013 will be a great year for Delphi's 
community. 

Just need to move forward at same time and the same 
direction.

Regards

Eliseo GN

Comment by Eliseo GN [http://www.delphiebnmovimiento.mx] on January 2, 18:47

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 
I feel WINDOWS 8 is the wrong OS for technical 
computing. 
Guess LINUX market share will increase in 2013 - be 
prepared for support of UNIX / LINUX as well with 
DELPHI XE 4  

Comment by Bernhard on January 3, 00:13

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Send copies to each school and university on this 
planet, and allow students to use Mobile Studio for free 
while they're studying. 

Once they get experience with it, some will eventually 
turn into paying customers. 
Those who don't would've never turned into a paying 
customer in the first place.

Comment by Wouter on January 3, 02:01

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I look forward to the mobile version. 

One question, Marco. Do you know in advance what 
embedded databases it will support so that I can plan 
now for then?

Comment by Louis Kessler [http://www.beholdgenealogy.com] on January 3, 04:08

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Marco, it's too little, too late. Qt is also going to
be delivering Android and iOS platforms this year
(Android port already partially exists as an
unofficial open source community project). That will
mean a single, powerful, seasoned, stable UI framework
that will target Windows, OS X, Linux, Unix, Android,
iOS, Blackberry, Solaris and several embedded OSes
such as QNX. Firemonkey, meanwhile, debuted poorly due
to quality issues and early adopters got burned by the
belief that they need to buy XE3 to get a version of
FireMonkey that works this time and then repurchase
the iOS development tools which will now be a separate
product. 

On top of this Mono (port of .Net) is already
available on Android and iOS and lets developers use
the currently popular C# (Qt targets the even more
popular C++ although a full python interface also
exists). 

Delphi has no mindshare anymore and most people's
reaction to hearing Delphi is "That still exists?"
Worse, several years ago I encountered high-ranking IT
people in a major U.S. retailer's corporate HQ who
simply had never heard of it at all. Mono's pricing is
$1K for businesses with more than 10 employees but
wisely they have a $400 edition for single developers
with a $250 upgrade price. C++, Qt, python, and
various IDEs can be had for free (Qt has both LGPL and
commercial licensing). 

You mention that the new Delphi will have the same
language, etc. that Delphi users have come to love.
The problem is that it needs to be the language,
features, etc. that OTHERS WILL COME to love.
Otherwise, Embarcadero's Delphi wing is just another
one of Attachmate's (Emb.'s parent company) companies
like Novell that milk users of legacy products until
they dry up. 

Who today would be confident starting a new commercial
project with Delphi? Who today is even hiring Delphi
developers? Delphi developers are a dying market.
Embarcadero can't milk them forever and there doesn't
seem to be any marketing plan. What is Firemonkey and
the next Delphi going to offer developers that
.Net/Mono, Qt or conventional Java/Dalvik or Objective
C/iOS development environments don't? That's the real
question and what will determine whether it will be a
great year for Delphi or not. 

Realistically, Embarcadero simply doesn't have the
developers to work on Firemonkey and VCL at the same
time. Heck, Swindell explained on your own blog
several years ago that work on Kylix would mean very
little improvement on VCL so Kylix had to return more
money than it did to have been worth damaging the core
business. Now you can say that VCL won't go away, but
it's clear that Delphi has less developers now than it
did at Borland, so if FireMonkey is the future then
VCL is the legacy framework that won't see much
updating. That means that Firemonkey is going to have
to be fantastic - if existing developers are going to
need to port legacy code to take advantage of new
features, they're going to look at other languages and
frameworks since they'll need to port either way and
this at least somewhat lowers the "exit costs" of
Delphi. It's also going to have to attract many new
developers to make up for the ones that are lost and
grow the product and prevent a death spiral. Given
that its introduction was less than spectacular, late
to market and its more established competitors are
either already there (Mono) or hot on its heels
(Qt)... it's hard to have optimism. This is in
addition to legacy Delphi developers looking at those
"bells and whistles" enviously already... and as
mentioned above seeing precisely zero books on Delphi
at their local bookstore... zero magazine articles,
let alone magazines, about Delphi, very little on the
Internet in terms of videos and tutorials, no online
courses (free or otherwise), high prices, dearth of
compatible add-ons libraries nowadays and no free
version to try/use for personal use (except
FreePascal, which is still ahead of Delphi in terms of
cross-platform compatibility). Oh, and Pascal's
complete disappearance from the West's learning
institutions as a teaching language in favor of
languages with those "bells and whistles". 
That's a huge mental & marketing hurdle to overcome,
never mind the quantitative issues of market share and
features and quality control. 

I wish you the best of luck, but honestly you remind
me of myself from several years ago when I completed
my ride from first new hire of a startup through
several growing years, their best year through their
decline to finally leaving when I hadn't been paid in
three months. :-( As I put it: "I didn't jump ship
until there were fish swimming past my eyeballs." :-)
It's not too late, Marco, for you to leave Delphi and
become the hot new python author/teacher the way you
became the undisputed guru and Bible-writer for
Delphi. :-) There's no leading author in that market
yet and I think you would have a lot of fun and
passion again (and all those bells and whistles!). 

Comment by Joseph G. Mitzen on January 3, 05:50

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Hi Marco,

I'm glad to see that you take your new job seriously.
It is good for Delphi that someone is banging on the
drums. However, I'm sceptical to the 2.0 renensance
you are talking about. 

The reason Delphi was so successful in the past was
that provided powerful tools to allow the masses to
leverage the client/server paradigm. The competition
was not even close at the time. Today Delphi is as
strong in that field, but the competion has chougt up
and frankly there are areas where Delphi is not that
competitive at all (for instance, Server side stuff 
).

Today the field has changed quite dramatically. The
mobile world is a very different thing. Delphi shines
in the Win32 environment, but the Win32 environment
does not exist as a mobile formfactor. Even if
Microsoft is trying hard to go mobile, it is not via
Win32 (and that is of course why you offer
FireMonkey). Because of the mobile formfactor "native"
is again king, but  both iOS and Android already has
quite powerful tools. While I certainly hope thay your
new mobile tools would be a player in the field it
seems a little bit like UI and Java back when Java was
young. You could build UI centric software using Java
that would run on a variety of platforms, but nowwhere
would it have the same polish and feel as software
that was specifically targeted for a particular platform. 

Thanks to Apple the bar is significantly raised when
it comes user experience. Moreover, the iOS and
Android platforms are quite different when you get to
the nitty gritty details. It is a challenge to say the
least to support several so different platforms under
one umbrella. To me FireMonky sounds a lot like Java
back in the days (regarding UI stuff): Sure you can
build a lot of stuff that kind of works, but you would
not really achieve that same polish as you would using
native platform tools. Furthermote, mobile apps often
work in an ecosystem where data is maintained and
persisted in backendsystems and unless you have done
something outstanding Delphi is not really shining
there either - I mean it is not even eveident that
that backends run on Windows these days.

What I'm saying is: I have just not yet bought into
the Delphi 2.0 renessance.

Regards,

Johan

Comment by Johan Sundström [] on January 3, 09:12

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Joseph,

I did publish your comment even if it is very biased against Embarcadero 
and it has also some "fact" I really disagree with. Here it goes.

Given past track of Qt I'm not terribly worried. You claim FireMonkey has 
little role because of the native look and feel, but fail to mention Qt has 
its own widgets, unless this changed recently.

Mono is interesting, but they do rely on native UI controls, so you have to 
write two different applications for iOS and Android. Do they have a 
unified set of components to handle the device, talk to the local and 
remote databases, and so forth? And price is not much cheaper than our 
"very expensive price".

Delphi mindshare has certainly reduced, but business developers looks 
for ways to get their job done. That's why so many are still using Delphi. 
And Delphi has been growing recently. And how do you know Borland 
has more people in R&D? I disagree on that. 

Embarcadero is clearly investing (making a new compiler, for example), 
and spreading FUD about Delphi is rather pointless, although it seems 
popular these days. And Attachmate is not Embarcadero parent company.

Again, reading your comment it is has merit, but lots of FUD: there are 
large colletions of online videos (CodeRage 7, for example), there are 
books even if only a few, there are component vendors around Delphi.

No intention to leave, sorry to put you down on your unrequested 
suggestion. I'm convinced that in the business world Python has a 
fraction of the Delphi influence, and writing a book on it is not an option 
for me (there are already way to many).

A few years ago I looked around for alternatives, now I think it is a good 
time to stick with Delphi (and I' also paid for that, which is a significant 
change for me). If you want to reply with real information and facts 
you're welcome. For spreading FUD, I'm not going to let all comments go 
through.

-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 3, 10:37

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Johan,

you are right to say that when Delphi started it was in a unique position, 
and that now languages and IDEs have caught up. But having played a bit 
with xCode and Eclipse, specifically with data binding and more complex 
situations, I think there is room for a visual and RAD development tool 
like Delphi targeting new operating systems.

Also, even if you achieve only 90% of what a native tool provides, having 
single source for multiple devices is a real bonus for business developers 
(we are not talking about games or other types of applications). 

FireMonkey was not introduced for Win32, but specifically for cross-
platform. We proved it by releasing an early version for iOS in XE2. But 
the experience with it was poor mostly because of the confused tool 
chain and also because in version 1.0 there were clear issues in the 
library. Still, nothing like Java, it is more like Silverlight done right and 
planned to be cross-platform.

Finally, you can use a Delphi backend if you want, but we're also happy if 
you use a different backend or cloud based storage for your Delphi client 
applications. We'll try to improve our backends, of course!

-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 3, 10:44

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Big challenge for Embarcadero is get those 
developers that use older versions ( for example D7 ) 
to upgrade.

Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time 
soon with current products.

Comment by Pratt on January 3, 11:07

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

> Delphi will be turning 18 on February 14th,
I will be turning 40 on February 14th. :)

Comment by Tomohiro Takahashi on January 4, 06:22

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Marco,

it seems that someone else also has thought about 
targeting different mobile platforms using a single
codebase.

http://www.zdnet.com/xamarin-delivers-tool-for-building-native-mac-os-x-apps-with-c-7000008754/


We live in interesting times indeed.

Cheers,

Johan

Comment by Johan Sundström [] on January 4, 09:32

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

The language and its structure is for PCs from a
bygone age.

But as long as there is no (serious) alternative to
target native Windows, I'll still be using Delphi.

Comment by kartus on January 4, 09:41

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 A great year ? THey might have nice things coming, but 
not for current customers ... They put in iOS support, 
then leave it out the current Delphi and promise you to 
get you in the beta for the mobile development ... 
after which you have to pay again ... Sorry but I 
bought the first FMX version just for the iOS support 
and I even have an SA, but I am not renewing and Delphi 
won't be getting much more support from me, each year 
Embarcadero finds new ways to screw clients over ... I 
am wondering what the new thing is this year ... Make 
professional not useable anymore for desktop 
applications ?

Comment by cricque on January 4, 10:12

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I should probably open by saying that I'm a hobbyist developer, but one who's been looking to break into the 
industry. I've already got numerous products, and have plans to move things up a gear this year.

I must agree with many of the sentiments regarding Firemonkey, even if I completely moved over to it in the 
January after XE2 was released. It felt unfinished, and lacked much in the way of documentation.

It took me 4-5 months to truly get to grips with it, but it was 4-5 months of enjoyable discovery of the 
framework. However, it still didn't fix the issues. For example, compiling to iOS or OS X, meant that I'd need to 
buy a mac and a developer license, which are costs I simply can't stomach for platforms I might never truly 
develop to. It became a dying dream to be able to be able to submit applications to the app store from Windows 
using my main Windows machine. Additionally, upon looking into it, the need for specific versions of XCODE looked 
like it may be a hassle. And so, I limited myself to creating fantasic UI's, but only designing them for Windows.

Fast-forward to XE3 and FM2, and the iOS support is being sold as an extra. The framework itself brought some 
nice additions, such as audio and video, but even those aren't without their issues (e.g. videos can't be scaled 
up and so they run at native resolution or lower). This goes against the idea of Firemonkey being a 'modular' 
framework. I did attend the webinar and heard the response that it was due to performance, but it once again felt 
like parts of the framework were only half delivered. Additionally, it seems impossible to make other visual 
components appear on top of a video 'frame', which makes things such as overlays (e.g. subtitles) impossible to 
show. This severely limits what can be done with the component. Video and Audio are both something that I'd 
appreciate being fixed up for XE3. Having the ability to scale video would be my one big fix request.

Livetile support was added, but if I ever want it to show on a client's system, it requires them to mess with the 
Group Policy editor (a fairly advanced tool for the novice user), and make tweaks to the registry, on top of 
installing a "proxy" application to handle the tiles. This is perhaps the biggest issue. It was shown as being 
for 'Metro', yet due to limitations imposed by Microsoft, it's not truly Metro ready. I can't blame Embarcadero 
for this completely as they did provide some method of working with it, but my fear is that when XE4 rolls 
around, we'll need to spend even more money in order to get something that was advertised for XE3. Having native 
live tile support would be my one big feature request, and I hope Microsoft will work with Embarcadero to make 
this a reality.

Admittedly, the performance of FM2 is better than the original FM, and the fix to allow multiple animations on 
single objects is a fantastic one. To some extent, you can also apply multiple effects to one visual object, but 
it requires you to use "holder" objects such as TLayout (and apply one effect to the visual object and another to 
the layout). For responsive and informative UI's such as the ones I design, this is a fantastic change.

My final point, and this is a big one, is that Delphi isn't considered accessible by most home developers. When 
they can pick up Visual Studio Express for free, learn C++ and/or C# and have the benefits of native metro tiles, 
why should they even consider Delphi? If you ever want to bring Delphi back in a big way, and truly promote 
Firemonkey as more than just a risky investment, you should absolutely consider providing a basic free version.

Home developers don't need databasing, or even much in the way of expandability. A lot of expression can be 
achieved through Firemonkey in terms of the UI, and I am extremely confident that if you provided them with a 
free "express" version of RAD Studio and/or Delphi, once they got a taste of it, they'd have a very tough choice 
deciding between it and Microsoft's offerings. Sure, you offer a trial, but it's limited in many ways and often 
doesn't turn those people into customers. They really just need a way of compiling their code into basic 
applications without the limitations imposed by the trial. It most certainly doesn't attract home developers 
except those who have developed in Delphi in the past (such as myself). I know when I see the word "Trial" for 
software of any sort, I instantly look elsewhere for a free option, even one that's more limited but gets the job 
done (or in my case, attempt to develop something of my own).

I do wish the best for Embarcadero. There's so much potential with FM2, and I'm enjoying developing in it, but 
there's also many things Embarcadero could do to bring people in. I hope my feedback will resonate somewhere in 
the company, and that we can bring Delphi back to the mainstream. Right now, I can't recommend my favourite tool 
to people looking to get into software development simply because of the cost and the fact that C++ and C# jobs 
are so much more common.

Comment by Scott Pritchard [http://www.innuendo-eu.co.uk] on January 4, 12:56

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

cricque (whoever you are),

the iOS support delivered in XE2 was never meant to stay the same in the 
future. How do you know what your current subscription will and won't 
give you? If you decide to step away fine, if you are upset I can 
understand, but spreading FUD (like your final comment about the 
Professional version) doesn't help a bit. 

Cheers
-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 4, 15:09

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Hi Marco, 

I have to agree with Lars Fosdal, Ide stability is a 
major issue, it's impossible for us to compile our 
very large project more then once without getting an 
out of memory error. We reported the problem several 
times in the past years and for different delphi 
versions, then out of desperation we also sent 
Embarcadero our codebase for them to try debug the 
memory leaks in the ide but so far nothing changed.
I do understand Embarcadero is trying to get new 
customers with  cross platform development but keeping 
the old ones is not a bad idea either ;)

I know you are a serious professional and I hope you 
will be able to steer Delphi in the good direction, 
best of luck for this year. 

Comment by Angelo Diego Crabolu on January 4, 15:22

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Best of luck for 2013 Marco.

Pricing is still an issue.
Please think about a pro-edition without bundled third-
party tools like fast report, interbase, aq time etc 
etc.
A small ISV could benefit of a Delphi Only version 
cheap edition using only open source components and 
suites.

How much an streamlined (IDE+Compiler+VCL/Source
+DataAcess tab+Command line) edition would cost?

Under USD 400? under USD 800? Think about it.

Comment by Carl J. [] on January 4, 18:53

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Man tough crowd!

I remember getting up early in the am 18 years ago to 
get to CompUSA to get my first copy of Delphi. I 
rushed home and installed it on my state-of-the-art 
GateWay 486.

I left delphi for a couple years and did some 
PowerBuilder work and management consulting but when I 
started my software company in 1997 I went with Delphi 
(could deploy an entire app on a 3.5 inch disk - 
awesome!)

I've reviewed and used many tools over the years and 
always ended up staying with Delphi - we've built our 
services architecture, thin client, web and mobile 
applications on it and they all rock. For web and 
mobile we use Delphi-powered web services and then 
javascript/ajax on the front end. Our enterprise 
software powers over 250 large organizations in the US 
and millions of users (including web customers) that 
use it every day.

I am really hoping that 2013 and beyond are great 
years for Delphi! I share your optimism. Keep working 
hard and godspeed!

A couple of items on my 2013 wish list:

1) Allow building of RT applications in Delphi. 
Partner with MS to make this happen. Yeah, I know few 
use Windows RT, but it sure would be nice to make some 
native RT apps (and leverage existing code) and it 
seems more of a political issue than a technical issue 
- it seems like it would be in MS's best interest to 
get some more apps running on RT. You need to maintain 
Delphi's leadership position in all things Windows 
(clients and servers)

2) Make sure the new mobile studio works well - we did 
a bunch of IOS development in XE2 using FM and was 
very bummed to see that what we did in XE2 (compiling 
using free pascal for IOS, compiling on MAC, etc) 
could no longer be done in XE3. Yeah, it was a hack in 
XE2 but at least we could get it to work for the 
iphone and mac - so make it work a lot better in 
mobile.

Good luck this year. The community is counting on you.

Charlie Vinal

Comment by Charlie Vinal on January 4, 23:41

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Marco, 
As you know, we use Delphi in Birmingham, Alabama, and
continue to drive forward with our products to help
those buying, selling and serving Television and Radio
Media.

And to those who say people are not hiring, we just
bought 5 new licenses for Delphi XE3 for our newly
hired developers.

To those who want to leave Delphi behind, I say "thank
you, more business for those of us who stay."

If you are a Delphi programer in the US, and do not
mind moving to Birmingham, Alabama, contact WideOrbit,
Inc.  A great place to work with Delphi in Birmingham,
Seattle, San Francisco and many other places.

-Eduardo

Comment by Eduardo A. Salgado [http://www.WideOrbit.com] on January 5, 21:24

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Marco,
One of the Firemonkey main problems is that the Canvas
is not extensible.
The third developers need to make this possible, at
least we should can to be able to access to variables
FGPGraphics (TCanvasGdiPlus) and Ftarget (TDirect2D)
... to make improvements.
Marco, please, you should make the canvas be
extensible in several ways, otherwise the library
developers will not be able support the expansion of
Firemonkey.

We also wish that 2013 is the best year for Delphi.
We trust you to do so.

Regards,
Jose A.

Comment by Jose A. [http://www.jfactivesoft.com] on January 6, 14:38

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Hi Marco

I share your optimism, I'm a true fan of Delphi and work with it since 
Delphi 4 (And I have your Delphi Bible, great source of knowledge). I'm 
always hoping and expecting the best for Delphi and I really hope that 
Embarcadero could bring some of Delphi golden years back again.

Unfortunally in Brazil the product is not as popular as it was some years 
ago, I know many people that moved away to C# or Java just because it 
was mainstream, and now Delphi is not in colleges and universities 
anymore and I hope that will change with Mobile Studio, if you could 
bring Mobile Studio to universities and target new developers seeking 
for a mobile development solution, those people could choose Delphi 
for their primary language 

Thanks for all your hard work and passion!

Comment by Eric Fleming Boniha [http://www.digifort.com.br] on January 6, 20:55

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I agree your opinion. Currently I'm developping an new 
application and after a time with other development 
tools, for this project I returned to Delphi XE3. I 
decided to develop this application Database 
Independent and cross platform, with firemonkey. After 
my first twenty forms, integrated into a new 
framework, based on four layer template, and with 
things like reports data imports, searches in 
databases, etcetera, I can say that this version of 
Delphi is the best of all times. The language continue 
with his very expresive structure and the totally new 
component library firemonkey it's more that I expect 
in his second stage. The really works well into the 
two platforms. 

The only problems that I have are respect to many 
behaviors of the IDE. I think that in the next 
versions all of these are going to be solved. 

 I'm greatly surprised about the posibility of use 
Delphi over two platforms with the same code. I tested 
it a it works very well. 

 Currenty I'm expecting the update that is going to 
allow me, to create application for IOS and Android 
with the same code and with my well know delphi 
language.    

   I agree with you. I think we assist to the reborn 
of delphi. 

Juan C.Cillerelo

Comment by Juan C.Cilleruelo [http://www.cilleruelo.es] on January 9, 12:40

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Marco !

I tried during 3 years to move to another environment
than Delphi. I tested many IDE but could not take a
decision. Today I really enjoy the progress made since
Delphi 2009. I moved to Delphi XE2 in 2011 and after a
little effort, I realize the work done by Embarcadero.
Great success to you as Delphi Product Manager and
long life to Embarcadero.

Comment by Laurent [http://www.aglconcept.com] on January 10, 13:35

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Marco
I agree with everything you said.
Too bad for those that continue to be negative, they 
are simply going to miss the boat.

Just read

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-death-of-the-pc-
slide-deck-2013-1?op=1

This bodes well for the future of FireMonkey...and 
for developers..."iOS app developers are in 
demand"....

All the best, and thanks for all your hard work!!

Comment by Wouter Oosthuizen on January 10, 14:54

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

you are right.
but why rad php does not support delphi syntax?
it means delphi is still weak in web tools.
????????????????????//  

Comment by ahmad on January 12, 06:26

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I work with Delphi since the first version!
I had convinced the studio where I worked to move from
Visual Basic 3.1 to Delphi 1.0!
They never regret the choice!
Then, working on my own, I bought the 3, 5 and 7,
which is the one on which I develop all my works!
I have always think that Delphi was the best
development environment for those like me who need to
develop about thirty programs for Windows at year, alone!
I Work in an industry segment in which the web and DB
isn't still very important and so I endured a lot
before buying new versions! 
I then bought the license for RadStudio 2010, never
used, then I bought RS XE, never used also, then I
switched to RS XE3, with whom I'm finally trying to
port one of the main programs from which many other
then are generated.
Here, unfortunately, my problems were born, in fact I
had to leave instantly FireMonkey, because totally
inadequate for my needs! There are really too many
bugs, after a week of study, without making things
very complex, I had counted more than a dozen and I
did give up and I return on my steps (VCL choise)!
But at this point I'm up against the absolute
instability of the IDE!
It isn't possible that the system crashes so often,
yes sometimes happened with D7 also, but on XE3 things
are really unbearable!
Many times the system crashes only for adding a
shortcut to the menu in the property editor, or
sometimes I just click on a unit in the program
manager and I need to close the whole environment!
I don't have the need to work on iOS, Android, Mobile,
Web, etc! I don't say that this things are not useful
and that you do not need to support them,  but I think
the whole thing should not come at the expense of
absolute stability of the system!
I fear that Embarcadero is doing the longer wheelbase
of the leg, too many new things and not enough quality
and stability!
I turned 43 years now, I have dozens of programs
running on D7, I have invested a lot of time on this
development system, which I very much peace, and I do
not have time to look around and look for alternative
solutions, the costs would be too high to support! So
I pray that Embarcadero will be able to balance it
all, new things yes, but never at the expense of
stability and quality, otherwise we're not going anywhere!

Happy 2013 to all!

Comment by Lorenzo Biondi [http://www.abulafia.it] on January 14, 09:38

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Hi Marco,

I am so thrilled about you being Delphi's Product 
Manager. Congratulations! I know you by your books, 
posts and your great reputation in the Delphi 
community. 

I embraced Delphi for professional development since 
D2 - the first true 32-bit RAD. Since then, to this 
very day, Delphi has paid my bills and brought the 
bacon home. And that's just the financial side of the 
story. The real thing is that developing in Delphi 
was a joy and excitement. In my opinion, there is no 
other development tool in the market that's even 
close to Delphi, let alone the sheer beauty and power 
of Object Pascal. 

To keep it real, I do have a criticism about the IDE -
 it uses the .NET framework. It's bloated, sluggish 
and sometimes buggy. No wonder why, it's .NET. So, 
please re-write the IDE in Delphi, as it used to be.
Wish you a great new year!

Comment by Ian Doney [http://www.flairbase.com] on January 15, 17:39

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

It would be an even greater year if a new Personal SKU is released.

While Delphi and C++Builder are still one of the most productive 
solutions (as compared to VC++), it cannot really compete with the 
unbeatable value for money of a free VS Express or Eclipse.

In Germany, many people used to learn Delphi in high school, and legacy 
Standard or Personal versions of Delphi were often bundled with 
magazines or books. But that was a decade ago. Most people would be 
perfectly fine with a Personal edition of RAD Studio 2007 or 2009 that 
can only be used for non-commercial development (Turbo Delphi 2006 
is pretty much obsolete)…

Comment by Max [http://www.fischerinsel.org] on January 23, 20:30

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 I love Delphi so much, I cannot wait for these new features! Great 
work Embarcadero!

Comment by Adrian G on February 5, 21:16

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Dear Marco, I would like to share your views, but I've to admit that 
most bloggers here have already underlined that Delphi (Borland, 
Inprise...) has not been able in the past to deliver what they 
promised. Delphi 8 (.net) has knocked me out. After several years out 
of the game, now I moved to Lazarus/free pascal. Clearly said: 
Lazarus (the IDE) is still behind Delphi 7 in some aspects, but the 
language (free pascal) is promising. Corba interfaces (no addrefs...), 
generics (since 2.7.1) and cross compiling....I hope that Delphi gets 
again the spirit what a real programmer claims: a fast, functional and 
lightweight IDE, a great debugger, spirit and dedication: In other 
words (to embarcadero): do only Delphi....

Comment by Florentin on February 24, 19:29

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Definitely after ten years with Delphi and I still love 
you even though I can say that Lazarus delphi codetyphon 
is what could be. Lazarus Long live

Comment by NATESHU on March 13, 02:42

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I'm not so sure about Delphi future. 
The main reason for this that it looking archaic and
smells like something old.
Even all the new features in recent years have been
borrowed from the modern languages like MS C# (
generics, class helpers e t.c. )

The niche of system programming occupied with no
exception by C/C++. The same for the сommercial
off-the-shelf, video games, entertainment, etc. All
others can be done more easily in modern managed code
languages or even on WEB technologies.

Delphi is becoming more and more of the language for a
narrow range of accounting tasks associated with the
database and mainly for old school programmers.

Young people are not looking in his direction. And
basically only old programmers attend the Delphi events.
Therefore, it does not matter how much makeup is
imposed on a zombie. Makeup can't do him alive :(

Comment by Alex Mikhailov on May 22, 12:01

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Hi Marco,

If I have an idea which I believe will help Delphi make another 
revolution, what would be the best way to communicate it to you? 
The idea is not really new, it is something that industry was thinking 
about in 70-80's but at that time the idea was thrown away. I'm sure 
if to get back to it now, Delphi will gain competitive advantage over 
other programming languages and IDEs...

Thanks.

Pavels.

Comment by Pavels Tremasovs [http://www.smartcodetech.com] on May 24, 18:42

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Marco

Hello to a man whose books I have referenced and code
I have happily plagiarised for over 18 years.

I have recently upgraded to XE3 Starter from 2009 at
home. I thought I'd try to use if for a few months
before comment.

I have now been using it and am very happy with it. I
would raise two points.

Using FireMonkey necessitates switching between code
and form views which I dislike (is there any
likelihood this might be changed). If I'm wrong and
it's my incomptent usage please let me know.

I do have to agree with the cost issue mentioned
earlier. Less so for a Delphi advocate like myself but
it did cost over twice the price of my operating
system and trying to convince people to experiment at
that price is not fruitful. I certainly believe that
formulating some strategy to provide educational
establishments with free usage could only be benficial.

That said I am 100% behind the hope that this year
will be judged a great year for Delphi.

All the best

Nick

Comment by Nick Foley on June 1, 13:31

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I used Delphi for years. Not anymore. We have moved 
over to other platforms due to Delphi missing the boat 
several times in a row. All our Delphi projects have 
been converted or are in the process of being 
converted.

Delphi skills are also extremely hard to come by. 
Delphi lost momentum in 2006 and once you stumble you 
need to run that much faster and harder to regain your 
position.

Delphi has unfortunately not even come close to what 
is being offered out there at the moment and it is 
trying to jump into a time where things are rapidly 
changing. Why should you pay for a Android development 
environment when they are free? Oh yeah Delphi does 
not do android yet... Linux development has taken off 
on the server side with free tools. Delphi not there 
yet.

Windows is becoming much more irrelevant everyday and 
soon will be just another operating system. Just like 
Delphi became just another development tool. 

I do have fond memories of it though. However when I 
worked on it last week for the first time in 6 years I 
was not impressed. It felt like Delphi 6 still... no 
progress no innovation things very much needed by the 
tool to move forward.

Its dead Jim!

Comment by Neil on June 11, 07:27

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 Ehhh...

I went from Delphi 5 to Delphi XE2,

had to rechange all my code, and a promise of iOS in 
XE2, that drove me to purchase the 1000$ package, and 
no iOS can be implemented, and barely hello world 
application.

Then the XE4, went out, and had to add another 500$ 
for upgrade, finding that the Mobile is not 
supported, and had to buy the mobile upgrade for 
another 450$...

And still, its working and nice, but my code need to 
have so much mofification... no thanks.



Firemonkey and iOS, does not have a good Bidi support,

the Profetional version, has poor database 
connection, and everything takes too much time to 
learn, waiting for the slowest embarcadero web site, 
for help.

Not to mention, that no QC, and the IDE on XE4 still 
crash two times a day, on iOS platform working.



Come'on, I want to connect a simple XML to Dataset, 
and it seems that the only version that does it, is 
the 2500$ package of Architect...

A Simple Web site cannot be developed, since it 
require too much knowledge of IIS and CGI 
technologies, and to compile and execute takes too 
much time, not to mention that Intraweb is sux, 
breaking my teeths to make a simple Ajax test...

You need to learn Delphi for 3 months until making 
something that works, where on PHP/HTML you can learn 
and develop in 1 month...



if Embacadero want to keep alive, they have to give 
thier product for free with evrything, but payment 
should be done only when people getting thier product 
to production... like the starter version, but should 
include all without cost...



This way, more developer will get into it...

As a developer, i dont mind to pay 2000$ for a full 
package, but finding developers that will cost me 5000
$/month, and very hard to find... is very hard...



But, i think they missed the train, and I really dont 
know what to do..

The world has 1 Million of Developers, which means, 
delphi has 0.5%, which is barely 5000 developers???

look at this link:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/
index.html

delphi went from position 12 to 17, the last year!!!!

Comment by Asaf Azulay [http://www.omc.co.il] on July 15, 16:17

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

A bad year for me.
I hate the so-called NextGEN compiler.

I do not like ARC with no chooice.
Do not like hard to shut down RTTI.
Do not like mess unit reference.
Do not like no AnsiString.
Do not like the low efficiency of the new routine.

I'm so sad that Delphi is farther and farther away 
from me. 

Bye Delphi.

Comment by on August 1, 01:53

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Dear anonymous (could you at least sign your message? I generally 
delete anonymous comments),

sorry you don't like the nextgen compiler,  which you can easily ignore 
on windows (it is required only on iOS). I read your message as a 
complain with little substance.

your take, but these pointless comments offer really no help at all. I 
suggest you use objective C for iOS development, and use their ARC 
implementation...

-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on August 1, 08:08

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Sorry for my anonymous post.I'm just so disappointed. 
I had no hope to get your reply .

If you want listen to me.
I will try telling you my opinion 
(Sorry for my bad english)

I actually do not oppose ARC. But ARC is not the 
whole world. Delphi should support a variety of 
development way. ARC maybe a good solution in many
situation. But absolutely not for every where.
I don't believe there is a kind of scheme is comply 
with all conditions .So put ARC in TObject is not a 
good chooice.At the very least to give a soulution to 
the user to do jobs with no ARC. 

On the other hand, i can not easily ignore on windows.
Because the NEXTGEN represents the future.I can find 
the TObject.DisposeOf with no compiler switch in 
Win32 DelphiXE4. It means Win32/Win64 must use ARC and
has no chooice one day in the future .

I don't know why EMB so like forcing users to accept 
something but not give a chooice. The same occur in 
the RTTI text information and AnsiString. Why EMB was
so confidence?



 

Comment by Stone on August 6, 03:02

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

What is native?

My understanding is speed and control for free.

Comment by Stone on August 6, 03:48

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I wish the best for Delphi's future! 
Be innovative and make a lightweight, stabile IDE with 
a performant backend. 
I think performance was the biggest feature of Delphi 
in the past - Delphi was the only language that could 
compete with C++, and had the nicer syntax (and C++ is 
not dying even though it's "old").

In my opinion you should restart writing a new 
development environment from scatch - make it 
extensible with a general modular component concept, 
so everything missing can be written by the community. 
Fully integrate multiple plattform support (including 
64bit). Add a new code-sharing-cloud where customers 
can exchange best practice solutions and get help. 
Push this feature as something innovative/new (maybe 
rename something existing into something eatable^^) 
and attack the new mobile market with performant, 
stabile apps that can run even under good old windows. 
ALL DEVS OUT THERE WAIT FOR AN EASY SOLUTION THAT JUST 
WORKS - SO PLEASE PLEASE JUMP INTO THIS CENTURY!!!

Comment by androdan on August 15, 11:08

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Hi Marco, your aknowledge of delphi is remarkable, I
been using delphi for 13 years now, and I guess I'm
spoiled because of delphi, I've learned C#, .net
technologies, but the IDE is just too cool, the WINAPI
implementation..., I just can't believe why delphi is
not the most popular IDE, I've tried to develop
programs in other languajes, but the speed, easyness,
everything about delphi is out of comparision.

Thank you for your books!!!! :)

Comment by miguel on November 27, 23:30

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Oke conclusion.

I see alot "older" people here. 
I have learned some Delphi on school. After that never seen it again.
Only once.. some old guy who was 40/50.

Young people will never be attracted to Delphi. Why? First: Pascal is not 
so populair language and isn't asked so much by the market.

As for mobile space. QT is WAY WAY WAY ahead.. Just look at the tech 
demo's.

 

Comment by Justincase on January 16, 06:50

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Justincase,

  I've started seeing many young people, talking at schools, etc. Mobile is 
changing the Delphi landscape. Object Pascal is still very popular in many 
parts of the world. I don't see QT way ahead, I see it different and much 
more limited in scope. Anyway, we're adding C++ to RAD Studio mobile 
support, iOS is there, Android coming.

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 16, 11:13

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 2013 A Great Year for Delphi

Take a look tiobe.
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/
index.html

Now, Delphi/Object Pascal's position is 20.

If I remember correctly, it was at 12 the earlier 
this year.

Comment by Stone on January 30, 01:36

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

Stone, I insist it was a great year for Delphi. We released iOS and Android 
support, gained new customers, won back the support for some old ones 
who had left, saw the community growing.

Tiobe has its way of evaluating languages we could debate at length, we 
are faring much better in other indexes, and in the real world (which is 
what really matters).

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 30, 10:48

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

The Tiobe's rank is meaningless for us(programmers).
For me, the rankings reflect my feelings for Delphi.
Maybe it has some reference significance for EMB.

Comment by Stone on January 31, 01:48

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

 I am written  an Accounting package in Delphi xe2
with a thin client front end and am very satisfied 
with its performance.

But.. I want to compile the Middle Tier to native
Linux code. (without using wine or any .net library)
as Linux works much faster than windows.

A Linux native compiler is important to the future of
Delphi, as Linux has a constantly growing
user base. (Some Governments are now using it)

When is Embarcadero going to make a move on this 
with Delphi\Firemonkey ? 

It does not have to be tomorrow but it must happen.

Comment by David on February 8, 20:28

2013 A Great Year for Delphi 

I have been developing in Foxpro programmer for the 
last 25 years. Microsoft have ceased support this year 
so I am having to look elsewhere and I don't trust 
Microsoft anymore. 

We have a couple of commercial windows applications 
that are screaming out for mobile additions. I have 
looked at Alpha Five and have found it a great tool 
for web development but no so good for Windows apps. 

I am the only developer but will be looking to take on 
another sometime soon to help rewrite these products. 
As you can imagine I need to justify the very high 
cost of Delphi as well as the cost of a Delphi 
programmer should I go down the Delphi route. 

I have read numerous posts that suggest Delphi is a 
good tool for small developers like us. I get the 
feeling it is very much an independent tool like 
Foxpro.

My question is. Should I opt for Delphi and if I do is 
it going to be developed for the next 15 years? I am 
46 and don't want to change again :@(

Arguments for and against would be very much 
appreciated.

Comment by Paul on June 8, 14:58