No, he thinks that the main reason for Delphi refusal is the lack of technical abrangence… Things like regex or crypto out of the box. It would be nice to have, just like 64-bit compiler or x-platform.

But the main reason to companies not to use Delphi in new code is just THERE’S NO NEW BLOOD on Delphi market. (btw, there’s a way to use bold on this blog engine?). It’s too risky to start a project of (let’s say) 5 or 6 people and discover months after you couldn’t find enough competent people to enter the position – so you go with 2 or 3 devs. And schedule have to be renegotiated, and so on. A lot of risk.

The reason is not technical at all…..

The companies that think about abandoning Delphi are not doing it because of lack of developers or free versions, they think it because they’re afraid Delphi can no longer fulfill actual needs – and wonder how long it will be available – and too many third party libraries are needed to fill actual gaps. What Delphi needs is to fill those gaps, not wasting resources and revenues for a rearguard battle it can no longer win.”

Sorry boy, you’re completely wrong. In the companies that think in abandoning Delphi, THE MAIN REASON is the lack of developers. And in companies that don’t ever CONSIDER using Delphi, THE MAIN REASON is the lack of developers. I know, I tried to do a recruitment. And didn’t find real talent in Delphi – we end hiring a (extremely competent, as we discovered little after) C# devel which learned Delphi very fast.

Making the community grow again, making Delphi ecosystem thrive again
is the main priority. We need new blood on Delphi market.

I do apologise. I had mistaken you for someone engaged in a meaningful discussion. But clearly you are just peddling some crooked agenda of your own since you persist in utterly ignoring points put to you.

I don’t want a free version of Professional. I can get that already if I want.

I – and others like me – *want* to pay for a Delphi license, but I can neither afford nor justify that expense given that I make no money from it and do not seek to make money from it.

I feel you have said all that you have to say. If you have anything sensible or additional to add go ahead, but please try to add something to the discussion, not simply try to close it down.

The companies that think about abandoning Delphi are not doing it because of lack of developers or free versions, they think it because they’re afraid Delphi can no longer fulfill actual needs – and wonder how long it will be available – and too many third party libraries are needed to fill actual gaps. What Delphi needs is to fill those gaps, not wasting resources and revenues for a rearguard battle it can no longer win.
And there’s always the wish to be on the winner’s side – and that’s not looks to be Delphi’s.

“I know or have ever known, that used Delphi were self taught.”

Those days are over. You may refuse to accept it, but those days are really over. And they won’t be back. Still people learn languages that are outside what they are exposed at schools. They do if they find them worth it. Again, what’s the driver for learning a language? The availability a free version? There’s Watcom Fortran for free. Why people don’t learn Fortran? Do they learn Java or .NET because they are free, or because they feel that’s where they perceive technology edge (and jobs) is? A C/C++ job is not easy to find, and often you have to learn it yourself. Yet, people do it. Just because it is free, or because they feel it’s the most powerful language? Again, why don’t they learn Fortran? Or Ada? Or any other niche language available for free?

You are disperately trying to live in a “golden age” that ended much time ago.

“You idea of finding a “profitable niche” is a joke. Delphi is a general purpose programming language”.
The fact it is a general purpose language does not mean that today native applications are becoming a niche market – and a niche does not need to be a small one. In some way, even C/C++ development is today a “niche” one, compared to the much broader Java/.NET/PHP/Python/etc. market.

“And your suggestions for a “Delphi store” is frankly laughable.” Just because you’re afraid to give your precious code away? Again all you want is a free version that could be used for professional development without giving back anything.
You say it clearly: “for as little inconvenience to both Embarcadero but *also to the users*” you would not accept any limitation, right? Here we say “you can’t have a full barrel and a drunk wife” – and that’s exactly what you want. Stop dreaming, and look at the harsh reality.

IMHO if the “Delphi community” wants a free Delphi they have just to spend their student/hobbyist time to work on FreePascal and Lazarus and make it grow. If you want something free, why don’t you build it?

Nobody is suggesting that Embarcadero start giving away Professional, Enterprise or Architect Editions of Delphi.

Nobody (or not many people) is even suggesting that they charge LESS for these editions.

What IS being suggested is that a NEW edition of Delphi be created that is offered for free, and that a further edition be created that is offered between that free edition and the current Pro editions.

The REASON for doing this is not to kill Delphi or undermine it’s paying user base, but to STRENGTHEN that paid for commercial user base. Many of those companies currently using and paying for Professional and Enterprise Delphi are only doing so reluctantly, to maintain aging Delphi code. Many of them now seriously think hard about starting any new projects in Delphi.

Why?

Because the WIDER community of Delphi developers is drying up because ONLY big companies and serious, commercial developers can afford to finance a “Delphi habit”.

Most (by which I mean nearly ALL) of the people I know or have ever known, that used Delphi were self taught. They did not come out of University with Delphi experience or qualifications to secure their first job. They are/were software development enthusiasts that caught the Delphi bug, perhaps in a job where thy were exposed to it, but whom then went on to buy their own licenses and do the hard yards in their own time. Sometimes they were lucky enough to get a job where they could do this learning, but that was years ago when Delphi was still a healthy a vibrant player in the commercial market.

These days a trainee in commercial shop is far more likely to be learning C# and/or Java. Not Delphi.

So if Delphi is to have ANY CHANCE in those PROFESSIONAL AND ENTERPRISE markets, Embarcadero have to find a way to foster the entrepreneurial learners that once found their way into jobs in those paying sites. Charging ever more for the products and increasing the costs of staying current is NOT the way to do it.

You idea of finding a “profitable niche” is a joke. Delphi is a general purpose programming language. There is no “niche” for such a product since there are any number of general purpose programming language products out there.

And your suggestions for a “Delphi store” is frankly laughable.

1. You are assuming that Delphi developers are in it to make money, selling code through “stores”. I really don’t think you understand what makes the Delphi community really tick at all.

2. The administration costs would be immense, given that this is to support a FREE product. Any %age that Embarcadero would take would have to pay not only for the “free edition” but also for the on-going maintenance and running costs of the store mechanism itself.

The way to do that effectively is to find a way of offering FREE for as *little* cost and inconvenience (to both Embarcadero but also to the users) as possible.

Some up front work to create the free/Standard Edition SKU’s of a Delphi product would be an initial development cost that would need to be absorbed, but once done, if done correctly, the on-going cost of maintaining those versions would be negligible. It’s just another product of the build/release management processes ALREADY IN PLACE.

My suggestion to Embarcadero: build a free version of Delphi who can’t produce working executables, only the IDE could launch applications. To get a working executables, the free version must submit the source code to an Embarcadero site which would produce the executable and put it on sale (if the programmer wish to sell it), or allow free downloads, and take a percentage on each sale to repay the “free” version. Submitted code could be used by Embarcadero. It may require an expensive infrastructure, but the “community” will pay somehow for Delphi development.

They are chasing the Enterprise, just as Borland did to their cost. In Embarcadero’s case it perhaps won’t undo the entire company, but it will be the undoing of Delphi.

1a) Visual Studio Standard 2008 (New) = $234.95 at Amazon (boxed version)
1b) Delphi Pro 2010 (Upgrade) = $399.00 at Codegear (download only)

And oh….that’s what, 4 tools as well in the package vs 1? So a better comparison should be against RAD Studio! hello!!??

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-Studio-2008-Standard/dp/B000WM1Z46/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1253893160&sr=8-2

2) When they announced they were coming to town to do a dog and pony show for D2009…I thought I may just head down there and finally see one of their “big events” that I assume was to help push Delphi 2009 and to finally see David I in real life…maybe even get his autograph! hehe…

I thought the hotel might have a big convention room or something….and lo & behold it was held in one of the small rooms on the ground floor and ended up with like a classroom of folks. Hmmm…. I got the impression that the attendants were long-time Delphi users as well as most of the questions were very Delphi specific and the fact that most of the talk was way over my head. LOL So…I thought to myself – “why in the heck are they spending the money to come all the way here to have an up-close and personal Pizza Party with already very smart (existing) Delphi users?” (less me, of course…am still a newbie!). I couldn’t help think about the air tickets, rental car, hotel bills, food for them (there was about 3, maybe 4 of them)…and pizza and drinks for all of us, etc. …and all for what? a classroom only of folks!??

As far as how the event went? For me – it was nothing to write home about and nothing that I think couldn’t be done in a pre-recorded video. I concluded afterward based on what I learned…or rather, did not learn – I’ll definitely won’t be going to one of those again, but maybe for the corporate guys in there….it may have been that helpful, I don’t know.

3) Educational material, in general. Just go to the Visual Studio site…esp. the “Beginner” part of it and the videos they have to get someone started….really excellent stuff and nicely laid out.

Even sites like this one that has a butt-load of videos to learn everything Visual Studio. I would gladly pay a subscription for a site like this for RAD Studio/Delphi: http://www.learnvisualstudio.net

I think this is another reason why VS is way more popular – the educational material is simply in abundance and the forums are thriving with questions and answers. And with the Express versions, new programmers can easily learn and then eventually graduate to the Standard/Pro versions once they get their heads wrapped around whatever tool they’re learning.

Anyway….I need all the “Visual” help I can get to help me learn and be more proficient at Delphi, but with the minimal videos that are not easy to find and the waning number of books on current versions of Delphi or even RAD studio….worries me big time.

5) WEBSITE – FINDING INFO – I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that a study showed if a person has to click more than 3-4 times to get what he is looking for on a site…then on average a person loses interest and moves onto a different site altogether; it was something like that! If so…I’m practically in that category! =) Going to the site….it’s like I’m constantly clicking to find whatever I’m looking for, like pulling teeth….really. Too much fellas….I think the site could be designed alot better and be way more clearer. KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid.

Case in Point – where do I find “Support” on the home page?? Please don’t tell me to press “EDN” at the top either…..that’s not universal !! {sigh}

6) WEBSITE = S.L.O.W.
I don’t know about you guys, but from the home page to the Shop to the Forum – I’m finding the site is just too slow overall in navigating any of it and I dread if I have to go to it. Maybe it’s the underlying coding or the server itself….I don’t know, but I think the site needs a major overhaul anyway to make it easier to navigate. Again….KISS.

7) No upgrade version of Delphi Prism…only subscription!?? Delphi and RAD has upgrades and subscription, but not Prism? What’s going on here?? So where can I find the PRICE for the “maintenance subscription” for Prism on the website? I tried to find it – I gave up – I was interested in it since I’m not interested in RAD Studio (don’t need C++) and thought to upgrade to use the BOGO to upgrade to D2010. That’s the main reason why I didn’t go for the BOGO deal either…info I couldn’t find and finally gave up.

So ultimately….I too, for what I use Delphi for, is simply not worth $400 upgrade every year…nor are their new product offerings and pricing. If I was new in programming and evaluating Delphi and other languages – one look at the price of Delphi as compared to the full blown Visual Studio – would be a no-brainer and RAD Studio wouldn’t even be a consideration. And if I wanted to upgrade VS as well – it wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg for the little man + there’s tons of help out there.

Now…for anyone that would come back and say – “OK man…If you’re not happy with the price of Delphi – then just go to Visual Studio and be gone forever from Delphi!” – because all of us – YOU AND I AND THEM don’t need that and the least we can do is to give honest feedback to Embarcadero/Codegear, so they know where everyone is coming from. One less Delphi programmer is one less upgrade/subscription payment to them…and to help promote Delphi.

As a “little man” programmer – they need me/us too….we all count. Don’t you put your small change in a glass jar everyday? Go to the bank at the end of the month and have them dump it into their change counting machine – and you’ll be surprised to find that all that change ends up being $30, $40, $50….and you wouldn’t have thunk it would have added up to that.

As far as the whole Community Edition thing goes – they need something to compete with Visual Studio Express Editions – NOW – and keep it updated unlike the “Turbo Editions”. That’s another thing – looks quite bad it was started and never really was followed through and not updated; that’s almost worst than not starting anything at all.

I think it could work, but they (bosses, marketing, operations) also need to get their thinking caps on and come up with something new and fresh to entice us and new up and coming programmers – AT LEAST better price their stuff as compared to Visual Studio Standard with all those tools…or bring it up to par. Add in Delphi PHP to the deal….maybe even the Ruby package. There’s no need to keep them separate if you want to compete, but maybe they don’t! I don’t know…it’s not my company, but I get the feeling the effort is in the pricing and these special deals. I wasn’t born yesterday; I get it – get me on your other tools…and you’ve got me in for those subscriptions, ie – the “buy Delphi and get RAD Studio deal”. uh uh…

VS 2010 is coming….and who knows what MS has up their sleeve to market it. I, for one, have just installed VB Express 2008 and playing around with old VB coding I have laying around and will try to port a few apps I’ve written in Delphi to VB and see how things go….and if I like it, D2007 will be my last ever Delphi purchase. I think the whole Win32 vs .Net runtime arguments are no longer valid either for your typical application, so leveraging that “benefit” over .Net I think is moot now, but only for a handful of people.

And oh….one last thing…..the whole IntraWeb thing – I would love to do some of that, but what the heck…..can I do this on a normal Linux server or do I need a specific host that has to support IntraWeb? Where do I find an updated list of hosts? What good is Intraweb to someone like me if I can’t find a 3rd party server/host to upload to that is reasonably priced to play around with it?

Oops….crap, I didn’t want to, but ended up in a long rant. oh well. Es todo mi dos centavos!

“I really wish econimic crysis to destroy Embarcadero in short time and allow Delphy to have second chance.”
Delphi was lucky enough to escape Borland wreck: Are you sure you want to challenge fortune and see if it survive another? Who would buy it? Some Russian billionare?

“I think that if Embarcadero could provide a safe escape route, say by helping make the Freepascal compiler compatible with Delphi”
And why should they fire in their feet? Would you help a competitor of yours, especially a free one, to become compatible with your apps?? What is this, kamikaze escape route? How could someone even think such things is beyond any rationale – just “hey, give me Delphi free, I don’t care what happens then”.

It that’s the “Delphi community”, I prefer to see this hippie-like community disappear ASAP instead of risking Delphi itself to disappear

Because ther would be no motivation any longer to produce a good product.

I, too, started with TP3.01 and went all the way to D7.

Then I bought D8. Oops.

I never bought another version until Nick convinced me to try D2007.

But no way would I be happy had I been obliged to pay a subscription over all those intervening years.