Marco Tech Blog

February 8, 2016

Delphi 2016 Roadmap

The RAD Studio roadmap for 2016, including plans for Delphi and C++Builder for the current year, is now public

posted by marcocantu @ 2:16PM | 36 Comments [0 Pending]

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

That all sounds good but is there any strategy for
growing the Object Pascal ecosystem in general? A
significant cost of using Delphi is the low number of
Pascal-native libraries available relative to other
programming languages. And it's not just library
functionality. Some of the time you can find a library
that does exactly what you want but its license is
incompatible with your project so you can't use it. A
bigger ecosystem would make more options available to
everyone and make Delphi a more attractive option.

Comment by Gary Johnson on February 9, 00:43

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 When is it Spring, Summer. 'Fall' is that Autum and
which month is that?

Comment by Frank on February 9, 00:54

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 As Gary pointed, the ecosystem is lagging behind.

The compatibility breaks of the last years (ARC, ZBS...) have 
furthered the problem, by making the existing libraries unusable in 
the latest environments, even when they were not visual at all.

Comment by Eric [https://www.delphitools.info/] on February 9, 11:09

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Gary, that's close to what I mentioned earlier.
Delphi is good, but it's getting pushed into a niche
market more and more.

- high cost
- small userbase

Decrease the cost and the userbase will increase,
which in turn will increase revenue. Keep increasing
the cost, and the userbase will dwindle until it's
down to the last few people who don't have any viable
alternatives to switch to.

I wish they'd look at some better pricing plans.
Especially for the single user licenses / home users /
students. So the next generation of delphi devs will
be able to start early.

Comment by Thomas on February 9, 12:02

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Looking forward to more Windows 10 VCL Controls.  
I would also like to see the IDE updated earlier - the form designer 
and other parts still show a Windows 7 look even on Windows 10.
And the ribbon control needs modernizing to the Office 2016 look.

Comment by Wilfred Oluoh [http://www.ideaz.co.ke] on February 10, 04:48

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 so it's 2016, and STILL no RTL\BiDi support??????
the last Delphi i bought was XE.
i don't see ANY reason to buy another Delphi until it
will have Right-To-Left - BiDi support in Firemonkey !!!

the roadmap says :
"Native support for Utf8String type on all platforms"
well, i'm sorry but that DOESN'T mean REAL BiDi support!

so again : NO RTL - NOT BUYING !!!

Comment by Eitan [] on February 10, 05:12

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

I'd really like to see Linux ARM support, along with 
the Linux x64 Server support:
http://blog.therealoracleatdelphi.com/2015/12/baking
-object-pascal-and-rapsberry-pie.html

Preferably supporting Yocto built distributions.

Besides that, I hope that Idera are serious about their 
intensions and investments into Delphi. My concern 
is that "fewer major releases", are management 
words for less investments into the product.

Comment by Alfred on February 10, 07:04

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Great to see new features, Specially Linux support, 
keep it up.

Its will be great if you guys can introduce a new 
language to the stack, Inspired from C#, Java or 
Swift, Most youngsters consider BEGIN END as 
OLD (even though its not ) Specially Students.

Comment by KK [] on February 10, 08:27

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

I know that people complain about everything.
But we must to see the good points of the news too. Delphi Seatle 
was good version of Delphi (XE + were a little lost). And this new 
version seems to be good too. For example the support of Linux is 
a very waited feature. Thanks for that.

Sure that there are a lot of points that the community cares about. 
But not everything is on Marco's responsibility (I think), as 
example, the pricing plan of Delphi. 
And be sure, no matter the way Idera choose to pricing Delphi, 
some will like some will not. For me for example, signature is the 
best option, you will always have the top IDE available (I know 
abou the thirdy components), will need to pay just as you need to 
use. It helps to increase the users base (sure, if the price is 
compatible to the market). 
The perpetual license is a little dangerous for systems that keeps on 
development. If I'd like to buy Seatle now for example, and have 
no much money available, I'll wait until next version to have linux 
support. It's not good for me that don't use a good IDE and it's not 
good to Idera that don't sell it's products.

Anyway, I hope the best for our IDE!

Find uses for Delphi: https://github.com/rfrezino/RFindUnit 

Comment by Rodrigo Farias Rezino [https://github.com/rfrezino/RFindUnit] on February 10, 12:13

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Hi,

What about Firemonkey RightToLeft BiDi support?

Comment by Asaf on February 10, 13:27

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Right now FireMonkey controls lack any property for 
supporting BiDi text and right-to-left languages. Please 
add BiDi support for android and IOS.

what dose "Native support for Utf8String type on all 
platforms" mean?

thanks

Comment by ray on February 10, 18:01

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Nice to know you failed to understand ARC makes no
sense in the server world where you want to fully
control memory management to ensure your application
doesn't blow out available memory under heavy load -
if you're going the native code route.
If I want something able to eat my server memory I
prefer Java, thank you. At least there is much broader
support.
Forget ARC, it's good for simple client side
applications, it's an hindrance on server application
with high scalability needs.

Comment by KMowath on February 10, 19:07

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 KK: "Its will be great if you guys can introduce a
new language to the stack"

I think introducing a brand new language would be the
worse possible option. The ecosystem for Object Pascal
is small, but at least there is one. A new language
has to start from zero and unless it's open source and
freely available it simply won't grow when there are
so many established languages to choose from. As an
example, the Rust and Swift user-bases are small but
they are growing because both languages are freely
available to everyone. Swift is growing much faster
than Rust because Apple is promoting it, whereas Rust
is mostly promoted by Mozilla.

KK: "Most youngsters consider BEGIN END as OLD (even
though its not ) Specially Students."

Yes, the Object Pascal language itself and the Object
Pascal ecosystem don't get enough promotion and
consequently many developers consider it a dead
language, which is a shame. IDERA\Embarcadero don't
seem to be that interested in helping to enlarge the
Object Pascal ecosystem at the moment so it's up to
Free Pascal (http://www.freepascal.org) to make it
happen (if it happens at all).

Comment by Gary Johnson on February 11, 00:13

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Is there any strategy to support Persian language on android?

Comment by DelphiBoy on February 11, 08:45

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

I keep refreshing this page hoping marco comes in with
a solution to all the above arguments and fears,. but
so far it's just more complaints and requests. :( 

Comment by Thomas on February 11, 10:04

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 To increase the Object Pascal ecosystem, I suggest that 
Embarcadero can try to promote some kind of MOOC 
course based on Delphi. Today are plenty of them 
around internet, and courses about mobile get a lot of 
attention. Young people will be the future users, and if 
them don't know about Delphi, the product ecosystem 
will be decrease.

Comment by Morewood on February 11, 11:09

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 when we Delphi for web?

Comment by Emerson on February 11, 12:09

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Thomas,

> I keep refreshing this page hoping Marco comes in with
> a solution to all the above arguments and fears 

The road map is a company road map, so I don't have much to add. 
Other than we are listening to our customers feedback.

Pushing back Delphi to younger developers or expanding the 
ecosystem are initiatives that don't belong to the product technical 
road map, but more to the business planning. Sure, there are 
connections, but up to a given point. Anyway, I fully disagree the 
ecosystem is lagging behind, there are still many third party 
vendors and open source libraries available for Delphi. Old classic 
ones and new offerings as well.

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on February 11, 14:23

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Marco Cantu: "Anyway, I fully disagree the ecosystem
is lagging behind, there are still many third party
vendors and open source libraries available for Delphi."

If the Object Pascal ecosystem is healthy then how is
it that Swift, a new language starting from zero
that's been around for just 19 months, is already
rated at over half of Object Pascal's rating on the
TIOBE index for February 2016:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

And that's even after Object Pascal's rating was given
a boost to get it to 10th place:
http://chapmanworld.com/2016/02/09/delphi-jumps-to-10th-place-on-the-tiobe-index/

I think it's quite likely that Swift will overtake
Object Pascal by the end of this year. When people see
these trends it just re-enforces their opinion that
Object Pascal is a dying (or even a dead) language and
that's not a good outcome for Delphi.

Comment by Gary Johnson on February 12, 00:20

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Gary, according to the same reasoning JavaScript is doomed because 
Delphi has almost reached it in Tiobe index. Let's get real.
It is true that Swift is a nice language on the rise. It is backed by a 
rather large company, you know. But for now it can be used only a 
very few platforms.
-Marco

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on February 12, 09:05

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 A programming language need to support all major
platform and linux is one of them. So it is great be
able to use Delphi to developp application that target
Linux. Today you can get a Rasperry Zero for 5 euro.
Linux systems are therefore perfect for IoT especially
if you need something you cannot do with a
microcontroller. Some Linux distributions are free and
you do not have the high price tag of the windows
operating system. If you deploy a large numbers of
system/server, it is a significant advantage to deploy
on linux system. Today are iOS/Androis/OSx rapid
moving targerts. Windows is today a rapid moving
target as well. Linux Kernel seems much more stable.
An exe build with Delphi about 10 years ago still run
on windows today, and that is great. Nevertheless we
are relying on Microsoft decision that may change in
future. Linux being not own by a company but much more
community/users driven, we will not be less subject
the consequence of Microsoft decision for our product

Comment by Alexandre Jacquot on February 12, 11:11

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Good news! I am looking forward to the Linux support.

Thanks to Marco for the great work he is doing!

Comment by Peter on February 12, 12:32

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

I'd like to see Apple Watch supported.  Apple has set this up to 
require development of Watch app as part of your iPhone app.

Comment by Brent [] on February 12, 13:34

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Marco Cantu: "according to the same reasoning
JavaScript is doomed because Delphi has almost reached
it in Tiobe index"

The problem is more that JavaScript scores highly on
all such indexes. Delphi only rates anywhere near the
top on TIOBE. Swift is moving up into the top rankings
in multiple indexes. Delphi is not.

Marco Cantu: "But for now it can be used only a very
few platforms."

Exactly. Even with that limitation TIOBE already rates
it as 1.3%.

Comment by Gary Johnson on February 12, 19:22

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 what dose "Native support for Utf8String type on all 
platforms" mean?

Comment by ray on February 13, 10:37

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 What about real right to left support on fmx controls
in next version

Comment by Morteza [http://Shatel.ir] on February 21, 06:39

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Hello Mr. Cantu,

Let RAD Team spend more time on fixing and enhancing Parallel 
Programming Library during 2016. It's promising lib, but it needs a 
lot of work/polishing. We miss cancellation tokens, we suffer from 
unresolved issues in QP. 

Regards,
Petar

Comment by Petar Georgiev on February 24, 08:08

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 What is the fference between Linux support and Kylix

Comment by RF on March 4, 22:20

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 wouldnt be a app-update from pc to android device via
wlan/wifi like appInventor has, a reall big deal for
Delphi?

would easy up things a lot ;-)

Comment by MARD on March 10, 11:14

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

No one likes Intraweb!

* I wold like to choose the kind of deployment for
Intraweb exactly like building VCL/FMX on choosing
platform source, like: Application, Isapi, etc...

* Also easy way to set page link
"www.mypage.com/something".

* Beautiful style designer like Embarcadero did to
HTML5 Builder.

Comment by Karina on March 18, 15:26

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 At least an editor that is close in productivity features to IntelliJ. 
The one Delphi has is the worst among development tools.

Comment by Nader on May 21, 19:56

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 Why is there not a free version of Delphi? 
We need a bigger community.. and 
communities don't start when the entry 
level to even try it costs so much. Whats 
encouraging the next wave of developers to 
try Delphi? I know it's amazing, but the 
price is too much of a restriction. Have a 
free version so we can get some young 
blood and a large community again. 

Comment by Adrian [http://vokke.com.au] on July 5, 12:59

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

What about Firemonkey RightToLeft BiDi supports ?
And can we write Arabic/Hebrew in Firemonkey updates till now !?

Comment by Safwan on July 30, 13:22

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 RTL language still not support?!!!!!!
why?
i dont know why this weakness is not important to you?

Comment by vahid [] on August 19, 20:54

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

Hi

I just wondering if there are any plans that allow 
FireMonkey compiling x64 in Mac OSx

Regards
Miquel T.

Comment by Miquel Taule on August 27, 09:20

Delphi 2016 Roadmap 

 I teach a course using Delphi (how my chess apps 
are created) and I've had students refuse to sign up 
because Firemonkey does not support Arabic.

On the plus side, I was paid to fix a chess VCL app 
that still supports BiDi text.

Comment by Michael Leahy [http://shadowme.bookup.com] on April 25, 13:12