Why the new roadmap won’t impress anyone
Well, Embarcadero has started to release some previews for Delphi 2011 XE, and what’s been released so far doesn’t show any obvious indications that the cross-platform features everyone was expecting will actually be present in this release. Some people on the forums immediately interpreted absence of evidence as evidence of absence and started a big to-do about it.
The interesting thing here is that people from Embarcadero are responding immediately. And it’s interesting what they’re saying, and what can be read between the lines. We won’t know anything for certain until an official announcement is made, but it’s sure starting to sound like the cross-platform features got delayed for whatever reason and are still in active development but won’t be in Delphi XE.
Embarcadero’s Allen Bauer and John Kaster have both announced that they’re working on a new, updated roadmap that will be posted within a few days. I haven’t seen it yet, but I already think it won’t really reassure or impress anybody.I can’t speak for everyone, or really for anyone but myself, but I tend to
be pretty good at reading people and particularly at reading groups of people, and from what I’ve seen, this new roadmap will strike most people in the Delphi community as rather underwhelming no matter what’s in it, not because of what it contains, but because of what it lacks.
The roadmap that would get people excited–the one that Embarcadero is never going to release, of course, because of the everpresent, nebulous, but all-important “business reasons” that always get in the way of doing stuff like this right–would replace the weasel words in slide 3 of the current roadmap.
If they were to lose the following:
This information describes Embarcadero’s general product
direction at this time, and should not be relied on in making a
licensing decision. The future development, release and timing
of features and functionality remains at our sole discretion and
may be changed at any time without notice.
…and replace it with something like this:
This information describes Embarcadero’s commitment to the
Delphi community, the features that we *will* produce for the
next releases, and a concrete schedule that we are 100%
committed to meeting or surpassing.
…can you imagine the reaction?!? It would finally give us something we’ve been sorely missing for the better part of a decade: a company behind Delphi that we know “gets it.”
Remember what Windows development used to be like before Delphi? Delphi was the great innovator in programming, back in the day. It was light-years ahead of VB, or any flavor of C++ for that matter. Then Delphi 8 came along, and the message it gave everyone is, “.NET is the future and we can’t get it right.” From that point on, Borland was dropping the ball on every occasion possible. You’d think Murphy himself was running the company, and overseeing the development tools division personally.
Quality plummeted. Delphi 8 was a joke, and 2005 and 2006 were scarcely better. D2007 was tolerable, but that’s the best I can say about it. We’re still waiting on 64-bit, which Dephi The Great Innovator, had it existed at the time, would have had ready and working no later than 2004. And Borland managed to pretty much eradicate the community’s trust. Then they sold off the dev tools division to Embarcadero, and we thought, “finally! Delphi in the hands of a company that really ‘gets it’ again.” But so far that’s only been half true.
The quality improvements have been immense. For the first time since D7, Delphi 2009 gave us a solid IDE that was not downright painful to use. (As long as you didn’t try to use Code Completion, or hit F1.) Generics, anonymous methods, Unicode and extended RTTI have been major steps forward, but Delphi The Great Innovator is gone.
Borland fumbled and gave Microsoft 4 free years to work on Visual Studio and the .NET languages, and C# has gone from an utter joke, (“let’s take people from the Delphi team and have them rewrite Delphi in Java syntax, and leave out half the stuff that makes Delphi worth working with because we can’t implement them without stepping in Borland’s patents, but that’s all right because it’s Backed By Microsoft™ so everyone will use it anyway,”) to an industry-leading language. Borland let that happen, Embarcadero inherited their mess, and we’re playing catch-up now. And until we have working compilers for Windows, OSX and Linux, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, a helpfile that’s actually complete and doesn’t suck, *Insight that actually works and doesn’t suck, and some form of LINQ and some form of concurrency support at the language level, (that actually work and don’t suck,) we’re going to be stuck playing catch-up.
While the team under Embarcadero has made excellent progress in improving the quality of Delphi, they’ve done little to nothing to rebuild trust in the Delphi community. The recent dual PR nightmares from firing Nick Hodges and the huge mess that the forum mods made of the whole Simon Kissel thing, it creates the sense that nothing has changed, that there’s still a bunch of PHBs undermining the team’s efforts. And that brings me back to the roadmaps. Apparently Borland had to talk in this sort of weasel words and say how they couldn’t really say anything until the product was ready to ship. Had something to do with being a publicly traded company. Well, that’s one anchor that Embarcadero doesn’t have around their necks.
Embarcadero is not a publicly traded corporation. They aren’t beholden to a bunch of morons on Wall Street who only care about stock price and don’t know a thing about producing good development tools. They aren’t bound by a lot of the laws and financial regulations that govern the behavior of publicly traded companies. So why does it feel so much like they’re still doing business by Borland’s rules?
If Embarcadero wants to regain the trust of the Delphi community, it has to give us something to base that trust on. A firm schedule with a firm commitment behind it would do absolute wonders, and IMO the commitment would be even more important than the actual content of the roadmap. Even if it said “x64 will be available in 2016,” if there was a firm date and we didn’t have to wonder if it would be here in 2012 or 2035 or ever, that would take a huge load off a lot of people’s shoulders. (Including, I’d imagine, the shoulders of a lot of the engineers on the Delphi team!)
But of course, Embarcadero isn’t going to do that, are they? They’re going to release another roadmap that says, right in the document itself, that we can’t actually trust what it says. And then they’re going to wonder why the developers don’t seem to trust what they say…
Fantastic aproach that defines what it’s going on about Delphi latests releases. We used to Laugh about VB devlopers on past. Now, the game changed…
Kind regards
Mason I totally agree with your comments. I hope that there is no consequences for you (like Simon Kissel). considering that you are speaking at the conference organized by Embarcadero Delphi 2010 live.
*shrug* I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been said plenty of times on the forums. I’m just tying it all together into a nice, neat package and hoping people will notice.
“So why does it feel so much like they’re still doing business by Borland’s rules?”
A: Because when Borland sold the IPR they also sold the *people* running the show.
It’s *people* that make decisions, not the logo over the door or on the company stationery.
Oh, one other thing… the whole SOX thing was a smokescreen at the time, and some of us knew it. Other publicly traded companies had roadmaps – it was always an excuse, not a reason.
And lo and behold, the same management *still* don’t know how, can’t be bothered or simply refuse to present a coherent and credible vision for the future direction of Delphi. All that has changed is that they no longer have any convenient excuses to fob people off with.
There is a saying: “Do not ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”
@Rodrigo: Delphi Live! is in fact organized by a german company called “Software & Support Verlag”, or short S&S Media. They do conferences here in germany for Delphi like 14 years around and wanted to revitalize the ‘Borcon’ idea with the first Delphi Live.
Embarcadero is merely a sponsor that should be glad to have the opportunity to present their stuff their.
@Mason: You can’t image how I feel about your words. That is just so true. Keep it up – and tell that to the Embc. guys when you meet them. And I’ll back you up 😉
We should see it this way:
We don’t actually NEED Embarcadero or new Tools. We can, in fact, ignore them and continue working with our old Delphi versions while changing to another platform (i.e. Java or .NET) whenever we like and leave the chains that bind us to x86 Windows development behind us. We are free to choose.
Embarcadero needs us. We are their customers. They NEED us to choose their products over other ones to get payed for what they do. It is NOT the other way round, and we should be unmistakably clear about that when communicating to them.
Let’s show them what we think of their attitude.
Thanks for this post Mason, I couldn’t have expressed or summed it up any better!
I agree with your comments totally Mason.
I myself experienced the “huge mess that the forum mods made of the whole Simon Kissel thing” indirectly on a thread they finally set up to answer newsgroup policy when I queried the way policy was operated.
The responses I had from some of the EMB Staff were unprofessional and rude in my opinion and continued to be. Wont go into all he gory details here those can be found elsewhere if you know where to look. The Episode was final straw for me after enduring delay after delay delivering Win64 support to name but one issue.
The end result was I requested my EDN account removed completely, All my remaining posts on newsgroups removed and any customer relations related data for me also deleted.
I have walked away completely from Developing in Delphi and gone back to VC++.
I am now watching this developing saga about Delphi XE from the Outside and thinking thank goodness I walked away from it all.
Another tick in the “agree” column. As you imply, the next outcry will be in response to a lack lustre roadmap revision.
Why can’t they just give us the things we need to substain us, as opposed to every increasing amounts of candyfloss ?
If we are bringing this down to a Homer Simpson analogy, just Google for the car he designed in “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”.
Succinct and accurate- thank you for voicing this.
I am seriously disillusioned and having to drown my sorrows in the impressive (yet sluggish) C# .NET world… come on Embarcadero, give us some meat and less of this fluff!
…Delphi 8 was a joke,…
I paid money out of my own pocket for Delphi 8.
I didn’t see the funny side.
As far as the Help is concerned, it would be great if Embi could open the help so anyone can edit it.
I’m convinced the Delphi community would come together and take each contributor’s best bits.
@Sebastian P.R. Gingter – Choice? Unfortunately .Net and Java both need runtimes. If you are targeting native code, there is not much choice. It is the only reason I still use Delphi.
I’m a private parttime developer and i bought Delphi 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,2005,2006 and 2009 from my own money. I really hope that there will be some kind of Standard Version (like in Delphi 5 or earlier), since the newer versions are getting more hard to get since they are very expensive. Please lower the price a little bit.
Be carefull! Embarcadero is the one and only company that punishes their own customers/employees! (see Simon Kissel, Nick Hodges)
Mason – yes, yes and yes. I agree.
One thing to add. A crossplattform solution cannot come alive in october when Alpha is in February. Delphi 2011 is for SA – for this it fits. Few new but some things required.
What has to be made clear is – does the delay for the cross plattform stuff come from the compiler, so this impacts the Win64 for sure. If this no the case does the delay in cross plattform force a delay in Win64 for other reasons. This is the monemtum of urgency in some cases. There is no problem with the truth – there is only a problem with uncertainity. For sure – let them work in peace – anything else makes no sense – they are years behind in the native corner, when we come to the broader picture.
But this XE video – Two happy mummies riding on a ghost train having to decide to switch from Logo to Scratch or Delphi (having to realize that Scratch has a extension for functional programming). I don’t what they all smoke the whole day. It is not from this earth. 2010 – The year we make the contact. Something like this.
I understand their bundling with the DB products … All in One … It is hard to compete open source … This is survival strategy. btw: I do not mean Freepascal/Lazarus – IBM knew why to give a way Eclipse. It is hard for them, but little more honesty to their customers – they need Nick Kirk – the community already sent the to Delta Quadrant – Picard would not have found a way back.
Thanks Mason for this true words!
You have undoubtedly saved several Delphi bloggers a lot of effort with your post. Well done !
Unless they’re leading off with a slowball, this is not worthy of a version change. Subversion integration is nifty, but hardly a product altering addition. The class graphing dohickey is cool, but I can hardly believe people were crying out for it. Unlike a lot of developers I’m not really in need of OSX or x64, and still, I find this to be a disappointment.
If this is actually a new version, by that I mean if they started off with a plan to reach this endpoint, then they have woefully misinterpreted their market. If instead, this is just where they fell when trying for a loftier goal then it should be a .X update to the current version. If, worst of all, this is to appease SA and/or rename for the sake of version number conformity, well, then they should just be ashamed.
XE … really ? XE ? So in the future when somebody asks what I develop with, I can proudly answer “RAD Delphi XEv2”. Do they not realize that in product branding, that fewer syllables is better. Do they not realize that if all of their products are going to carry the XE moniker then it becomes redundantly redundant. Do they not realize that if part of the reason for this “version” is so that they can rename everything to fit nicely on a business report, that people are going to get pissed!
Hello,
I read your post and I confess that I saw a lot of truth in everything that was said, including in the comments. I have worked with Delphi for almost 15 years now and I am an addict in this language / IDE, but I confess that a few years back, I have been very disappointed with the tool, with the bugs, and with the exorbitant prices. Also had high hopes that the sale to the Embarcadero, we won one tool more robust and everything we ever asked for. However, we received a lot of updates that practically serves no purpose. Unfortunately, I am studying other languages and think about leaving because of Delphi.
First, I agree with you that they have fallen down on communication. And it isn’t just a Borland or CodeGear thing. I think Embarcadero needs to communicate more openly and effectively. On the flip side, if they open up and talk about things that are in the planning stages, we can’t hit them with a stick every time something changes.
I had a different experience with the Delphi timeline. Delphi 4 was my worse release. I actually rolled back to Delphi 3 until after the second update. Delphi 2005 had some improvements over 7, but big problems, too. Delphi 2006 was the tolerable release for me, Delphi 2007 surpassed Delphi 7 (web services were a big part of that), and 2009/2010 have set the bar even higher.
I get a kick out of the “world is ending” crowd, but I’m expecting 2011 (haven’t warmed up to XE, yet) to be better, still.
My one long standing frustration is that it’s taking so long to get native Linux support back. I don’t need Mac support and won’t need native 64 bit for a while, but a couple of opportunities have come and go where a solid and reliable native Linux implementation would have helped. I’d go in to how I (still) feel about the Kylix debacle, but it wouldn’t be good for my blood pressure.
I remember the outrage over Delphi 7 when it was released and how it was just a useless service pack of Delphi 6. And then i remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that there weren’t any service packs for Delphi 7. One long drawn out thread still makes me chuckle.
After the novelty of some of the more radical comments and conspiracy theories wears off, hopefully calmer heads will prevail. Here’s a good example:
http://www.uweraabe.de/Blog/2010/08/11/anticlimax/
..and why should I migrate to Delphi XE? I don’t think costs worth the migration.
Unfortunately wait-and-see doesn’t work in this economy.
I am in business – I develop products.
My competitor develops products.
Customers want a product that does X
I wait on road-mapped updates
My competitor develops a product that does X
I used to be a developer – I used to be in business.
I’ve also been one to get a kick out of the “Delphi is doomed” crowd, but it’s occurred to me recently that it isn’t a matter of Delphi being doomed. It’s a matter of the development community outgrowing Delphi. Delphi is still a fantastic, top-notch product for what it does. Unfortunately developers are needing it to do things that it does not do. Roadmaps and QC entries dont help pay the rent. I WANT Delphi to sway me back, I want to continue with the product I’ve used and enjoyed since it’s inception. I just don’t see it happening.
@batman
If you’re asking me, I’m one of those dreaded SA customers, so I will be upgrading anyway. As for why I’d use it, if it’s improved over Delphi 2010, then it’s worth the time for me to migrate my projects. The migration from 2009 to 2010 was trivial.
If I didn’t have SA and owned Delphi 2010, that’s a whole other calculation. There might not be enough advantages to justify the upgrade cost (I’d still need to see the rest of the previews).
If I owned a previous version, then it might be compelling. It would depend on what I like/want/need. Some people are still wary of the migration to Unicode if they haven’t moved to Delphi 2009 or later.
If native 64 was my overriding concern, then I probably wouldn’t upgrade.
@Ray,
If the Embarcadero guys are right and there will be an updated roadmap out this week, I hope it contains something that you like.
I don’t have any specific details, but I have a suspicion that the 64 bit crowd will be happier than the people who are waiting for Linux.
We’ll see.
@Ken Knopfli:
There is nothing bad about ‘needing a runtime’ at all. The .NET client profile is small too.
But if you don’t want it, you can target Mono instead of .NET and use the full ahead-of-time compiler (once for every platform targeted). That way you have native executables that don’t need a runtime. And they are not much larger than Delphi executables that have the VCL and other components compiled in 😉
@Bruce McGee. Somehow it at least had a positive effect – Mike pointed out what XE stands for. What rumor does it require to get such an information.
This XE is not for most of the existing Delphi customer base (tiny shops). This is an offer for bigger enterprises. My opinion it targets strong into direction of All Access Bronze at least silver. In my case this fits. I understand it from the business and the priorities. This a matter Gartner Quadrant and feature lists.
I know this is sperated – maybe it really helps to repostion Delphi. There is a solid underlying already and somehow targets the market shares of Quest and CA. Just to clarfify what we are talking about here.
Inprise
@Michael,
What makes you think most of the Delphi customer base is tiny shops? I thought the opposite was true based on .
Speaking as a tiny shop myself, SA makes sense to me financially (I use each version), so if it’s better than 2010, then I’m definitely the target audience. I’m looking forward to Linux support, but I don’t need it to continue.
@Michael,
Are you saying that the caterwauling has a positive effect?
@Bruce
caterhauwling – no. It will not change anything. The view from most people imho. does not come from bigger companies.
Tiny shop is for me – Micro ISV or individual developer. They take something different. This business is over here. No chance to survive to small.
For me it pays too. We have to maintain!!! This is not really attractive for someone new in the end to be better of with a silver all access…
See it – Microsoft targets with their model for tinies (3,5k a year for nearly unlmited seats via MSDN and Technet together) and .net is mainstream at customers site. Project developments are never here in Delphi in a broad.
My assumption is – if mid Europe where Delphi was never king represents somehow a vendor/supplier structure that can of course be respresentative – exceptions exist. We did not have /fewest exception) this consulting developers writing projects on customers sites. This came with Java in last decade.
40% with 100 developers or more are making a promille or a half per company this means there 1000 of them. This is big but not a lot.
@Bruce: I want it on Linux too. I think they understood what is required. This has never changed since the Borland times it jsut came later to Europe and Austria even later:-). I did not believe if crossplattform is in Alpha in Feb. that it is finished in septmeber…
I just said 2011 XE (what we saw yesterday) is definitly targeting big companies at least not us and here a 64bit support in marketing is recoginzed, ok, but clicking on a button and seeing Pascal – “It is all the same” – cannot be for us:-). I don’t fear .net. I used chrome form verison 1 on. This is the leage where you can sell a wohle bunch if ever. Somehow competing Quest.
I appreiciate all they ship – Delphi for PHP – worked not bad – as I use Morfik and see the reactions my surrounding … I know a PHP in RAD is approiate – the underlying is ok…
Just give us all on 64bit and 3 OSes and I can run all solution hosted on “my site” or at a hosters site. This is just a matter of infrastructure public available. Hosting ones self written apps is the better opportunity, but making it on our own is not accepted.
Intraweb XI is not so bad … It could work.
It is looking really bad… We are 2 Delphi developers out of a shop of about 350 developers doing C#, C/C++ and Java. We are definitely feeling the lack of future brought up to us by XE preview. Why is there no mention of what is going to be included in the product – REALLY!
Maybe the time to dust off my C++ skills and get ready to embrace QT has come? At least QT is cross-platform (many platforms) and it compiles in 64 bits.
As a frequent solitary Delphi developer fending off armies of C#, VB and Java developers, I have run out of bullets to fire in self defense. Now, the reasons for and against Delphi are even. The next move the XE team make will determine in which direction the balance moves. They better think very clearly about what to say to their remaining fans.
I miss the Scotts Valley offices.. lots of fun there.
My last delphi was delphi 4 pro and I loved it! Together with torry.ru and some other nice resources you could get things done in a very short time.
However, something in my brain wanted to create cross-platform applications due to the fact that I was using some alternative operating system at home and that’s where I left delphi and the pascal syntax completely…sometimes I miss delphi ( I still have my delphi 4 license though but fails to start on windows 7 😛 ) but on the other hand I also tried the newer versions and didn’t like them so far and they are quite expensive, too plus I don’t get all the different versions, features etc…I just want a delphi that works on linux, windows and os-x or at least cross-compiles for these three operating systems.
Prism is something to consider…but as my main targets are windows and os-x that’s not even an option as mono apps require the x-server on os-x which is noticably slower than the rest and its startup time is horrible…even slower than a java swing app.
When I left delphi 4 I did a lot of web apps because that was the easiest way for me to be “cross platform” :)!
However, when I now need/want to create a desktop app that needs to run on windows, os-x and linux I really use “realstudio” now which uses realbasic as its language which is a basic dialect. I don’t need to mention that I really hate every basic dialect but it’s the best and only option for me which works best for me.
I also tried out java and swing but it’s not an option for a small desktop app. It probably “works” in some enviroments but no in mine :). There are too many small things that bug the average user like startup time and what’s really a mess is swing itself is the native look “emulator”…swing surely promises to look native whenever it can but it’s often or always the case that certain features are badly implemented like the main menu…in os-x the last entry in the main menu has rounded corners…in swing, too except that you can see how the rounding happens :P…and I don’t have a small mac.
The file dialogs in swing is another thing that really bugs me :/…
SWT is probably a useful alternative to swing but for now realstudio got me :). It’s like the old days when I developed in delphi…though it’s a basic dialect. It cross compiles for os-x, windows and linux…
Good article btw. That’s basically what I think about the products of Bor…Embarcadero, too.
Seems like I made a good decision back then. I used to be a die-hard Delphi fan. I was using Delphi 5 and loving it. Then I bought d2005. Horrible. I dropped Delphi, went for Python and never looked back. I’m glad I could actually make that decision. I feel for people stuck with it.
@Virgil
You did make a good decision I think. Wish I had made the move away sooner than I did. Now looking from outside I do feel for people stuck with it too.
Thank you Mason for your nice post!
“If Embarcadero wants to regain the trust of the Delphi community, it has to give us something to base that trust on. ”
But when they (Embarcadero) do not want to get it that customers are losing their trust in their words, we cannot have any hope for improvement 🙁 Look at Mike Rozlog’s blog post regarding the new announcement:
http://blogs.embarcadero.com/michaelrozlog/2010/08/10/37155
He is simply closing his eyes on all the questions and concerns raised by the community about trusting their words, and their commitments. They are just pretending everything’s fine, customers are all excited about this XE stuff, and the company has never ever mentioned anything about 64-bit compiler or cross-platform, and there have been no really expectations from the community! He event forgot his own interview with Jim in Delphi podcast, when he was bragging about cross-compilation, cross-platform VCL-like library based on Qt, remote debugging and other stuff in their upcoming release. And it is not just Mike Rozlog, you can see the same attitude from other Embarcadero’s staff in their own newsgroup replying to customers who are kinda shocked by this sudden change in direction, and Embarcadero’s cool attitude toward discrediting their own words.
They do not want to see that people are concerned, that people are losing their trust in their words, that people are getting tired of being kept in suspense. When they do not want to see this, when they do not want to believe in this fact that something’s wrong with their approach (especially their public relationship); then there would be no hope for improvement.
It’s actually quite funny how they present Subversion integration as if it was the greatest accomplishment in computing the world has seen over the past 20 years. If you are not a customer depending on Delphi that is.
@Ray Andrews
competitors do product X, I can do product X with Delphi 2009, so what’s the point?
Little IDE improvments, version control, combine other languages in the same package, all these are not necessary to create the product X.
@batman, how do you develop the x64, OS X, or Linux version of product X with Delphi 2009 ?
For developers who need those capabilities, waiting can put them out of business.
It will be another “sit on the shelf” version like – Delphi 8, 2005, & 2006 – which no one will use. Save you money, send a message to embarcadero. We switched languages back before Delphi 2010 came out. We used Delphi 7 up until then. We do own a version of Delphi 2010 (1 license) which we are useing now to keep our win32 version of software up to date, but all new software is now written in other language and for the web. We have no intentions of ever upgrading again.
Good Job Embarcadero. You lost a client who has been with you since Turbo pascal days!
The updated roadmap has been posted.
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39934
[…] agree with Mason Wheelers’ latest blog post. I certainly wasn’t impressed, but I was amused by the subtitle on the first slide […]
Quite disappointed with the roadmap. Bought my MacBook 1.5 years ago and was excited to see Delphi supporting OSX. But now is time to change my plans and look for something else to develop applications for MacOS.
Now Andreas pointed RealStudio and I remembered something. Nearly half year ago I came across RealStudio when I found one excellent cross-platform software and asked about the development environment they used. But in that time I found myself a little lazy to start learning a new language and now I regret. Not that RealStudio is the best option, but just stay stopped in time is a horrible feeling. Now I looked at the price from RealStudio and the Enterprise version (TOP version) is 1/3 the Enterprise version of Delphi.
Since nothing is certain at Embarcadero, I will start to expand my horizon and learn something new that will be useful for me in all aspects (not necessary RealStudio/RealBasic). I use Delphi at work since v1 and I was nearly laughing at few friend that changed to C# at D7 era, because for me when D2009 appeared with unicode support I could feel that Delphi was alive and with the plans of OSX support and 64bit support coming it would be great step for Delphi. Now I see that my friend made a good choice, not that C# is better than Delphi, but at least now they can find easily jobs. Today the market is not searching for Delphi developers and now with the lack of real commitment from Embarcadero with actual users, I really don’t see how Embarcadero expect new users. I participate in some Delphi Newsgroup and see maybe only one job offer in every 3-5 months and just to make small changes in old projects (D5-D2005).
Not that 64bit support is important for me, but is not only about my needs. IMO is important to use one development environment that the market uses because no job is certain. Someone that own a company and don’t require such features like cross-platform and 64bit support have (maybe) nothing to complain, but as an employee I can really be worried about the future in case I stay with a product without future.
I really like Delphi, but for me is time to change.
From a slide in the (apparently hastily prepared) updated roadmap
“What we are telling customers we are going to go” …. Um … what
Setting aside the obvious fact that it should be ‘Where…going to go” or “What…going to do”, why even put in the phrase “we are telling customers”. It should just read “What we are going to do”. There shouldn’t be any need to differentiate what you’re going to do, from what you’re telling customers you’re going to do. This little Freudian typo says a lot as far as I’m concerend.
There is a saying – “If it sticks, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway”. I think I have been forced to the “replacing” point. Like many of you I have been a user of Pascal/Delphi since the days of yore – for me, 1985 with TP 3.02a. I have all the version of Turbo Pascal since 3.02a, all of the versions of Delphi and all the versions of Kylix (yep – a true diehard). This last excuse to create a revenue stream by hoodwinking the customers into thinking they are getting something awesome is the final straw, especially if the Big Thing is this SVN integration – I don’t care a whit about SVN, I use another VCS entirely! And modeling? Just one more way for non-developers to think like they know something (oh yes, there are uses but the project size has to be way up there for it to be more useful than wasteful).
I am (was) an SA customer myself and I *wasn’t* one of this demanding new stuff every year. I would *much* rather have seen an alternating update cycle where the product was released one year and a whole pot load of bugs fixed during the next “release” cycle. Then, hit me with a new version the next year after that. Give me something that works, works well and that I can sell customers on.
Right now, I don’t trust BorInpCodeEmb anymore. They have abused my trust too many times. Couple that with the “demand” (NOT) for Delphi out there and I, too, must succumb to the Microsoft .NET world. I don’t like it, I have loathed MS for decades but I also have to eat. I’m in the US and my favorite touchstone to the business world is Dice.com. Put in Delphi for a keyword and out of 67,415 posted tech jobs (today is 8/13/2010) there are exactly 101 positions posted. Put in c# and you get 6,450. Even an idiot would conclude that there is no demand for a product that costs thousands of dollars to maintain (it costs me as an SA customer nearly a grand a year to keep updated and what do I get? Delphi and Delphi Prism). For an amount just over *HALF* of what my SA payment is, my MSDN subscription gives me VS Professional, Sql Server, *all* the operating systems and lot’s more goodies that I haven’t even had time to play with yet (SharePoint, IIS, etc. etc.). Now, someone with more financial acuity than me please explain just how Emb intends to keep customers with their current direction (or lack thereof) and their nasty attitude? I cannot fathom it.
Last time I checked, there was this big hullabaloo about Simon Kissel and how the forums are owned by Emb and that they can do as they wish with them, etc. Well, I have news for Emb – that loud snapping sound you heard was the sound of my wallet closing with the money still inside. We DO NOT need Emb, Emb NEEDS US. Without our funding, Emb GOES OUT OF BUSINESS. No more nice salaries, no more vacations, no more plush offices, no more cubicles, no more anything.
I have not seen anything out of Emb to stir up new business and use of Delphi, unlike MS that sponsors the BizSpark program (go check it out, it’s awesome and again, let me say that I *despise* MS but…I have to eat). As was said earlier, innovation used to be the byword with the Delphi folks – they came out with a compiler that supported XP features BEFORE Microsoft did! I haven’t seen anything in the way of leadership from them in years and nothing in their current statements leads me to trust them again. I am finally at the point where I am even considering not updating my SA contract – there isn’t enough there for me to justify spending nearly a thousand dollars just to get thin smoke and cracked mirrors.
I’m sure there will be folks out there screaming “Troll, Troll”. Not the case. As I said, I’ve been loyal to Delphi to the point of stupidity – I didn’t even look at .NET until the 2.0 release (6 YEARS after it’s initial release) and couldn’t believe the lack of such things as defaulted parameter values, etc. Things that have been in Delphi for years. Just now, after *six* releases of .NET (I count the 3.5SP1 as a separate release because of all the added goodies), with the seventh release and over TEN YEARS of .NET, we FINALLY get default parameter values! Like I said, I’m no fan of MS but even I have to admit they are doing some things right. My current money-making environment is VS2010 (a very nice WPF app) with ReSharper 5 and NUnit. What I wouldn’t give for a ReSharper for Delphi! It’s a sad shame but there are things in VS that I now come to expect out of my dev environment that just aren’t there in the current Delphi (which still relies on .NET oddly enough – there is another thing I’d like corrected – the old Delphi was written in…you guessed it…DELPHI). I’d like to see that again as well.
There are so many things that Emb could be doing to win us back again and I just don’t see signs of any of them. So, much as I dislike doing so, I must join the ranks of the defectors and become one of those that says “Thanks for the memories, Delphi”…
@Warning,
You seem to be having a bad day. Personally, I have a hard time taking rants and vitriol seriously. More so when posted anonymously.
While not a die-hard Delphi fanatic (in other words I don’t purchase every version) I have been using it since Delphi 1 and at times have gone for the SA packages. Most recently been using Delphi 2007 and 2009. I really like Delphi after having learnt Pascal at university and fallen in love with Turbo Pascal back in the days of DOS. Of course, no one really cares about my background (which is not an uncommon story), but the point is I like Delphi and still use it a lot.
A few years back while starting a project that had to be cross-platform, I stumbled across Runtime Revolution, or RunRev for short. It’s based on a HyperCard heritage, and while I think I hear snickering already, it does what I need and it and makes applications that run on OSX and Windows. I still love using Delphi, but RunRev with the revTalk language is ridiculously productive and my apps can run on more than just Windows.
With previous Delphi roadmaps suggesting that OSX support was coming, I was thinking that perhaps I had switched tools just a little too soon. But now, with the new roadmaps, perhaps I made the right choice? Time will tell.
Perfect analysis!
Embarcadero is doing business just like Borland because the SAME PEOPLE responsible for Kylix, Delphi 8, VCL.NET, Delphi 2005, etc. etc. etc. are running the show under a diferent brand, as Jolyon Smith has pointed.