Delphi Live: RAD Studio XE launch

I just attended the Delphi Live keynote address by several members of the Embarcadero team.  They used the term “RAD Studio XE launch” a few times, but it’s not available for sale just yet, and they didn’t announce a release date.  But the feeling was that it’ll be for sale very soon, within a week or two.  I saw a few people filming it, including Jim McKeeth, who put videos of a few sessions from last year up on his blog, so we’ll probably end up seeing it on Delphi.org soon enough.  But I’ll recount a few of the highlights here.

David I showed a fortune from a fortune cookie he got at a Chinese retaurant just last week.  “You will do well in the field of computer technology.”  With the release of the new Delphi just days away, let’s hope it turns out to be true.

Michael Swindell, one of the top executives at Embarcadero, gave some very interesting numbers.  Out of an estimated 16 million total programmers worldwide, 1.7 million are using Delphi.  More than 10%!  So you’re not alone, even when all the C# and Java people try to make you feel like you are.  I found this particularly interesting because last year, when I was on the phone with Emb. tech support for an installation hiccup with D2010, I was chatting with the rep and I asked him if he knew how many people were actually using Delphi.  He basically said that that was a trade secret of Embarcadero’s and he could lose his job if he told me that.  Looks like perspectives have changed somewhat, and for the better IMO.

Michael also mentioned that even with the economic downturn, Delphi’s grown pretty significantly last year, including the biggest increase in upgrades from D7 ever.  He attributed this specifically to their strong commitment to quality, which was the main reason behind the much-maligned OSX compiler schedule slip.  I don’t remember if it was him or Allen Bauer, who spoke a little later, but one of them said specifically that they have a working OSX compiler and OSX-ready VCL, that they could have shipped, but it wasn’t good enough to meet their quality standards so they held it back.  They’re really trying to avoid another Kylix or Delphi 8 style disaster, and they seem pretty sincere about it.

Probably the most exciting thing that Michael Swindell said was that they’re starting to aggressively market to schools again, “from universities down to middle schools,” trying to get Delphi into classrooms and into students’ hands, at the sort of prices that schools and students can afford, including some way (not many details on this) for students to use Delphi for free for educational purposes.  It’s good to hear some public recognition that new blood is very important to the heath of the Delphi community and that they’re working on targeting the low end of the market again.  Borland sent Delphi into a decline by being far too enterprise-oriented, and that attitude seems to have gotten inherited, and it’s good to see that they’re starting to really see past that now.

Tony de la Lama, the VP of R&D, mentioned that they’re putting a lot of emphasis within the company on actually doing new development in Delphi.  Before, a lot of it was built on other products and with other languages, but they’re moving towards using Delphi internally a lot more.

One complaint that I’ve heard raised several times since the launch of Delphi 2010 was about how DataSnap servers were crippled, or at least less useful than they could be, because there’s no built-in support for encryption.  That’s being remedied in XE, with a couple different encryption modes out of the box and a way to add other filters if necessary.

Also, I got an answer to a question that a lot of people have been asking about the XE previews.  I don’t know if they’ve answered this one before, but if they have I haven’t seen it yet.  A big part of the new functionality in XE will be bundled third-party software.  I asked at the end which products would be with which editions, and the answer was basically that all the new products they’ve been demoing would be in the Professional edition, except for FinalBuilder, which would be in Enterprise and above.

There was more, but those are the points that really stuck out to me.  Delphi XE may not be everything that everyone wanted or expected, but it looks like a pretty solid release and the team definitely has their heads on straight.  I think they’re really taking things in the right direction, much more so than in past years, and I’m (cautiously) optimistic about the future.  They presented a lot of really good plans.  We’ll see how they work out.

15 Comments

  1. Chris says:

    Nice writeup, thanks.

  2. Jolyon Smith says:

    “that they could have shipped, but it wasn’t good enough to meet their quality standards so they held it back”

    So, we could have shipped it except it wasn’t in a fit state to ship? Bottom line is, it didn’t ship.

    And I would be a millionaire if only I had a million bucks.

    This time next year Rodder’s, this time next year…

    (That’s one for the fans of “Only Fools and Horses”) 🙂

  3. Kyle Miller says:

    Thanks for writing this up.

  4. tonaldefiance says:

    Anyone have a video of the keynote, i want to hear them talk about osx.

  5. Serg says:

    “David I showed a fortune from a fortune cookie he got at a Chinese retaurant”
    I can’t understand the meaning of the above sentence (BTW – what it really means?), but I believe that David I meant to keep a Delphi programmer’s productivity at a maximum.

  6. Ken Knopfli says:

    Thanks for this clarifying post.

    “1.7 million [programmers] are using Delphi.” – I’d love to know on what that figure is based. Did they sell 1.7m D2010 licenses? But I do hope that the market is still healthy and Delphi is a profitable product.

    “They’re really trying to avoid another Kylix or Delphi 8 style disaster, and they seem pretty sincere about it.” – Good. I purchased D8 out of my own pocket and never bought another license until Nick Hodges said “D2007 is stable and really good – honest!”

    “A big part of the new functionality in XE will be bundled third-party software.” – Well, that’s pretty straight. Thanks.

  7. Ken Knopfli says:

    @Serg: A fortune cookie is a kind of small baked confectionery. Not quite a biscuit, but sort of like that. And it has a bit of paper baked inside with a message on it, supposedly telling you something about yourself and your future.

    David I obviously got one with “You will do well in the field of computer technology” written on the paper strip.

  8. Chee Meng says:

    1.7m? I reckon they included the 1M user licenses sold to Russia for their education programme? 😉

  9. LJU says:

    Why use Delphi, when C# is used more these days.

    Too little too late for Embarcadero.

  10. LJU: Because Delphi works better than C# and is a more productive and more efficient language.

    Why eat human food when insects, which eat garbage, are far more common than we are? There’s more of them doing it that way, so they must be right, right?

    Chee: I don’t think so. He didn’t say specifically, but I was talking with David I afterwards about various things, and he mentioned that 1M licenses deal, and a few other similar things in other places, and with the numbers he was using I got the impression that they were probably being counted separately. I could be completely wrong, but I think the 1.7M figure is actual people and companies doing real work in Delphi, not bulk educational licenses.

  11. Serg says:

    @Ken Knopfli – Thank you for explanation.

  12. Allen Bauer says:

    > 1.7m? I reckon they included the 1M user licenses sold to Russia for their education programme?

    No. That number was from an analyst firm. I don’t remember exactly which one (IDC, Gartner, Forrester, etc…), but it was not specifically a number *we* came up with. That number also includes all versions of the product (not just the latest version) and, ahem, “unlicensed” versions…

    Regardless, it is a decent chunk of the market.

  13. Mason Wheeler says:

    @Allen: Thanks for clarifying. 🙂

  14. RichardS says:

    @Allen – it would be very useful to know the source, or was it privately commissioned research? I waste a lot of time convincing people that there are more than a few dozen of us Delphi folks out here…

    Richard

  15. Tonaldefiance says:

    @Allen

    are we going to get a demonstration of the osx compiler
    from this years Delphi live?