Is it me or is this forum slown down quite a bit in the Delphi Arena?
Everyone moved to Java? .NIET?
Borland better think of moving Delphi Vista to as early as possible, so they can support the 64bit instructions....
I really don't want to conform to .NEIT ...
I mean seriously
Var
S: String;
//
S:='Hello';
S.ClassName....
Come on, does a String in any language have to be an object?
I'll award the points (all 20 ooooo) in a few days time after everyones' had chance to respond to what they think about Delphi Vista and .NET in terms of where to go next with Delphi (Delphi 2006 is .NIET + C++) But i'm more interested in Traditional Style Delphi, that for me would be Delphi Vista....
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DOS was also tooo better but still we moved to Windows XX.
I think that if Delphi doesn't go with current trends then it will be there to just support the projects what are earlier developed in Delphi. The current market demands can not be fulfilled with just D5 or D7.
I've worked on D7, D7, D2005... and really found that its really nice move.
>>Come on, does a String in any language have to be an object?
For object oriented languages it has to be.
First of all, Borland is trying to get rid of it's IDE development cluster, trying to find some company willing to buy it and continue developing new Delphi versions. Borland is more interested into other market segments.
Delphi will probably become Turbo Delphi in the future, if whomever takes it over is also interested in this old name. (Old, since we used to have Turbo Pascal in the past.) Would be interesting, btw.
And about the future of Delphi? There will still be a need for WIN32 applications for the next 5 to 10 years so don't worry about that. Plenty of people who will refuse to upgrade to Vista anyway since they don't fix things that aren't broken... And the 64-bits platform? It's not really that interesting since most applications won't have much gain by it. Sure, speed is improved a bit and you can use even more memory now, if you have the appropiate hardware but still... It's like using a sledge-hammer to put a small nail in the wall...
Problem is that with .NET development then Delphi will always be a year or two behind on Microsoft. MS is creating the new techniques and others just have to wait until MS is finished and makes these new techniques available. A new Delphi version would be more succesful if it also supports other platforms but something like Kylix (Delphi for Linux) just failed because not enough companies were interested in purchasing any licenses of Kylix. And of course with the FreePascal compiler it will be difficult for Delphi to get a good grip on the Linux market. (Besides, with so many free tools for Linux, why would someone even pay for one?)
If Delphi wants to stay in business then some new, unique technology must be introduced by it. About 10 years ago, Borland did such a thing when it introduced Delphi and with it the RAD development environment for Windows. And with some good database support too. Back then it was top technology. But nowadays it is getting old.
It would be interesting to get Delphi combined with a very good UML modelling tool with Delphi code generators but that too already exists and worse, those UML tools have even better support for some other languages. So maybe the Pascal language is about to die, being slowly replaced by C# in the next decade...
Delphi should stop following new trends and start creating its own, new trends just like it did 10 years ago...
it's the natural law of technology, you have to move on or you get stuck, Borland trashed Delphi, I'm pretty sure the number of users (which was already low) dropped drammatically when they released (the unfinished and never fixed) Delphi 8, then Delphi 2005 and even with D2006, those 3 were pretty bad desicions on a company that just cared about making money, didn't care for Delphi at all, they pretty much killed Delphi
now there are a few entusiast who are trying to bring back the Delphi spirit under a new company, but it is going to be really hard, a lot of people have already moved to .NET, even .NET 2.0 and 3.0 is on the way and Delphi is still on 1.1
sure you can still create win32 and Delphi is by far the best tool for that, but that is already old, a lot of things are moving to the web, and there's nothing like VS2005 to create web apps, which means migrating to C# (unless you want to use Chrome, which is a renewed Delphi language)
ECO is just not going to cut it for Delphi, it might be good, but it will happen the same that happened to BDE, because there are no big guys behind it and something else will become the standard
about Linux, I don't think Delphi (or any other IDE company) can really make any business there, the mind of the linux people just says "free as in I won't pay a penny for it"
Delphi has already been replaced (in a large portion) by C#, many of us don't have a choice, we have to move on, if Delphi is not moving on, I still have to move on with technology
I still believe that we can had a very good time if borland has changed their action plan after Hejlsberg moved to Microsoft.
Visit the following link, if there is some reality then one can say the Delphi is not dying but it is being killed.
http://delphi.about.com/od
Actually, I must say that I like Delphi 2006. I think the IDE improved quite a bit, especially in the way how the componentbar has changed. I like the new layout, although it took me some time to get used to it. (And I have been using Delphi ever since version 1, and Turbo/Borland Pascal long before that.)
I also like Delphi 2006 since it allows me to write ASP.NET applications that are supported by Delphi-code in the background. Previously I had not much choice than rely upon either CGI or ISAPI web applications and both had their drawbacks. Since I don't have any physical control over my own webserver (only remore) it meant for me that CGI was the only way to go. (Or using some scripting languages.) But .NET support in Delphi provided me a much better solution to play with. :-)
Still, I don't trust the .NET environments that much anymore. Microsoft promised and end to the socalled DLL hell which mostly affected the VB and VC++ programmers but it seems to me that we'll have a .NET hell in the future now new versions of .NET seem to pop up. We already have version 1.0 and 1.1 and recently 2.0 was added. We can expect a version 3.0 and after that a version 4.0. I fear that 5 years from now we might have about 8 to 10 different .NET versions which will just be another flavour of the DLL Hell. Microsoft didn't really solve it. They just started it all over again.
AAnd it is true that C# is replacing Delphi on the .NET platform. Then again, since D2006 also contains C#Builder that doesn't mean people have to change to the Visual Studio products. They can still continue to use the Borland product if they prefer it. Because Borland combined C++, C# and Delphi I think Delphi will continue to survive for quite a while. Since C# doesn't support the WIN32 environment and since C++ is a bit harder to learn, it wouldn't suprise me that after a good marketing campain that the whole IDE from Borland will start to increase in popularity again.
So Delphi will be taken over by some other company. For the sake of discusssions, let's just call that company Turbo. Very nostalgic too. :-)
About Linux... There are plenty of companies that can make a good business out of it but they have to be a bit more creative about it. For example, by providing cheap or free applications and then build a support business around it. I could imagine that Turbo would make a good business by just providing the IDE for free and then provide solutions and services to many other companies. For example, if some company would need to develop some product, they could either build it themselves or have it outsourced. Who better to outsource a project to than the company that built the IDE and language of your favourite development tool? :-)
But Turbo could also provide other services. Trainings, books, seminars, etc. There's so much business possible around a tool that you give away for free. Companies like Suse and RedHat are doing this for years already, with great succes. It's just a different way of marketting, which Borland didn't quite understand. I hope that Turbo (or whatever the new company is called) will have a better understanding of the open-source market...
Btw, I don't think that WIN32 applications will disappear forever. Basically, there will always be a need for compilers that generate applications that are closer to the core OS than any .NET application. Especially applications that need high performance. While .NET is a great environment, it tends to be bloated and not always suitable for everything. While I can imagine simple accounting tools to work just fine under .NET, I have some problems with applications for video-manipulations which would need to handle large amounts of data fast. The additional overhead for all the .NET objects will just make such tools bloated and thus slows them down.
I once had written an application that could parse a text file of 50 MB within one minute, splitting every line up in different fields as specified by a template provided by the user. It would also filter out all invalid records and remove duplicate values from the import file, reporting it back to the user. (And then it would send the valid records to an Oracle database where stored procedures were slowing down the import to about 6 hours again...) Anyway, doing the same thing in .NET would be quite hard since I had to do lots of pointer arithmetics, worrking with PChar and "array of char" types to contain the data, and an array of PChar's that would keep track of positions within the import file. And of course the use of file mapping to get the whole file in memory without immediately loading it. I had to be very close to the basic Delphi functions and avoid most of the VCL to get a huge speed while importing the data. (Which turned out to be useless since the people who did the database maintenance did a lousy job at improving the performance there...)
Microsoft is promising that .NET would perform just as well as the old WIN32 applications. And well, as long as it's just basic UI code and perhaps some simple things I will agree with them. But when you need performance then I fear that .NET won't be the proper tool for it.
I remember a drawing I've seen about 10 years ago. It showed a MacIntosh on the left and a Windows system to the right. And with it, it said: "Windows, Yesterdays techniques for tomorrow." referring to the fact that the nice graphical layout offered by Microsoft was already used for years by other systems.
I would almost dare to say: ".NET, yesterday's performance for tomorrow." referring to the need of new and faster hardware and bigger memory requirements which you will need to run .NET applications with the same performance as WIN32 applications on current systems...
(Yes, I know that .NET will pre-compile applications from .NET code to WIN32 code on demand but there lies the problem. This works fine on systems with a normal workload but not when high performance is required and the system needs to do hundreds of tasks at the same time.)
Well... according to Borland's RoadMap
http://bdn.borland.com/art
and i quote
"....and beyond. "Delphi Vista"
While the transition from .NET 1.x to .NET 2.0 is non-trivial, the next-generation Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Communication Framework (WCF) technologies (“Avalon” and “Indigo” respectively) that Microsoft plans for their Windows Vista release constitute far more drastic changes for Windows developers, who may face challenges reminiscent of the VB to VB.NET transition. The Delphi release that follows Highlander will help reduce migration issues by providing a VCL for WPF and by integrating WCF into Delphi’s multi-tier communications framework (e.g. ECO, BDP, DataHub and DataSync). In particular, support for reverse-engineering of existing applications with Together and deployment of executable models with ECO for WCF will significantly reduce the complexity of porting existing applications. In addition to supporting Windows Vista, WPF, WCF, and the WinFX APIs from Microsoft, this release will introduce managed C++ support as well as ECO support for C++, and will continue to add and enhance productivity features applicable across all language personalities and platforms in the studio.
"
Delphi Vista is expected to come out late 2007....
IF delphi's dying, why bother with Delphi 2006 and "HighLander" and then "delphi vista"
What's the purpose of that if everyone truely believes Borland are killing it off?
By the time that Borland is supporting .NET version 2.0 it is very likely that Microsoft will be putting .NET 3.0 in the market, with it's related Visual Studio products. There lies the problem, since Borland will always be behind on the development od development tools for .NET. It's just that Microsoft has a huge advantage in this market. An advantage that you can't take away by just following them.
Btw, of course Borland is making it clear that they just continue to add new improvements to Delphi. But also consider the fact that Borland actually wants to sell it's IDE segment to some other company. It's not really a dying product (yet) but for Borland it's not something they want to keep them busy.
Do you know what I think is really annoying? The webserver which runs my personal website (hosted by some other company) still just supports .NET version 1.1 else I might have already upgraded to the latest Visual Studio instead. I cannot upgrade the .NET system on that host since it's just 'rented webspace'. So I have no need (yet) to move to .NET 2.0 which means I'll stick to D2006 a bit longer.
Still leaves me with a question of the new Delphi versions will be able to support both the .NET 1.1 as the 2.0 versions. If not, I might end up with a compiler for .NET 2.0 which genersates code that won't run on my .NET 1.1 webserver. (And no, upgrading that server is no option.)
So personally, I would still prefer to stay with the old .NET versions and the basic WIN32 development...
For my employer, things are a bit different, though. We're still using Delphi (6, not 2006) for several products but when we have some extra development time, we want to rewrite those and have them running under .NET by using C#. Don't think we'll ever get that time but if we do, my employer will move over to the Visual Studio environment since it offers the newest .NET technologies.
It's still quite a difficult decision, though. Even deciding if I would upgrade to Vista or not is difficult. My current system is about 5 years old and still running perfectly. Back then it was just one of the fastest systems available and thus quite an investment. So it is about time to start thinking about a new investment. Yet I worry about the big hardware requirements that this Vista will need just to run nicely.
I still remember the days from MS-DOS and Windows 3.11... The simplest tools would run at extreme high speed since they had no additional overhead. But I fear that Windows (Vista) will just become more and more bloated. And my current hardware works just fine so no need to fix it since it ain't broke.
And I think many companies will share that opinion thus Delphi will still be a popular tool for everyone who prefer to just wait and see all those new developments but who don't want to take that big step of changing...
I've noticed that there are lot of ppl (including me) who didn't like the new Delphi 2005/06 IDE. Its much impressive in its classic style.
See the following what tells how you can switch the VB like IDE to classic one.
http://blogs.borland.com/s
Am I one of the few who actually considers the new IDE to be better than the old (D1..D7) IDE? I think the wat the components are handled are much better now than in the past. A toolbar on the left with icon+name is much better than just a componentbar on top with just icons. Especially when you have several hundreds of components installed then the old componentbar would be a real Hell. The new toolbat improved it a lot.
And I must say that in the past, the layout of my Delphi 1..7 was already organised in a way that D2005/2006 offers now, with the object inspector and other toolpanels on the left, with tabs and the editor itself eating up the rest of the space. So for me it's a bit unclear why people are complaining about the new IDE. Well, okay. If they complain about the bugs in the IDE then that's fine. But the IDE itself has improved in layout and functionality in my opinion.
It's just that people will have to get used to this new IDE. That will take time. But I hope the Turbo products will use the same IDE as Delphi 2006. But without all the bugs. :-)
Hi all …
If you buy vista, you have to go for a hardware upgrade to run it in a normal speed.
The high end configuration computer you have right now will be a low end configuration in front of Vista.
People and companies think thrice before upgrade to Vista.
SO we have to wait and see how much Vista will emerge in the market.
Or Vista will come with a free hardware upgrade pack ;) Who knows M$ will do to promote Vista.
Any how I feel it will take a long time to spread in the market, until then Win32 applications will there for a long time.
In the reverse way if the Vista flooded in the market with in a time, then you will have no time to finish your jobs, because all the existing win32 will have to upgrade to 64 bit.
Minimum hardware requirements to run Vista 800 MHz, 512 MB of RAM, and 15 GB of free disk space
Minimum hardware requirements to run winXP 233 MHz, 64 MB, 1.5 GB
See the difference
Do you think people will go for a sudden change with out gaining much more?
What will the future?? Wait and see!!!
sun4sunday
That … seems to be the HTML-encoded value of the & in unicode. :-) Or some other character that you've copied and pasted there. After typing <alt>+8230 I get & so that's probably what you've typed. :-)
And about Vista... It's not on the market yet but at this moment there are already quite a few people who have hardware that match these minimum requirements. I know my computer does and when I bought it more than 5 years ago it was the latest and fastest system available back then. A Pentium III at 866 MHz. It has exactly 512 MB Ram and more than enough gigabytes to install Vista about 15 times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
My biggest problem will be deciding which version to upgrade to, though. I will need IIS at home for webdevelopment which requires "Windows Vista Business". Also means I'll have to buy a whole new computer and when I do that, I will probably do the same as with my previous one: invest a lot in the best hardware so it will last at least 5 years before I have to upgrade again... Then again, my current system works quite well and I still have no reason to upgrade my system and thus risk that many of my USB-based hardware and a lot of my software won't be able to run on the new system simply because Vista won't support it.
For example, in the past I was using Windows 2000 combined with a fingerprint recognition device. A great tool which helped me to log in to many things with just a press of one finger. But I upgraded to Windows XP and there just weren't any drivers available for this tool under XP. Even worse, the software didn't run on XP either and I never got it to work under XP. Wasn't a big loss, though, since I bought a new device for about EUR 25,- and thus saved me the trouble to have to research why it woudn't work. But still, it's one of the problems that you get when upgrading your OS.
Borland must think about upgrading to Vista because Borland can't allow themselves to run far, far behind of Microsoft. Already they have a delay with their development of .NET compilers. Just look at .NET 2.0 which is out there for quite some while and still no support for this from any Borland compiler. Once Vista is out and developers have to start supporting it, you can bet that they will be forced to use MS Studio if Borland doesn't provide an alternative soon enough...
Yet as a developer you have a choice. If your market segment isn't depending on the latest of the latest then you can just continue to use the same tool for years. The number of companies using Delphi 4, 5 or 6 is still quite high. Even my current employer still uses Delphi 6 and never considered upgrading since it works. Basically, the need of our customers will determine if we need to upgrade. Since many of them are even using Windows 98 and Windows NT, it just means that we can use the tools we have now. We will force our users to use Windows 2000 for the latest release of our software, though. But that's because they wanted additional security which we can't provide on 98 or NT...
I agree with atul_parmar... :-)
I am the last now. :-P
Well, back to topic... Vista is still not available for the masses so anything we're doing here is speculating. I still remember when Windows '95 hit the market and MS marketing campaign was so good that some people even bought it even though they did not even own a computer! It was a hype so everyone had to have it.
Will Vista follow a similar marketing career? If so, it might be that we will have to follow soon, too. Simply because the masses are quickly upgrading...
But I also remember the arrival of Windows ME which became public about the same time as Windows 2000. Many people didn't upgrade to ME but to W2000 since W2000 offered a bit more functionality and had received some compliments about being more reliable than ME. Still, Windows ME was delivered with new computers although back then I bought my PC with W2000 instead and advised everyone else to do the same. Better security, more reliable. And besides, Windows 98 and ME weren't that much different so not many people decided to upgrade.
Actually, Windows 98 is still quite popular since it starts up fast and doesn't have those "annoying" security thingies of W2000. :-)
Basically, the need to upgrade, as a developer, to Windows Vista will mostly depend on how popular this new version will become. If MS manages to sell 10 million copies within the first month then you can assume it will be important to keep an eye on it. If they sell less than a 1000 copies in the first month then just forget it... :-)
Basically, the market will decide and I wonder if MS will manage to create the same hype as 12 years ago with Windows '95...
Btw, you do know that Windows CE, Windows ME and Windows NT spell Windows CE.ME.NT... :-)
I have a plan to buy Visata when the pack come with a free hardware ugrade
It is marketing, anything can happen.
If Vista will not be a sucess, then Win 32 applicaitons will be live long.
May be Vista will introduce the feature to integrate win32 applications ..hahah... :))))
Mine is the last post now. ;)
sun4sunday
The winner is the guy who wrote a whole novel in this post. :-)
Btw, sun4sunday... Even though Windows 95 was quite succesfull, I still had to update old Windows 3.1 (16-bits) applications for at least 5 years afterwards. We could have rewritten those in 32-bits versions but that would require much more time than was available for these updates. So in the end of 2001 my employer back then still delivered a software product where one of the components was a 16-bits application, simply because we couldn't take the efford to move the code to 32-bits. (Well, we could, but would have to rewrite quite a few of our custom libraries that did some communications over serial ports and it had some dependency on simple assembler routines and some other 16-bits techniques.
None of our customers complained about it, though. And the next year the whole application became obsolete since we had time to rewrite a 32-bits version by then.
Will Vista be succesful? Probably yes, since Microsoft has very good marketing people who can sell anything to anyone. :-) But will Vista be succesful in it's usage? That will be a big question since more and more people have learned that it's better to not fix things if they're not broken.
And be honest, if you already have two dozens of servers running Windows 2003 Server and a couple of hundreds of desktops running Windows XP in your company then why would you even consider purchasing new Vista licenses for it all, which also means all hardware needs to be upgraded. Even worse, the people who will work on those desktops might lose several valuable hours re-adjusting their new systems to their personal preferences... Such an upgrade would be quite expensive...
Hello, found this thread by coincidence and have just finished reading all the comments, with mixed thoughts. It would be interesting to re-open discussion now 3 years later, with Vista released, W7 almost here with .NET 4.0, WPF, Delphi 2009 w/o .net .. quite a few things have been changed.
As for me, I'm quite dissapointed at Borland. I own D2009 now and begin to think the situation will never improve (still lacking 64-bit, .net dropped, half the documention is non-existant, few years old APIs still unsupported or incomplete, buggy IDE, almost 0 support or fixes for older versions, no multi-platform .. well there's prysm but it's very limited). I hate this feeling like it's time to move on and wave Delphi good bye in favor of .NET (which I don't like at all).
bryan7,
You and me both...
I had no choice (to move off) though, as 64 bit was crucial to the work I currently do. So back to C++ for me (full time), and C# when .NET is a requirement. Much of my time is now spent porting my Delphi code over to C++, and then ensuring the code is 64 bit compliant. Borland milked this for all it was worth, but the times have changed and the sad fact is that the tool has not. Sorry to see it go, but if no money is to be invested in this tool, then its time to move on.
Regards,
Russell
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: ciulyPosted on 2006-08-22 at 01:59:51ID: 17362013
I'm with delphi 7 since it appeared. never even tried the newer versions as this suits me just fine.
how are you going to award the points? to the first one that totally agress with you? I totally agree with you :D
back to reality: things are chaning. some changes are good, some ar bad. usually we need to acept the bad changes in order to use teh good changes.
I myself rpefer to wait until something is decided to be good and tere are enough reviews out there and only after that move on to it, IF I think it is good enough for me. and if I'll have to cope with the idea of teh string being a class in order to get that ... so be it :)