Marco Tech Blog

February 13, 2006

Support Delphi, Now!

For the dream of a new Delphi era to become true, the community needs to start acting now, or better, to keep acting as usual but with renewed strength.

posted by marcocantu @ 1:06PM | 26 Comments [0 Pending]

Support Delphi, Now! 

Sorry Marco, I am afraid will happen the contrary.
Most of us can't bet their reputation (what is left 
now...) and future on something so unclear yet.
I already wasted money in D2005 - and now even Bauer 
admits it was a bad release. Now I won't buy a tool 
with a so unclear future. If I have to buy BDS 2006 
or VS 2005, I'll save money until the situation gets 
clear. Especially, I won't give a penny to the actual 
Borland.
Moreover here all new development in Delphi is 
stopped, and I can't blame them. This time I won't 
spend my reputation trying to change their minds. On 
what ground? Hopes? Blog posts? Borland execs 
promises??? C'mon, let's be serious.
If Delphi fails to find a new company Bauer & C. 
probably won't have problem to find a new job. They 
have no investment in code and tools. But our 
applications won't turn in another language 
magically, nor our tools.
I really hope their dances are not like those on the 
Titanic - there won't be lifeboats for everybody.

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on February 13, 13:46

Support Delphi, Now! 

Marco,

I just bought your excellent Mastering D2005 book this
weekend.  Even though a lot of it is stuff I already
know, having used the product for years, you always
cover areas that I've glossed over or need more
details on, so it's worth having your stuff.

Now if only you had a PDF version of it on sale...that
sucker is heavy to carry back and forth to work!

Randy

Comment by Randy Magruder [http://randymagruder.blogspot.com] on February 13, 17:44

Support Delphi, Now! 

 I looked at how much a Delphi 2006 Enterprise UPGRADE
cost and I about choked.

Besides the Enterprise copy of Delphi I have at work,
I bought a Professional copy for hobby use at home. I
paid for most if not all the upgrades between Delphi 2
and Delphi 7. But the cost of keeping up to date was
totally unreasonable. I suspect that many Delphi
developers skip releases like I do. I think
NewDelphiCo would be better off if most of its
customers kept on new releases.

Kevin

Comment by Kevin Davidson [http://www.BlogOrDie.com] on February 13, 18:13

Support Delphi, Now! 

 I buyed the product d2006 two weeks ago, but after 
the news of february 8 , i am very worried. The 
product seems a good product (not like d2005) but 
all of us need a sign (from ¿?). I use delphi 7 and 
all my developments can wait for the new proprietor.
In this new version are missing a lot of things:
compact framework .... .Net 2.0 ......... .
Other products like Chrome (pascal), csharp 
develop ... and others invert in investigation and 
they get it.
I would like to know the new propietor , his plans, 
roadmap, and other things before. Now I won't invert 
(my time) in a tool with a so unclear future, I 
already wasted money in D2006. I am sorry.  

    

Comment by vicente on February 13, 18:53

Support Delphi, Now! 

most of (the very few of) us don't really have the 
cash to buy Delphi 2006

and from the very few who have the cash to buy it, 
why would they buy a product from a company... no 
wait, why would they buy a product that belongs to no 
company? ("NewCo" doesn't count)

Comment by Eber Irigoyen [http://ebersys.blogspot.com] on February 13, 18:57

Support Delphi, Now! 

 Why should I buy Delphi now? I'd better give my money
to "The New Delphi Co." than to Borland. Borland won't
invest any more money in Delphi, right? Why sponsor
ALM products instead of Delphi?

Comment by Andris on February 13, 20:42

Support Delphi, Now! 

Marco, I think your PS it's the rigth way for the 
future.

CIAO

Comment by Bertoncini Luca [http://sviluppoesviluppi.blogspot.com] on February 13, 21:43

Support Delphi, Now! 

D2006 is a great product. D8 and D2005 have ruined the
reputation of Delphi big time last couple of years,
but after investigating the alternatives I must say
that Delphi still makes sense today. If I have to
choose for a (now still immature) .NET framework or
the VCL I still prefer the last one. C# is a great,
but still lacks a framework that can match VCL. 

Why does Delphi still make sense to me?
- the community (if there is one thing that makes
Delphi strong, it has to be this one)
- VCL (unlike .NET, shipped with all sources)
- the ultra-fast native code compiler
- code portability
- the streaming system
- the open tools API for component developers
- the structured and self documenting Pascal language

The main drawbacks that need to be fixed:
- pricing... Although I think that MSFT does not make
much profit with the extremely low pricing of VS.
- stability of the IDE. D2006 is a BIG improvement,
but is still not as stable as good old D7. 

Comment by Unnamed Identifier on February 13, 21:55

Support Delphi, Now! 

Hi Marco,

I like suggest to buy D2006 from new company, not from 
Borland. And I wish a open source 
compiler+RTL+VCL+BDe+DBExpress, so the community can 
help the new company to bring 
Unicode+64bit+multiplatform. A similar strategy as 
MySQL. If they don't do this, unfortunately I feel as 
our masterpiece Delphi will die slowly slowly... :'(

Comment by Roby on February 14, 10:55

Support Delphi, Now! 

A couple of clarifications. 

Buy Delphi now means, in the words of David I, that
"if you need Delphi now, and you're trying to solve
real problems, buy it now. There's no reason to wait."
The new company needs a solid user base, not a
declining one. I think it needs a solid use base more
than cash.

Also notice that Borland has not stopped supporting
Delphi. They have not stopped developing it. The R&D
team is at work, all of them. DevRel is pushing the
product. An udpate and the trial version are still
expected soon. The company is still bound to the
roadmap and working against it.

Finally, Tod Nielsen and the Board of Directors have
been very clear that "the aim has been to help our
customers first. The highest priority is not to
maximize the sale value, but look for investors who
will do things in the best interest of our customers,
the DevCon company, and our shareholders".

Comment by Marco Cantù [http://www.marcocantu.com] on February 14, 11:31

I will do my best! :-) 

I have just finished a course about COM and .NET
Programming in Delphi; today, I'll do another course
about using MySQL with ADO and dbExpress components.

During these courses, often reading and explaining
some Delphi capabilities and comparing them to
Microsoft tools, for examples, reveals a great value
inside this product, clearly visible for me and for
all my customers, even without the need of make "big
shows" to highlight them.

In order to support Delphi community, I am also
planning about writing some articles (in Italian
language) and publish some example on my blog.

Even if my spare (read: "non working") time is a
little bit limited, I'll do my best to keep up this
product hoping that it will be evaluated from the "new
company" for the value it really has!

I will start creating a little poll, as soon as
possible, to ask what visitors would like to read or
get their hands on.

By the way, can I "trackback" this blog entry? ;-)

Go Delphi!

Bye,
  Marco.

Comment by Marco Breveglieri [http://www.marco.breveglieri.name] on February 14, 11:36

Support Delphi, Now! 

Cash and Future, those are the questions.  Can I as a
single developer layout that much cash for a product
that has such a cloudy future? As much as I love
Delphi, I can't risk my career on it any more then I
already have. And I can't justify the cash when C# is
so cheap.  

Of course C# has just enough issues that I know I'll
get frustrated at times (ARGH! THIS WOULD BE SO EASY
IN DELPHI).  Face it, its good experience to learn
other languages.  For the short term, I'll code new
stuff in C#.  If in 6 monthes, if the air clears and a
NewDelphiCo emerges from the ashes (at a reduced
price??), I'll use reflection to convert the C# back
over to Delphi.

But until then, the check goes back into my wallet. 
HOPEFULLY it will be sooner rather then later.

Comment by Steve Wash on February 14, 17:58

Support Delphi, Now! 

"if you need Delphi now, and you're trying to solve
real problems, buy it now. There's no reason to wait."

If I need Delphi it's because I already have Delphi, 
I guess... if I already have a recent version I see 
no good reason *now* to upgrade.
Why should I give money to a company that is selling 
the tool I use and invested in? Wait for the new one 
to start and give money to it looks to be a better 
option. Or Borland will give money to the new 
company? I don't think so.

"The new company needs a solid user base, not a
declining one."

When the new company will be unveiled, and if the 
company will look solid enough, I guess most current 
developers will give it a chance. Not before. The 
more time passes, the more developers will switch to 
other environments, or at least try them.
The user base has been declining for some time.

"Finally, Tod Nielsen and the Board of Directors"

C'mon, who believes them anymore?

Comment by Anonymous on February 14, 19:34

Support Delphi, Now! 

I've been using Delphi since V1. If I remember 
correctly, Turbo Pascal and Delphi V1 after that were 
around $75. This was something most tinkerers could 
afford on their own. This also allowed me to bypass 
my corporate puchasing group and obtain it on my own. 
Now, BDS 2006 Enterprise costs me almost $3k! 

I have owned every Delphi version since 1.0, but have 
not necessarily have used each version. My current 
Win32 development environment is still D7, though I 
do own BDS2005 and now DBS2006. I purposedly bypassed 
BDS2005, but do find BDS2006 very promising.

However, now I find myself in the position of having 
to target technologies for which the interfaces, 
examples and APIs are not readily available to the 
Delphi programmer. Things like RDF, the sematic web, 
and the Apache foundation libraries are forcing me to 
switch to the Eclipse IDE (for free) and, 
unfortunately, Java, something I thought I wouldn't 
need to. 

I will always support Delphi for Win32 development; 
but am not sure how well I can split my time between 
Pascal for Win32 and ASP development, and Eclipse for 
Tomcat and Apache development.

Comment by Juan C. Rodriguez on February 14, 22:07

Support Delphi, Now! 

The company I work for bought D2005 Enterprise and, 
quite simply, will not purchase any further Borland 
IDE products until such times as their future is 
assured.

The "Board" of Borland have killed sales of the IDE 
product to most businesses by their announcement. 
Only those businesses that desparately need a copy 
will buy it. As for the individual users, those who 
can afford it and needed it, will have bought it by 
now. The others will wait and see who buys "DevCo" 
because they do not have > $1000 to fritter away.

Unless a suitable buyer is found very quickly I can 
see the "cash cow" becoming a millstone.

Comment by JQL [http://www.visualaccounts.co.uk] on February 15, 12:18

Support Delphi, Now! 

Marco, I will probably buy BDS2006 from the new croud. 
 I will definitely not buy it from Borland.  I own 
every version of BP/Delphi from BP 5.5 to Delphi 6 and 
Kylix 1 (Pro versions).  Borland have systematically 
pushed the price of Delphi upwards while adding little 
for the smaller developer (The price of Delphi 2005 
was twice the prices of a months rent here without SA
).  Borland have leeched all of that money (while 
pleading poverty, lack of resources etc) from Delphi 
and pushed it into ALM.  I cannot and will not support 
them.

Some advise to the new croud would be to drop SA to 
20%-25%.  That way, most Delphi developers would buy 
in to it.  It would probably be a good idea to release 
an affordable small developer edition (No ALM etc) and 
a free hobby version (Students etc).

Cheers

Dean

Comment by Dean [] on February 15, 14:53

It's over guys 

 Come on. 

We've all had fun, we've all been way more productive
than most, we made a lot of money, the end is here.

Not tomorrow (maybe a few years ago) but definitely,
it's dead.

Anders gave us a really nice replacement and I'm going
to use it.

I'm out of the Delphi ghetto. I hope you guys join me too.

http://lamecode.com/?p=498

Comment by bob jones [http://www.lamecode.com] on February 15, 23:26

Back to code! 

Back to code, boys! 
Instead of wasting time (myself first) speculating 
about future, come back to BDS2006 and write code, 
useful for you and your customers! 
Make money, help your customers to make money.
BDS2006 is here, now, is good, more productive IMHO 
than .NET (that need at least 1-2 release to became 
as good as VCL, even it's younger so has some 
advantages in it obviously), so use it!
This history of Delphi dying is something I hear from 
V3... Now is V10 alive and kicking, despite Borland, 
Inprise, Corel acquisition.
Seemed that VB was safer, and now VB is dead. My 
applications written with BDE runs with Oracle10g 
without problems, I can open and enhance them with 
BDS2006. This is fact! 
Is Microsoft using .NET? Is new shining office 
release written in C# or what? So why have I to use 
it?? What % of Vista is written in some CLR language? 
Instead, 700 new Win32 apis will born with Vista... 

Ok, back to code now.. I've wasted too much time with 
these speculations. Real world is another thing.

Comment by Roberto Icardi on February 16, 03:45

Support Delphi, Now! 

You can easily tell which comment posters don't have 
a sizeable number of lines of code written in 
Delphi. Go on, take your "Calculator" hobby programs 
and re-write them in Java, C# or whatever 
seems "cool" to you.

Real Delphi zealots (like me) find it difficult to 
consider a future without Delphi. Don't get me 
wrong, I can code in C#, Java or VB and get results 
but "The Experience (tm)" that Delphi gives you is 
like no other.

Go Delphi!

Comment by wpSlider on February 16, 05:53

Support Delphi, Now! 

> Go Delphi!

Sorry guys, I really loved Delphi for a decade, and I
don't want to piss on your parade (and hate to sound
like Hector Santos), but this really sounds like:

Go dBASE IV !!!
Go Paradox!
Go PowerBuilder!
Go ObjectVision! (remember that one?)
Go COBOL!
Go Btrieve!
Go FoxPro!
Go, um, Fortran 77!
Go Amiga!
Go Classic VB- (who needs the .NET junk)?!
Go ReportSmith!
Go Entera!
Go Quattro Pro!
Go Sprint! (Borl's wordprocessor..)

Comment by bob jones [http://www.lamecode.com] on February 16, 18:50

Delphi Wiki site 

Hoi Marco

Nice to see that you also have found the Delphi Wiki
page, with the Delphi application list. Since Kevin
Berry started this list a year ago, I have gained
X-ray vision when it comes to detecting Delphi
applications. It has even surprised me how many Delphi
apps you can find in the market, and most people have
no idea.

You can go to a major download site like
www.download.com which have loads of shareware and
freeware apps. If you take the applications with high
ratings from the editors or from users, about 1 in 5
is a Delphi app. Does it mean that there are many
Delphi programmer, or does mean that Delphi
programmers makes better apps than most other
shareware developers? ;-)

Doei RIF

Comment by Richard Foersom on February 17, 23:50

Support Delphi, Now! 

Hey!!
After some days diggesting the notice, I think this 
can be a good think for us. For me the best will be 
the "Delphi Software Company" a company focused on 
Delphi who promote our language forgetting market 
fashions. If Borland need to get out Delphi, Delphi 
IDE need to get out the ballast of Java, C# and 
Interbase...

Delphi rocks, it's true!!

Comment by F.Ruiz on March 3, 12:52

Support Delphi, Now! Why? 

Hi! I'm your big fann. I have all your books in 
editions "Master of Delphi" I am all new to 
programming. I love Delphi very much. I have Delphi 7 
and Delphi 2005. But, all this days walking over 
internet and forums, i'm confused "why use delphi, 
when c# will kill him". Will Delphi exist in future, 
is it worth my time and learning?! I searched for jobs 
in Delphi especialy Australia because me and my family 
plan to move there and I found 15 jobs for Delphi and 
2000 for .NET developer in C# or VB.NET.
So, I don't know what to do ?! To work on Delphi in 
this moment or just leave it behind and move to VS.NET 
and C#. 
But one thing is still true "Delphi is best RAD tool 
ever"

Comment by Zooma on March 16, 19:38

Support Delphi, Now! 

 	Every morning I log on to the Borland Delphi 
site to see if Delphi has found a new home.  The 
sooner the better, but PLEASE don’t tell me it’s 
Microsoft, as I have no doubt that would be the end 
of the line for Delphi, one way or the other.
	I’m with the folks who say they will buy 
BDS’06 as soon as there is a new company to work 
with.  I’d be happy to continue to support Delphi, as 
I feel it is still the best product available.  
However, Borland is no longer on my list of good guys 
and I see no reason to give them more of my hard 
earned cash.
In the meantime, I have way too much invested in 
Delphi to try to port all of my code to C# overnight, 
especially considering the limitations of C# and 
the .NET libraries.  So…I continue to use D7 for real 
work.  However, I am using BDS’05 to study .NET and 
C#, just in case there are no choices left.  

	I’m still hopeful, but I’m also damn 
concerned.  

Comment by Terry Robinson [Terry.Robinson@State.co.us] on March 16, 23:29

Support Delphi, Now! 

 We are still using D6 only.  We purchased D8 & D2005 
and planned to migrate....... but never did it.  It 
may be good to wait for the new company to take over 
the reins from Borland. Though we are getting promo 
offer of 45% reduced rates in India but decided not 
to hurry up !

Comment by Francis S Victor [http://www.lenvica.com] on March 21, 10:54

The great product that is meant to be 

We are not writing here about an old and depleted
product like dbase, sprint or cobol. Maybe I am
hurting some people senses but some of them nor even
were a popular product, rather a choice for
alternative users. Most of them were as real and
advanced as they could be for some time, but then turn
into almost cult techs or tools, and just like every
cult we know, their followers don't ever notice when
they was surpased and get into the semi-obsolecence
(there still are a lot of fervorous clipper followers). 

Delphi is not totally different, a pretty, pretty well
done product from its very foundations to the last
version after .Net-Together-unit testing-refactoring
transition, but somehow still losted in the shake, and
a company not totally inmune at Microsoft's oscure
competition.

However, more now than ever before, communities make
the difference. The real difference between the best
product and the best marketing. Nowadays here in my
beloved Mexico is not possible to found in the most
popular bookstores a recent Delphi nor Java
publication, but VB.Net or C# is covering half the
shelves. Every university or goverment orgs that were
taking advantage (a real advantage) of linux or any
other technology not in the MS trademark (Delphi
included), have been contacted from that company
somehow they were converted.

Still, I´m a Delphi developer and I know a lot, and
linux is already some sort of tech fortress for the
new enterpreuners.

Comment by Salvador Gomez Retamoza [] on May 8, 21:12