October 6, 2008
SDN: Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
As the SDN conference in the Netherlands, Delphi product manager Nick Hodges made a public reference to a new project, Delphi Prism
As the SDN conference in the Netherlands, Delphi product manager Nick Hodges made reference (the word announce I used earlier is not appropriate here... as there was no formal announcement) to a new product, Delphi Prism.
- This will be a completely separate product, it will be a plug-in to visual studio, using the Visual Studio Shell
- The separate product will be the .NET portion of RAD Studio 2009
- It will be an all new, next generation .NET solution for Delphi with full support for the .NET framework 3.5
(WinForms, WFP, Silverlight, ASP.NET, WCF, LINQ) - CodeGear will provide Datasnap 2009 integration and dbExpress for ADO.NET support
- Will be sold only with maintanance
- Will be available before the end of the year
Update
I'm sorry to have used the wrong term "announces" as this has stirred some controversy. As Bob and Nick clarified in their comments, and I fully agree with, this was not a formal product announcement. Nick did mention, at the end of his product address (which included an updated Delphi Win32 Roadmap), what is the current plan for Delphi .NET... so he announced a plan, not a product.
32 Comments
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
Let us all guess how much effort will be going into the .NET product (Prism) and how much effort will be left for the Win32. That will be very hard decisions to make. Do we go full gear on the Prims-product to give it all chances to succeed? How much resources will must be allocated to the other products (Win32, PHP, AS400) to let those not die out? I only hope that my previous prediction (http://blogs.sevensteps.com/2008/05/embarcadero-youd- better-keep.html) doesn't come true... Codegear will have a real tough cookie on their hands now to fight MS on their own turf. The Delphi.Net implementation better be very, very good and very, very successfull. Good luck to them; I don't think this will be easy...Comment by Bart Roozendaal [http://blogs.sevensteps.com] on October 6, 13:17
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
Hopefully now we can get the .NET roadmap also... NOTE: I mentioned your blog here: https://forums.codegear.com/thread.jspa?threadID=4350&tstart=0Comment by El Cy on October 6, 13:37
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
So the rumours hold true, but was anything said about the future of Delphi.NET as in BDS/VCL.NET based Delphi.NET? Is this another product in the Delphi.NET stable, or a different direction for Delphi.NET ?Comment by Marco van de Voort [http://www.nldelphi.com] on October 6, 13:55
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
Nick didn't really announce Delphi Prism, but more disclosed the project. CodeGear will be at PDC at the end of this month, and he said they would announce it at that time, not today ;-) Delphi Prism was still said to be shipping this year...Comment by Bob Swart [http://www.bobswart.nl/blog] on October 6, 14:24
Delphi Prism under VS: Good News!
Delphi as Visual Studio plug-in = Good News both for developers and the companies! Good for Developers because they now get a focused and coherent .NET enviroment. Good for Embarcadero because they now have a solid and viable platform to offer Delphi developers. Good for Microsoft because the Delphi developers now may find it less of a risk to move to .NET where appropriate. Delphi PRISM sounds about right if it indeed supports the PRISM app.lib.Comment by Lars Fosdal [http://delphi.fosdal.com] on October 6, 14:39
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
Just to be clear, I didn't "announce" anything. ;-) NickComment by Nick Hodges [http://blogs.codegear.com/nickhodges] on October 6, 14:39
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
I'm glad it's going to be separate. I'm not ever going to do anything with .Net, so good riddance.Comment by Steve Moran [http://www.objecttree.com] on October 6, 14:40
@Nick: so there are just some rumors ... anyway some gooood ones
@Nick - "Just to be clear, I didn't "announce" anything" OK, so there are just some rumors ... anyway some gooood ones :) Hopefully now you will keep your promise (I know you'll say that you made no promise :) ...) and "announce" the .NET roadmap, now that Delphi future's is looking quite bright ! CogeGear(ers), I congrat you (all) for such a good job ! ... This is just be another proof that CG is listening !Comment by El Cy on October 6, 16:09
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
I read in Bob's blog there will be no CF.net support (designers). At this moment this means I'm forced to move to C# for CF development. :-((Comment by TDaniel on October 6, 16:21
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
CF.NET development will be definitely supported but not the CF.NET designers since these are bound to C# & VB.NET (bad code ... or just the MS need to be "in charge" with mobile devel ?!). So the problem is not with CG here but with MS way of exposing the CF.NET designers to "outside" languages. Maybe this will change in next VS ... so Delphi Prism will benefit also (as now in the .NET client arena).Comment by @TDaniel: CF.NET on October 6, 16:29
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
>> I read in Bob's blog there will be no CF.net support (designers). AGAIN ?? -.-Comment by Mauro Italy on October 6, 16:38
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Is this Oxygene ? If it is, I hope the price will stay about the same as it is now. "Only sold with maintenance" sounds like a threat to me.Comment by delphirocks on October 6, 17:36
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
I wonder who would pay for such a tool. You bought VS. You already have whatever you need to develop under .NET. Why should you pay again for "Prims" instead of, say, some good C# libraries? Just because it's Pascal and you're too old to learn another language? Because of dbExpress and Datasnap? LOL! The only reasonable scenario I can think of is you decided to move to VS and C#, and you can't rewrite all the code at once - it looks CodeGear is still happy to bring water to the MS mill - they are still falling blindly in any trap MS put on the road of Windows development.Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on October 6, 18:31
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
@Luigi: I've been playing around with Oxygene for a couple days now and I have to say it rocks. Bigger C#/VB codebases tend to get messy. Oxygene code looks way cleaner than C# or VB.NET, thanks to its separation of interface and implementation. That alone would be a good reason to buy it (if the prices stays where it is right now).Comment by delphirocks on October 6, 19:51
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
While I think it's a good news for both native Delphi and managed Delphi... I just wondering... Kylix was "kylixed" several years ago, but ever today some developers ask to revive it. So where all these guys, who used (and still use?) "old" Delphi.NET and VCL.NET which gonna be "kylixed"? Why they don't cry about their favourite tool? Or Borland just spent resources for a product which was used by few developers? (May be aside from ASP.NET development).Comment by Kryvich [] on October 6, 23:26
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
This is inline with what Nick said when I interviewed him back on August 25th: http://www.delphi.org/2008/08/episode-2-nick-hodges/ The Visual Studio plug-in and name are new, but the rest was already reviled.Comment by Jim McKeeth [http://www.Delphi.org] on October 7, 01:03
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
So can we expect a new BDS totally written in native code? codegear, please remove the .net code from the IDE since we dont need that anymore!!!Comment by ahmoy on October 7, 06:47
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
The very last thing we need, is a VS based Delphi.NET. Because it will open the door for an Eclipse based Delphi Win32. *brrrr*Comment by Roman on October 7, 12:41
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
I can't wait to get out of software development and forget about all this. But meanwhile, we appear to be going round and round in ever-decreasing circles, which can have only one outcome. Yes, you got it. Vanishing up there. The Microsoft bubble cannot be far from popping, especially given the world situation. Who's going to keep paying into their protection racket, when you can get everything free?Comment by Steve Moran [http://www.objecttree.com] on October 7, 13:58
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
So for CF.NET designer support using Delphi, I'm forced to use RemObjects Oxygene? Thanks a lot, CodeGear!Comment by Paul Morey [http://www.givenhansco.com] on October 7, 16:15
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
"Because it will open the door for an Eclipse based Delphi Win32. *brrrr*" That might not be bad, if it allows us to dump MS desktop operating systems and use Linux or Mac. Currently I run XP SP3 in a VM (virtualbox)on 64bit Ubuntu 8.04 and the only thing installed in the VM is Delphi..... All my other needs are easily handled by Ubuntu. So a Eclipse based delphi might be a good thing if it runs on other platforms and allows cross compiling to Linux,Mac OSX, and win32/64Comment by on October 7, 19:23
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Jim McKeeth might have meant to say "revealed" instead of "reviled". :-) WComment by Warren on October 7, 19:34
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Naw, I think Jim was right on with "reviled" - except it just seems to confirm that BorPrise liked the look of VS.NET. For those of us who really like the undocked designers, this is just one more indication that the VS.NET IDE is viewed as superior by the only real commercial IDE competitor out there. I know the Galileo architect swears he started out designing Galileo without ever seeing VS.NET, but it just feels like moving to Microsoft by inches. Why'd we put up with defending and justifying our choice of using Delphi all these years instead of VB when we're just being moved over that way anyway? Harrumph. <g>Comment by Brion on October 7, 21:05
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
@Warren: You are correct. Jim McKeeth frequently spells things incorrectly. I believe that is a favorite of his.Comment by Jim McKeeth [http://www.Delphi.org] on October 7, 21:14
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Hmm, so if we want to continue with .net development as well as native, I wonder if this mean we have to buy a visual studio licence in addition to Rad studio and Prism ? Even if the VS2008 IDE is bundled like Oxygene, I wonder if the 'new product' approach means there will still be something extra to buy. (keeps fingers crossed that it will be included as part of the Rad studio maintenance)Comment by Graham Kennedy on October 7, 23:44
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Ten bucks says this is essentially RemObject's Oxygene re-packaged and slightly modified to integrate w/other CG/E stuff more smoothly. More info on Oxygene here: http://www.remobjects.com/product/oxygene Keep in mind, their Hydra product allows Win32 / .NET cross-pollination as well.Comment by Cass McNutt [http://www.ThoughtsOnThinking.com] on October 8, 20:01
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Nick Hodges "leaking" of the Delphi Prism for .Net without disclosing a roadmap I consider a very dangerous thing down the road as it create a lot of FUD and rumors specially on actual users of VCL.NET.Comment by Fabricio on October 8, 20:21
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
once upon a time, this conference (to the max) was about speakers, with some time for vendor exhibits. These days, you have to pay money to hear this kind of "plans" ?? Even your (interesting as always) talks could not motivate me to attend this years conference.Comment by Old_SD(G)N_FAN on October 8, 22:49
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
Not that I know much more, so I though of not commenting any further... but some of the posts require some notes. Here they go: On the problems of committing resources to either Win32 and .NET, if they come up with a solution for the end of the year, with Delphi 2009 just out of the door, I won't worry... I don't think Delphi Prism is supposed to support the .NET Prism ((a beta name) technology... Delphi 2009 already requires less .NET than Delphi 2007, as the SDK is not needed any more... The problems with CF support is that designers are not licensed with Visual Studio Shell... "Is this Oxygene?" There are many rumors on the newsgroups pointing in this direction, but nothing officially indicating (or denying) it... I don't think you'll have to pay for Visual Studio to get Delphi Prism with the Visual Studio Shell. That version of Visual Studio (with no C# and VB.NET) comes free... The idea of Delphi going to Eclipse seems to have absolutely no ground to me. Two different beasts... I agree that CodeGear should disclose more information on this project and as soon as possible, to avoid too mush speculation.... There were less than 5 minutes of the conference devoted to this topic, so the comment by the old SD(G)N fan has no ground in this specific respect (I won't comment more in general, posted on the conference in another blog entry).... That's all.Comment by Marco Cantù [http://www.marcocantu.com] on October 10, 01:50
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
I didn't know about the "Visual Studio Shell" and Visual Studio SDK. Well, it Delphi Prims is licensed Oxygene that makes sense because it already runs in VS. But just to add some FUD <g>, shouldn't we start to get worried that Codegear may have some long term plans to move its products to the VS Shell? 8-O Just kidding...Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on October 12, 16:33
SDN Nick Refers to Delphi Prism
We Delphi developers can be compared to a football being kicked in all possible directions by the very companies that made it. I am all too confused and is considering in moving to C#. After having mastered Win32 development then came .NET and Borland promised that the whole idea of developing .NET apps using VCL.NET is the best way to go. That is why they dropped WinForms support in Delphi 2007 remember. After being happy and contented using Delphi.NET & VCL.Net here comes another change in strategy on the part of Embarcadero. They are now realeasing Delphi Prism which fully supports .NET, winForms, Silverlight etc.. All the while I thought that WinForms doesn't matter anymore and now VCL.NET is on the way out. Whew!! I hope they present us clear roadmap to our beloved Delphi. Right now I am just sitting & waiting for new developments and I will not be surprised if they declared that Delphi is also on its way out. But before that happens we Delphi programmers must leverage our .NET development using other languages such as C# I guess, or else we'll be doomed if further developments in Delphi will also be dropped I hope it will not suffer the same fate as Kylix.Comment by Rossano Eugenio on April 29, 01:40
Post Your Comment
Click here for posting your feedback to this blog.
There are currently 0 pending (unapproved) messages.
SDN Nick Announces Delphi Prism
Comment by vicente on October 6, 12:36