Marco Tech Blog

October 30, 2006

Delphi Survey 2006

The yearly survey of the Delphi community is online.

posted by marcocantu @ 1:45PM | 4 Comments [0 Pending]

Delphi Survey 2006 

"so that Borland can figure out what is needed only 
by some very vocal developers and what is useful for 
most of them"

This is very unfair. If it had been for what 
was "useful for most of them", Delphi would have 
been a VB clone - no OOP, pcode, runtime and OCX 
hell, no way to write its own components. Simpler to 
use, and far less powerful.

Delphi was different because it was more powerful 
than *most* developers ever take advantage of.
In turn, this power had a positive feedback. Those 
happily putting controls on a form and gluing them 
together with some events were able to exploit the 
more powerful controls developed by those who were 
able to go beyond what was "useful for most of them".

Just follow the mean, and all you get is a mediocre 
product.

Comment by Kent Morwath on October 30, 16:17

Delphi Survey 2006 

Kent,

I fully agree with what you say, but this is not what
I meant, and I guess you should know... For sure,
Delphi does and should do much more than the average
developer needs.

But comments like "90% Delphi developers don't care
about .NET", "CF is useless", "we all need Kylix" make
more sense if they come from a broad survey than if
you poll requests in read the non-tech newsgroup.

Comment by Marco Cantù [http://www.marcocantu.com] on October 30, 16:26

Delphi Survey 2006 

Marco, I apologize for misunderstanding your words. 
I am aware that each of us uses a different set of 
Delphi features, and each Delphi developer would 
like to have her own feature set improved.
Even if we don't develop web sites, I would never 
ask to drop web support from Delphi - I understand 
it is very important for others.
But when I hear people dismissing other advanced 
features just because they don't use them, and many 
don't use them just because of their own vertical 
market, well, I get a bit upset.
For example localization/unicode may not be an issue 
for people working for the US market only, but could 
be a big issue for people in Europe and those 
working for Eastern Europe, Far East and the like. A 
huge market is opening in those countries, and the 
approach "we don't need it right now" could mean to 
lose a big chance. 
I believe the big issue with such a survey is to 
weigh results properly. I don't know how they could 
match responses to "real users" - as I wrote in 
Nick's blog, I'd like the survey to be tied to a BDN 
account and product licenses.
Every developer's need is important, but has the 
hobbyist working in his basement the same needs of a 
company selling critical software to a big 
enterprise? Has he the same insight into technology 
and market challenges?
DevCo. should deliver not only what "most user want" 
(free beer, perhaps?), they should give them what 
they will need surely in the near future even if 
they are not able to understand it now. In the good 
old days Borland had a "vision", and .NET itself 
showed that vision was correct. If they lose it, and 
give developers the tools to develop yesterday apps 
only, well, they have lost.

Comment by Kent Morwath on October 30, 18:16

Delphi Survey 2006 

This kind of activity reminds of the history. After 
the C++Builder Community posted their Open Letter, 
Borland held a similar survey on C++. Now Simon 
conducted an Open Letter on Delphi, so Borland/DevCo 
responded again. Yes, it is a good action. I wish 
everyone using Delphi/Turbos/Kylix and C++Builder 
participate in this survey in order to give DTG 
correct data on their users. And personally I really 
wish Unicode and Win64 support would be soon 
available.

Comment by lextm [http://blog.csdn.net/lextm] on October 31, 05:24