Apparently the appointment of Macro Cantù as Delphi Product Manager has now been officially announced or at least confirmed. I cannot find any official announcement, not even on the Embarcadero web site. Anywhere. But the wires are full of people congratulating Marco on the official confirmation of his appointment and he has tweeted about it, so I have to assume it is now indeed confirmed.
It has to be said – again – that as a customer and user of Embarcadero products, I feel that Embarcadero leave a lot to be desired in the area of communications and customer relationships. I get repeatedly bombarded with emails all but pleading with me to upgrade to, or even to simply purchase, products that I already own. With the Draconian registration procedures required to activate these products, there really is no excuse for them to not know that they are not only wasting their time, but also annoying the hell out of me with these emails.
But I digress.
The apparent lack of official announcement of an appointment that they surely know is of huge interest to their customers is another example of the inability of Embarcadero to adequately manage the relationship with their customers and users (or perhaps simply a lack of interest in doing so).
Hopefully this is something that will be high on Marco’s agenda when he is settled in behind his big, new desk. 🙂
As for Marco himself, I wish him well in his new role, but have to confess to a certain doubt that he is right for this role or indeed that the role is right for him. A Product Manager is a very different animal to a conference lecturer, book writer and consultant. Which isn’t to say that Marco doesn’t have it within him to be a very good Product Manager, only that – without wishing to be unkind – I don’t see any evidence that he does. Yet. I sincerely hope that he does.
Of course, the very fact of his appointment should suggest that someone believes that he does, but I have a disquieting feeling that there may be other motives behind his choice. Namely that Embarcadero feel that by appointing from the community they will gain Brownie points with that community and earn themselves a few more “free passes” (goodness knows they get plenty already).
It remains to be seen whether Marco has clear and firm ideas about the direction that Delphi should take and whether those ideas will be permitted by higher Embarcadero management to come to fruition.
Even more worrying is that the initial news of Marco’s appointment came along with information about the departure of 2 senior, long serving engineers in the development team, specifically Mark Edington and Shaunak Mistry, along with further commentary from a self-professed/claimed “Insider”, about the declining state of the development resources on the Delphi team.
As good a job as Marco may do, without the talent to bring to bear in the development team, a Product Manager is in an extremely difficult – dare I say impossible – position.
Good luck Marco. I hope you won’t need it.
The announcement of a new Delphi Product Manager was done in the product address during CodeRage today. I’m sure EMBT will publish something on their website in the near future to that effect (how else would they get that free pass?). Developer relations appears to be a one man show at EMBT, and DavidI is busy with CodeRage right now.
When will Intersimone be let go? It’s one of the move that could save Delphi…
Sadly, I have to agree with you.
How so?
Kent – who are you, what Delphi versions do you own? And why do you want me to go? What did I ever do to harm you or Delphi?
Why would that “save” Delphi, and from what?
@Kent M. – Finger pointing is not the way. We point with a finger to someone we see. David I. returned in the darkest age of Delphi and tried his best to play good and happy music while others bewailed Tap or Amazing Grace and did not stop until today. David I is at the front line and of course battling there is risky. He can get hurt by his own people’s artillery fire, a ricochet and crossfire is his destiny. We cannot blame the one who holds the Stars and Bars flag high for doing what he does, if he believes in what he is doing. He is doing so many things we don’t see.
David I’s fault is that the zeitgeist changed and happy nice people who build software for other nice people in order to make them happy are no longer welcome, rare or hare. Hard to find, indeed. David I’s bunniness is not up for discussion.
We can also say, someone who remembers that Borland is still here for the tiny and hands out sheets with questions … Your companies income 0 to 1 Mio | 1. Mio to 10 Mio … is bad or a liar. Imo, says something about the company he worked for. The good old Borland days – the illusion was a different one. Blind believe in a myth.
Now we are back to reality – from this perspective it’s time to take off the Borland shirt and pull on the EMB shirt. This counts for most of the people who complain a lot – the Borland shirts are worn out and doing the laundry again and again will not make them better. Counts for all. This is something to let go, I think.
I was never a big Borland fan … I liked their C++ IDE but finally switched because the Turbo Vision implementation for C++ was little strange. I think it payed to move from Basic to Pascal when Windows arrived.
I think the problem is that the EMB shirts are more like the Inprise ones, and it was the Inprise era when Borland lost it’s way with Delphi, only really finding the path once again with CodeGear. But EMB swept away CodeGear and although their colours may not be entirely ALM, they are definitely back at the enterprise end of the spectrum.
Deltics: “I think the problem is that the EMB shirts are more like the Inprise ones…” and “EMB swept away CodeGear and although their colours may not be entirely ALM, they are definitely back at the enterprise end of the spectrum.”
As a true “inside embarcadero” person – I don’t see anything close to the management of the past(s). But I do admit that we have to continue to do a better job for all of our customers whether they are enterprise, small business, ISVs, consultants or independents. That’s why we deliver Starter, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate and Architect editions of Delphi.
Not sure what “spectrum” we are on, but I do know that we care about every type of developer regardless of where they are located, what size company they work in, what software/hardware architectures they leverage, or what types of applications they build. We are definitely not anywhere near the ALM coloration, at least as far as I can see internally.
As has been gone over repeatedly in the past, the gulf between “Starter” and “Professional” is vast.
“Starter” is nothing more than a paid for, unlimited trial version. The lack of VCL source make it useless for it’s intended user base, and the ridiculous conditions in the license w.r.t revenue wipe out it’s value for anyone looking for a low-cost entry into the software development business – your future ISV customers.
I thought about eating humble pie. Inprise no – Enterprise spectrum would be my guess from what I see. Maybe I see it this way because I expected Delphi to evolve into this direction.
Codegear said – we will focus on developers again. EMB is aiming at developers and EMB is supporting developers. DB tools make more sense if you have a complex or huge database or databases, this is simply how things evolved. Implementing DB tools is not trivial. Does not mean that no one else can make use and benefit from using those tools.
Delphi is similar, but it has never been different. Imo Windows was simpler and Delphi allowed to cover almost everything concerning Windows a lot earlier than Microsoft Tools did or did the easy way. This allowed professionals to benefit early, ISVs to surf in a more convenient way on the ‘bleeding’ not even cutting edge MS provided. Delphi was very unique these days – ‘Borland’ side of the medal. EMB is little more careful with adopting the new from many more technology corners – from this perspective the smell is little ‘Enterprise’. WinRT in V 1.0 (can turn into (un)planned obsolescence).
Enterprises simply avoid becoming victim of obsolescence by staying little behind the times, but if there is need to change and a way they change very fundamental by introducing a new platform.
What could be more “official” than having Marco’s boss, JT Thomas, announcing it during CodeRage?
Or how about the man himself announcing it. He’s from Embarcadero, and he’s “official” and he announced it. What else do you want? Nothing pleases you, it seems.
Larry — Anders Ohlsson is still in Developer Relations, as is Christine Ellis.
Not everyone has the luxury of being able to “attend” CodeRage. Or necessarily the inclination. Or are there two Product Managers ? One for CodeRage attendees and another for the rest of us ?
Is it really that difficult to co-ordinate things such that an email is sent to registered users at or around the same time as the scheduled announcement is made at CodeRage, or to have that information available on the corporate web site at/around that time ? I searched the Embarcadero web site looking for confirmation after the official announcement had apparently been made.
Nothing.
Nada.
Zip.
Diddly Squat.
As far as Embarcadero.com was concerned, Marco Cantu was (and at time of this reply, still is) nothing more than a prolific contributor to the community content on their Developer Network site.
Are you really suggesting that finding information about a key management appointment on a corporate web site after it has apparently been announced is an unreasonable expectation in this day and age ?
Clearly the Embarcadero email servers work well enough to send out useless and irrelevant information, and someone has the time and the inclination to continually cause them to do so. But apparently they don’t work at all – or nobody can be bothered – when it comes to timely and relevant information.
You of all people should know that these things are not difficult to do if you want to do them. Indeed if there was any real interest in fostering good relations and communicating effectively with customers/users, these things would be obvious things to do as part of a proper management/developer relations process.
But I am not at all surprised that you, and I don’t doubt others, will continue to give free passes.
It was also announced on the CodeRage twitter feed (#coderage).
So what ? I fail to see what point this makes other than to re-assert that “CodeRage” was the chosen platform on which to make this announcement and to further highlight the failure to co-ordinate that announcement with the other channels of communication by which the much larger superset of all their users and customers might engage with them.
Embarcadero is totally dysfunctional, PERIOD. Nothing will get better here.
Another senior engineer will be leaving soon.
The C++ 64bit compiler was planned to be released last month and they have to release this month, but thinks are not going well and I think they will release with poor quality to try to get revenue.
Would that engineer be you?
Someone can’t depart from somewhere they aren’t.
I was replying to the alleged Delphi Insider, but there was no reply button, so I replied to the parent post.
@Insider: I do feel the same from the outside.
(Some of) my words in an e-mail some hours ago to some guys from ALT+KUDOS:
It is de-facto not possible to help Delphi anymore (as long it belongs to EMBT). A lot of people see Delphi as some kind of toy language and now it is also developed by amateurs.
@Uwe I’m glad you sent a message, unfortunately it won’t change anything that’s the reality.
They will replace Tony (VP of R&D) soon and will blame on him all the R&D issues, but is not his fault, and this is not the bad news. The bad news is his replace, this is going to be worse.
Stay tunned!!!
Oh, ‘Tell me a name, bring me a head’. Nice game, I know. Poor Mr. Tony. He looks nice on the photo. What’s the problem – Did he overdraw the cost center by one cent.
There is a certain delay since XE which will turn into one year or one and a half – this is simply natural. So what’s the problem… I don’t get it.
Does someone at EMB provide false status reports to the management? Tell the directors good things take a while and they will have to learn this.
And by JT
http://blogs.embarcadero.com/jtembarcadero/2012/11/06/welcome-marco-cantu-delphi-product-manager/
“As I announced this morning during the Delphi CodeRage 7 product address”
Again, so what? A blog post after the fact. That’s like pointing today to a news article published yesterday that reports on the day before yesterday’s news as evidence that they provide “up to the minute” coverage. Sheesh.
Incidentally, it’s still not showing up in a general search of Embarcadero.com even for as vague a term as “Marco” (you can’t search for “Delphi Product Manager” because the search box won’t allow that many characters!)
Why is it so important to know *before* the fact? So you can give your veto, or what?
@Rudy, nowhere did I say I wanted to know “before the fact”. I merely pointed out that the evidence offered of other announcements made at the same time as or (implicitly) before the announcement at CodeRage were nothing of the sort, but were commentary on what had been announced at CodeRage.
My point was that I went looking for some sort of official confirmation of what was something that had – according to all the gossip – already been officially confirmed, and that this “news” couldn’t be (easily) found anywhere that someone with an interest might go looking for it. The lack of communication and availability of this information was then put against the continued bombardment of irrelevant information that I do have to put up with, merely to establish that the problem wasn’t a lack of willingness or ability to communicate at all, but a failure to communicate effectively.
A lot of the criteria for “what would make me happy” that I supposedly measure Embarcadero against on this matter were invented by other people in order to paint me as unreasonable.
No reply button, so a reply this way: It was you who stressed the “after the fact” thing a few times, which made me ask myself why that it is so important to you.
I used that phrase once, as a simple description of the fact that the blog post referred to was posted some time after the announcement. If you think that is “stressing” something then my gast is well and truly flabbered.
And yes, I repeated it once more when another post of a similar nature was offered as further “evidence” of a supposedly more co-ordinated release of information than I was observing. Those two posts were simply reporting on the announcement made earlier at CodeRage. And the point wasn’t that they were just “after the fact”, but they were, obviously, quite some time afterwards, being in blogs posted by people who were involved at the event.
Sheesh, it really isn’t that important, but the bottom line is that the way this information was communicated was poor.
If by contrast you think it was in fact “well handled” then that’s your prerogative, but all I can say to that is that like many others you have depressingly low standards if that is the case.
So you are complaining that blog posts appear after the announcement. You would have preferred something to have appeared before the announcement?
No, and you know it. Or if you don’t you are either more dense or more deliberately argumentative than even I thought.
I merely pointed out that BLOG posts made after an announcement, made by the people involved, commenting on the announcement already made, does NOT constitute a co-ordinated and effective communication in this day and age.
Go troll on someone else’s blog. Please.
“I merely pointed out that BLOG posts made after an announcement, made by the people involved, commenting on the announcement already made, does NOT constitute a co-ordinated and effective communication in this day and age.”
I don’t understand that. Perhaps I am dense as you say. I can’t understand what you want. Blogging before the announcement makes no sense. And if blogging after the event is also bad, then the only remaining possibility is that you would have preferred no blogging at all. Is that it?
Dense or argumentative, I still am not sure.
I did not say or infer that blogging was “bad”, only that “blogging” is not effective communication. When Apple make a Product Address, they co-ordinate the release of the information through other channels to effectively reach their customers and interested parties. For example. This is not a unique approach to such things.
Yet even now, the Embarcadero EDN landing page has nothing to say about the new Delphi Product Manager – an appointment important enough to feature in the PRODUCT ADDRESS to some Delphi developers at CodeRage, but not worth mentioning at all (or highlighting) on the DEVELOPER NETWORK site ?
Even in the EDN blog roll headlines, apparently the most up to date information, even about CodeRage, is … that it is about to start ??!!!
This is not rocket science.
“I don’t understand that. Perhaps I am dense as you say. I can’t understand what you want. Blogging before the announcement makes no sense. And if blogging after the event is also bad, then the only remaining possibility is that you would have preferred no blogging at all. Is that it?”
I started this whole thread by saying “Nothing pleases you”. I think the truth of that has been born out.
Nick, you are an idiot. Sorry, but on this question it’s true. I have outlined quite clearly what would have “pleased me” on this matter. i.e. some basic competence.
To insist that “nothing will please” someone who has quite clearly outlined what would have “pleased” them, and to do so in such a condescending manner does you no favours. For someone who doesn’t like being disparaged you would do well to look to your own words.
People who live in glass houses etc.
I cannot believe you have stooped so low as to describe Nick as an “idiot”. That’s not acceptable.
In this matter sadly he is being an idiot. Why? I don’t know.
That’s not my point. Whether or not anyone thinks anyone else is an idiot, name calling is cheap and lacks class. You are an erudite writer. Why waste your talents with such cheapness?
We might not agree on many matters. That’s fine. Disagreement and debate are the foundation of a free society. But name calling is low.
As is continually insisting something that is patently false. Doing that is idiotic. Seemingly I am entitled to recognised and think that, but not to say it ? Anyway, moving on…
Don’t worry, David. My idiocy is well known, and I’ve been called so by much better men than Jolyon. 😉
I don’t doubt for a moment that there are better men than I, or that they too would recognise that even the best of us can be idiots at times.
And by Marco himself.
http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/joining_embarcadero_delphi_product_manager.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marcocantublog+%28marcocantu.blog%29
Also after the fact. Come on, you have to do better than this when trying to make excuses. 😉
Blog and twitter announcements immediately after the actual announcement at CodeRage. What exactly is your complaint?
Yep, I forget which play # this is in the “Politicians Guide to Dodging The Issue”, but this is definitely in there… Offer as rebuttal information that actually supports the original complaint as if it somehow refutes it and then when this is pointed out, simply ignore that fact and ask – as if somehow you have been wronged or misunderstood – why anyone was complaining in the first place.
You played it perfectly. Well done. I’m sure your MVP certificate is in the post. 😉
As you know full well, the complaint was fully explained (not that it was really a complaint, merely an observation), that Embarcadero’s communication skills in the developer relations area still leave a lot to be desired.
Blog posts and twits [sic] reflecting on an announcement are not themselves an announcement.
In fact, the very fact that the assembled ranks of the Embarcadero apologists were so quick to pounce on that observation makes it all the more valid imho. Nothing hurts more than the truth, and in the absence of anything else that can be done about it, some people find it easier to pretend they don’t see what is laid out in front of them. Even more predictably, they quickly attack anyone who does point it out as it makes it harder to avoid the uncomfortable truths they are otherwise forced to confront.
A corporate web site not containing information about an important management appointment even after that announcement has been officially, well, announced, not even in a manner that a search for the most relevant of relevant search terms can find, is inexcusable in these days of instant communication. Even more so from a supposed technology company who should be wholly on top of such things.
The same supposed technology company that it seems is unable to target their electronic communications at all, since at the same time as failing to provide timely and relevant information to their customers, continue to bombard them with useless communications that their own records would show as such.
Sending this NEWS to registered users and making sure that the information is available on the web site, not just in blogs but in the NEWS section… these things are not difficult to achieve if you have even the slightest interest in doing so and to suggest otherwise or that to expect this sort of competency is unreasonable is obsequious nonesense.
I hope you eventually get the announcement in exactly the format and location that will satisfy your sensibilities.
Of course, it will still be declared a failure, but oh well…
Yes Bruce, because the crux of the issue, which again in typically political fashion you ignore in this pithy and dismissive comment, was the lack of timeliness. No matter how well “fixed” the announcement is made later, without the aid of a time-machine nobody can fix the fact that they screwed up at the time.
If your complaints were even remotely reasonable, it might be worth talking the time to make a more considered response.
As I said before, it wasn’t even really a complaint, just an observation as to how I felt a switched on, half competent developer relations process would/could/should work.
The only people that latched on to it and keep banging on about it by trying to somehow prove that the observed timeline of events (or non-events) was not in fact observed, are the people who even more predictably than I am alleged to “complain”, themselves constantly seek to apologise and excuse every little mis-step that Embarcadero make, and who seemingly have nothing to say about the hemorrhaging of top talent at the firm they attest to support, being so obsessed by the task of attacking me instead.
Go figure.
Your “observation” got more shrill as time went on. Again.
Yeah, I really should learn to ignore the trolls.
Trit trot trit… 😉
Right back atcha.
@Jolyon – Why should EMB inform people in an totally offical way that Marco became product manager. It’s their company, their decision and Marco’s
Marco adventures – not in English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzeVCC4PG24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCvfc5ICZLA
Or little more actual – but with monkeys!
Absolutely, and the user community involved has absolutely no interest and has historically been entirely apathetic to this sort of thing, especially when the appointment is made from among one of their own. Of course not, what was I thinking. 😉
Yes, in the general case management appointments are an internal matter of only cursory interest to external parties. But this isn’t the general case. And clearly someone thought it was of sufficient interest to make an announcement at CodeRage…
But what really beggars belief is that people are more wound up about my side-observation about the poor communications of Embarcadero than they are about yet more top talent jumping ship. Incredible. It’s almost as if those claiming to be the most supportive are actually wishing to hasten Delphi’s demise by ignoring the disaster unfolding at Embarcadero and distracting people by sweating the petty stuff instead.
The community has never been interested indeed. Rumor does not matter. 🙂 Does say something more about the community and less about EMB.
Honestly a Delphi Community Society Magazine would have more readers than developers using Delphi. Maybe EMB make Firemonkey fashion and perfume in the future – maybe the better option in general. Complex products are too cumbersome, in my opinion.
I understand those who maybe had relations to the one or other team member, good experience … or whatever. This is sad … jo mei.
What does EMB want to have, since the XE times – peace and silence. What I see now – is Angst.
There is no reason to fear anything – EMB does not matter, Delphi does not matter -> Nothing else matters. They have all the time, whatever they do it’s irrelevant. Imo EMB (whatever part) is living an illusion, people don’t buy Delphi because they would be satisfied, there are other reasons one of those is satisfaction maybe – I think the reason is – it does not matter anymore, but loosing does not hurt either. What is happening at EMB is maybe a response to this zombie state. I can only recommend, don’t ship something that doesn’t work.
For 17 years, we had our good times, we are thankful … I don’t expect a lot more and many others I think expect the same. Whatever will come is adding value to my expectations. Programmers are like children, crying when you take away their beloved toy but in the next second enjoy another.
The beloved teddy is getting dusty in the attic and the Barbie puppet is next week’s king.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSSOzsbsEQw
I don’t care about those who quit, they are gone anyway, they are past – something EMB has to live with especially. This is organic fever, the moment the first quits many others quit too. There is a reason – we will never get to know – so I don’t care. I don’t expect a change to come with Marco, I doubt Marco was hired to change something.
I have a simple strategy – wait until all fixes are provided – give the actual Delphi version a try – in case of XE3 things are good at the moment…
A corporate website would be a place for “key management appointments, yes.
However, the Delphi Product Manager is at the fourth level of the org chart — hardly “key management appointments” from the corporate perspective. If they had to do a press release (or whatever it takes to please you) for every change at that level in order to make you happy, then they’d be busy indeed.
You found out about it. It was released on any number of “official” channels”, just ones with which you apparently aren’t satisfied.
I can’t wait to see your response to this. Seriously — it’s amusing.
I heard about it, and then went looking for official confirmation and couldn’t find anything.
As someone who once held this position, I am sure you are keenly aware of how important this position is to the developers, and Embarcadero claim to have this thing called “Developer Relations”. Then again, an abused spouse also has “relations” with their partner. 😉
There are the general rules as to what is and is not important and sensitive enough information for certain channels. Then there are the specific cases. But by all means, continue to excuse the inadequacies in the specific by reference to the general case all you like.
I was right — your response was amusing. 😉
Delphi PM is on the 4th level of the org chart? That’s a big part of the problem right there. The guy running the company’s most important product should be reporting directly to the CEO. Right now there’s way too much space for a Thermocline of Truth to form. (Google it; the article it comes from should be required reading in business school.)
“Not everyone has the luxury of being able to “attend” CodeRage. Or necessarily the inclination.”. Really? I know that as a Delphi and Pascal expert you would want to take part in any Delphi product address sessions whether it is live in person or live online. Many others took part and asked questions during the Q&A.
First of all, you might want to check the time difference between PST and NZ – that and the fact that not all of us can afford to give up a day of work (even if the majority of the hours are out of work time, there is an impact on the work day of “attending” an event starting at 2am) to listen to presentations on matters that, whilst they may be technically interesting, are in the main not relevant to that work.
Overall David, this comment from you sums up the problem at Embarcadero. It seems that you feel entitled to expect interest and engagement, and anyone that isn’t interested or engaged, well that’s their problem, whatever their reasons (in which there doesn’t appear to be much interest).
i.e. instead of the contribution you make above, I would have perhaps thought that something along the lines of “I’m sorry you didn’t feel that CodeRage was for you. Why was that? What would have made the event more appealing?” would have been far more constructive.
Maybe I’m naive, but that seems like much more the response I would expect from someone keen to foster good developer relations, rather than simply impose the terms under which those relations were expected to be conducted.
I’m sorry you couldn’t attend CodeRage 7. It would be very helpful to know why you missed all of last week’s live online virtual conference, especially the Delphi Product Address. Maybe we should have repeated the product address to fit into several time zones. Would that have helped with any time/work/sleep conflicts? For our future planning, what topics, days of the week, and session times would make future CodeRage(s) more appealing to you?
Nice try. But why waste time responding when this clearly isn’t a sincere inquiry. If you were at all interested in the answers then this would have been your first response/reaction (not just to me, but generally), not one that had to be cajoled out of you.
But I will give you one tip – if you think that CodeRage is so important to your Delphi users, then why not in the future make it top billing on the email newsletter to those users preceding the event, instead of #5 of 7 ?
@Nick,
Thanks for the reminder Nick. It seems Anders and Christine have different responsibilities though, as I am always told to direct questions to DavidI to get a response instead of developer.relations@embarcadero.com (which doesn’t exist), and then I often have to remind DavidI of my request since he is so busy. I have never understood this….perhaps as a previous insider you could enlighten me. It would be worth a beer if we ever met up 😉
Larry —
My guess is that David I gets 1000 emails a day. If he replied to everyone, he’d do nothing else done. 😉
I don’t know what a good solution to that issue would be.
Nick,
I guess you missed my point. A company with over 60 million Delphi customers worldwide (as per JT’s address at CodeRage IIRC), should not be reliant on a single individual to answer customer emails. If the department is called Developer Relations then everyone there should be doing that as part of their job, not just DavidI because it would be more than a full-time job in itself as you pointed out. I have even made this suggestion to DavidI.
Most companies like TMS Software, or A to Z use an email product or shared email address so everyone on the team can respond, and see what the client has been told. Fewer balls get dropped this way, and a more consistent and timely response is given to the customer. Also, metrics are usually employed to determine when more resources are required, or when alternate methods such as web site updates or emails broadcast to all customers are required based on the kind and frequency of the customer questions. Knowing your customers and their desires is key to the success of any business, so the key shouldn’t be buried in one individual’s email Inbox.
It’s useless bringing up examples of companies that manage to get it right. David I isn’t interested, and neither is Nick. Those companies are aberrant freaks, not something that mere mortals should aspire to without any hope of ever achieving. Just watch, a litany of reasons why TMS and A to Z are in a different situation will be forthcoming. In this case I suspect it will be that they are smaller and therefore more able to be responsive. If on the other hand you use examples from companies that are larger, then the answer is that they have more resources that Embarcadero don’t have the luxury of.
See ? They have it covered every which way.
I get the sense that Nick really isn’t interested in grasping what could be done, he just doesn’t like it when people take issue with what is done. Or fails to be done. As the case may be.
What is, is. It’s our job to be happy with our lot, not to suggest ways in which things could be improved, because accepting that would first require that you accept that there is room for improvement, and for some people this is heresy when it comes to their beloved Embarcadero.
I understand what could be done.
What mystifies me is why you seem to think that an announcement on the public website is required for a minor management change.
If it deserved to be in the opening address at CodeRage then it deserved to be more adequately communicated to those interested parties unable or disinclined to be at or following the twits from CodeRage. That is all.
Looking for it on the public website (but not JUST in the public website, but across the entire website, including community forums) was the last resort to find confirmation of an announcement apparently made by the company, in the absence of any other more targeted communication that might have come to customers/users (dare I say DEVELOPERS) from, oh, I don’t know, let’s call it a “Developer Relations” team… maybe ?
The point being, that I get pointless and irrelevant communications all the time from this company who are unwilling or unable to comunicate effectively information that is relevant.
I would actually be more tolerant of the lack of relevant communication if it weren’t for the irrelevant and incompetent communications they do keep sending me.
There is always room for improvement on all fronts here at Embarcadero and for me personally. I do really appreciate all of the suggestions and advice for improvements and enhancements.
Well, except maybe for Kent Morwath’s suggestion that he commented: “When will Intersimone be let go? It’s one of the move that could save Delphi…”
I’m not excusing David I. Forgive me if it sounded that way.
Emails should be answered.
*60* million Delphi customers? Did he really say that?
LOL!!!
He said 60 million :), what is he drinking?
David I always mention on his presentations 3 million, he repeat the same number since 1999.
In my opinion Delphi community should be < 40000 developers world wide
The statistic mentioned was from Evans Data Research reports for the total number of developers worldwide. Evans Data estimates that there are approximately 16 million developers world wide.
So it was 16 millions and not 60 millions (was the presenter mis-heard or did they mis-speak ?).
People who heard the presentation seem to have gained the impression that the speaker was suggesting this was the number of DELPHI developers, which is of course nonsense. The best you might say is that there are 16 million “potential” Delphi customers, but even this supposes that you can sell Delphi to every man and woman (and most likely some children) who is a developer, on any and all platforms for any and all development purposes.
Is there a more realistic estimate of actual – or even potential – Delphi developers ?
I know exactly what it is like, but if there is no way an one employee can respond to all messages then that one employee should not absolutely promise to get back to the customer and then ignore all further inquires (especially when that one employee acknowledges how important it is to that customer) AND the company should hire more people to respond to emails.
@Joylon,
I wasn’t suggesting that the announcement couldn’t have, or shouldn’t have been done in a more coordinated, professional fashion, just suggesting that your expectation might be a little unrealistic given EMBT’s past communications, and the size of developer relations. I know DavidI was busy trying to track down the “Inside Embarcadero” poster who had violated their NDA, leaking that Marco would be the new Product Manager.
Indeed Larry, and I didn’t read your post as suggesting that. You merely pointed out where the “official announcement” was made, for which I was actually grateful for the clarification. Thank you. 🙂
It was Nick I was replying to, having suggested that “Nothing pleases me”. I was merely explaining what *would* have pleased me, and observing that what would have pleased me was not – in my view – anything other than what might be reasonably expected of a competent, engaged management team in this day and age.
Far from it being a case of “nothing pleases me”, rather it seems to me that some people have ridiculously low standards and expectations.
It’s easy. Just isolate developers from the team one-by-one and wait when he’ll stop to write his lampoons. 😉
However it’s interesting how Marco plans to control the team, working from home in Italy.
It will be very nice NICK if you can, to tell us what happen with you at embarcadero, since embarcadero took control of codegear many people has left them. You say that embarcadero let you leave, but i guess that the decitions that were on table didn’t pleased you at all. I’m i right?.
NICK left because he said the true many times to management and they simple can’t accept the true.
The last one was a message on the private newsgroup (beta) was the beta tester to report everything because they would ship this shit, he used that word (SHIT). He was right and he was trying to delivery some good product, management doesn’t care about that.
The same management that fired him, is the same that is hiring Marco.
It will happen the same with Marco, for sure.
I don’t know who you are, but the part about using the word “shit” is utterly, completely, and totally false. I did not use that word in the post in question.
“in the post in question” or “not ever in any post” ? Just asking, in case perhaps “Inside Embarcadero” was simply confusing two different posts rather than inventing stuff.
Your first sentence implies the latter, but your second sentence leaves open the possibility of the former.
Nick actually used the word crap.
Replying to Uwe here, since there’s no reply button for his post….
Unless I am having a very bad memory day, I never said anything like “They would ship this crap” or anything remotely like that.
I feel like I’m being disparaged very unfairly here.
Suffice it to say that I never said anything like what is being characterized here. I did post a message that was not pleasing to EMBT management, and that may have been my “last straw”, but it was nothing remotely like what “Insider” is saying.
Yep, sorry about the lack of reply facility but I imagine that’s due to the “reply depth” limit on the comments plugin I’m using for WordPress, a feature intended presumably to prevent runaway comment threads (which on some WordPress themes would make such threads intolerable).
Being disparaged unfairly ? Yeah, I know how that feels. But you personally don’t get much sympathy from me on that score I’m sad to say. 😉
The link for the thread “Holy Crap! Are they really going to ship this thing?” is https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=39623
Nick was there and knows what happened. It sounds like he was fighting the cause of better quality. If that isn’t deserving of sympathy, I cannot imagine what is. Or would Jolyon prefer a “yes man”?
Uwe —
Ahh, yes, a message that had the utterly and completely different intent, message, and meaning than what applies.
That message was actually approved by management.
Sorry, that should say “implied” instead of “applies”
@Nick,
Sorry for the confusion, you used the word crap, which is close to shit 🙂
The point is not the word you used, but how crap and shit is Embarcadero management.
You Nick are a great guy, we all know that.
The problem with Embarcadero is that the guys leaving are not the ones that should be leaving.
I wish Marco well, but to be completely blunt, I don’t think he has much chances of accomplishing much good, not as long as his new boss isn’t replaced (along with other people higher up)
http://blogs.embarcadero.com/jtembarcadero/2012/11/06/welcome-marco-cantu-delphi-product-manager/
He has seen that. He doesn’t think it counts.
I’m afraid I have to agree with those questioning the appointment of MC to Delphi product manager. He may be a great guy with a longstanding history in the Delphi community, but I am not aware of any evidence that indicates he has experience as a product manager for a software company.
Add to this that he will remain based in Europe and not be moving to EMBT HQ, and you have to wonder just how serious EMBT is about the position. To me, it looks much more like community relations than anything else.
Nevertheless, I wish MC the best of success and hope that he really can have a positive influence on Delphi’s future.
Wish I could edit posts. Should be “Nevertheless” as the start of the final paragraph. Missing a capital “To” at the beginning of the last sentence of the second paragraph as well.
Taken care of that for you. 🙂
Unless/until an edit-your-own-comments feature is added to WordPress, I’m always happy to apply any edits that people might ask me to make. Within reason of course. I do have other things to do. 🙂
I remeber how optimistic everyone were when Borland finally off loaded CodeGear to Embarcadero. Finally the princess, err I mean Delphi was saved from the evil Borland ALM overlords!!!!
More than 4 years later, it seems that the ALM overlords weren’t the real problem. There is something else wrong.
I really hope that Macro Cantù can make some difference and I wish him all the luck, he will really need it.
I think Marco is about to stick his head in the Lion’s mouth. I only hope he gas time to kick the bastard in the testicles before it’s jaws snap shut.
Getting the timing of that right would be critical. 😀
@mart All you heard on that time was marketing.
Since the day after to the acquisition everybody start seeing how bad was Embarcadero.
The ALM business was never the problem, and it helped Borland and Delphi to stay in business for a little more time.
Management from Borland era still here + Embarcadero’s CEO Wayne Willians, which is the worst CEO you could ever imagine.
Marco Cantu won’t change anything, it’s not his decision what to do with Delphi, he doesn’t have a good R&D anymore, they won’t hire senior Engineers, they will hire cheap (junior/internal) engineers in Spain and Romania (if Romania office remain open)
If you think it was ALM that kept Borland afloat, then you really didn’t pay attention.
If Delphi was the cash cow that was keeping the ALM business afloat – as was widely believed – then you would expect Borland without Delphi to have been worthless. But as it was, the ALM business got a price of $75m cash, compared to less than $30m (of which only $20m was cash) paid for CodeGear.
How do you square that circle ?
Maybe you could ask the presumed insider what the big revenue makers were for Borland and are for Embarcadero.
I don’t have a direct line to “Insider”, so you can ask them just as effectively as I can, through these comments. But why bother ? It’s pretty much a given that you will dismiss any answer that “Insider” gives as not reliable if they don’t jive with what you want to hear, or demand “proof” otherwise, safe in the knowledge that Insider can’t/won’t be able to provide it.
All of which is just a way for you to wriggle off the hook.
The prices paid for CodeGear and for Borland-without-CodeGear are already matters of record.
You presumably think the CodeGear business was the more valuable. So you need to explain why – if you are correct – people with access to far more concrete information than you, I or possibly even “Insider” have, came to the valuations that they did.
Should be easy, if you were “paying attention”, no ? 😉
I already know the answer (it’s Delphi). Of course, I don’t expect you to believe me, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
I NEED to explain the price difference to you? I’m afraid I can’t. Sorry.
Perhaps you can explain why Borland spent years neglecting their dev tools, but channeling profits from them to their ALM, and shortly after selling off the CodeGear division had to be sold to a company widely know for its COBOL compiler. I think of it as “poetic justice”.
As for this apparently disgruntled employee, I take what they say with a grain of salt. I respect the opinions of other insiders much more.
You “know” the answer, yet it requires “belief”, and you “can’t” explain the price difference in the two businesses ?
I think I can explain why Borland neglected Delphi (notice how I do actually answer your questions ?)
The simple answer is, they didn’t wilfully neglect it, although that may be how it appeared from outside.
What they did do was make the mistake of buying into Microsoft’s .NET vision. While Win32 developers (myself included) started to feel increasingly neglected, Delphi.NET was being developed along with the vastly more complex “multi-tenanted” IDE. This made sense, if .NET was going to be as important as Microsoft claimed and hoped.
If .NET had fulfilled Microsoft’s vision, instead of being lambasted for neglecting Delphi, Borland would have been lauded as having been bold and insightful. Of course, that required also that Delphi.NET was any good, and the problem there was that they got hung up on protecting the interests of those people moaning about the neglect of Delphi by striving to ensure portability of the Win32 code to the new .NET runtime, rather than starting from scratch and building a “proper” Delphi for .NET.
For that, we had to wait for RemObjects and Chrome / Oxygene.
In this time of course, like Java before it, .NET failed to make the impact on the desktop that Microsoft had hoped and they themselves had started to back-pedal on their intentions toward it. Let’s not forget that Microsoft too had been “neglecting” their native code developers during this time.
But without the resources of Microsoft, when the penny finally dropped at Borland, the amount of ground that they had to catch up was immense and the opportunity to gain a massive lead in the native code space had been lost. But I’m not sure anyone would have had the intestinal fortitude to make that call any other way at the time. Pretty much everyone was proclaiming the end of native code as an inevitable certainty at that time.
As for the “channeling of profits”, so what ? All large businesses have different activities that provide different returns, and it is only commercial sense to use profits that are being made in one area to invest in other areas that you hope and intend to build toward providing similar returns in the future. The fact that this other area was ultimately valued at twice the value of the supposedly more profitable area is clear evidence that this strategy worked well, from a business perspective.
The real test is whether you invest enough in those currently profitable areas in order to sustain them. Borland were doing that, but they unfortunately simply chose to develop that business in the “wrong way”, i.e. toward .NET.
yup, I know. And most of your speculation is false. Note the increase in Delphi sales since it was purchased by Embarcadero. Not that things are perfect. I have a not insubstantial list of things I think have been “misguided”.
Since you’re so conscientious about answering questions, how about answering the one about why David I is bad for Delphi?
Yet again you simply dismiss a response with “It aint so”, without any detailed rebuttal, and continue to avoid answering the question by deflecting back and implying that I myself haven’t answered a question. But I did, in my reply to David I himself.
Not that that will stop you from continuing to paint me in the colours that suit your prejudice.
Really, you should seek a career in politics. You would do well, I am sure.
As for the Delphi sales, where you do get your numbers for that ? The Embarcadero press release in Feb 2012 ? Who audited those numbers ? What is the baseline for the percentage growth figures cited ? What adjustments have been made “for accuracy” ? How much of the figures which are quoted for the “RAD family” are accounted for by Delphi alone ? You must have answers to these questions if you can be so confident in what those press release figures meant in terms of actual results for Delphi “on the ground”.
Even with your rose tinted spectacles, you have to bear in mind this is not a public, listed company subject to oversight. It’s a venture capital company with a vested interest in talking up the value of it’s portfolio of products in hopes of attracting a buyer (my guess is that they are hoping CA will want to take a punt) and no statutory consequences if the numbers it announces prove subsequently to be inaccurate.
More to the point, if sales are going so well and Delphi has never had it so good, why are costs being cut and why is so much top talent leaving the company and so much talk of dissatisfaction from within ?
Whatever the talk of increased sales, what I know with certainty is that I cannot point to a single new Delphi user or customer that I know, but I can point to a depressingly large number of existing/previous customers, and those who are renewing/have renewed their SA or upgraded etc, are saying that this will most likely be the last year that they do.
You presumably see a different dynamic in the user community around you, yes ?
Considering how you dismiss the evidence of increased sales, I’m not sure your endless complaints are worth a detailed rebuttal.
I see your response to David I. Also not worth much time.
You can’t point to a single new user? I can. Whose anecdote wins? Where do you get your numbers?
If you don’t like Delphi being singled out and want to split hairs, we can use Rad Studio in place of Delphi. I don’t use C++, but I am using Prism and HTML5Builder, so it’s worth getting the studio sku for me.
I’m not wild about people leaving the team, but it’s going to happen. Not much talk about any of the new people coming on, though.
I speak with some Delphi developers locally and from different places in the world, and yes, I do see a different dynamic (even though there are some bumps in the road). There have been Delphi doomsday preppers since version 1 in 1995, and they haven’t been right yet.
If you’re going to take your anonymous disgruntled person’s words as gospel, then I guess it would paint a pretty bleak picture. Especially if you are predisposed to bad news about Embarcadero or Delphi (sorry, Rad Studio).
A press release is not “evidence”.
And there is no need to try to justify another set of non-responses. I didn’t expect you to try to tackle anything put to you. Like all politicians, you never do.
Anything without evidence is speculation.
Evidence that is presented is dismissed as anecdote.
Unless of course it’s your speculation or your anecdote. Sheesh.
The Delphi “doomsday preppers” may not have been right yet (interesting that even you let that “yet” slip in there) but “Inside” has been *very* accurate. Anonymous or not, whoever “Inside” is clearly has access to actual information that isn’t likely to make its way into any press release or CodeRage session. They aren’t just an outsider projecting their own wishful thinking. And being such, their need for anonymity is perfectly understandable, not a reason to doubt them.
I’ve wasted more than enough time responding to you hoping that you might eventually engage in a meaningful exchange of views. Clearly that isn’t going to happen, so it’s time to move on.
Deltics: “A press release is not ‘evidence’.”
While I am not a lawyer and cannot determine whether a press release can be used as evidence in trial or other judicial proceedings, Embarcadero Technologies does have to follow several US laws in its business dealings and in reporting. Yes, Embarcadero is a non-public, non-public shareholder company owned by an investor group.
Embarcadero, because of its size and revenue levels, does have to follow the rules when it releases any information to the public, makes any forward looking statements (like the recent RAD Studio Mobile Roadmap article), recognizing revenue, etc.
The press release in question spoke primarily in terms of percentages. You can’t bank a percentage.
Doomsday preppers may get it right some day. Let’s see how the Mayan thing turns out. In the mean time, they’re batting zero.
The alleged disgruntled employee is right to remain anonymous. They are breaking their confidentiality agreement and would likely be fired. Since they don;t seem to be happy in their job, I hope they find something they like better.
Are you still actively using Delphi? For the sheer novelty, it would be interesting to know if you had anything positive to say.
Yes I do still use Delphi, both at work and at home.
I don’t do “Saying Something Positive” as a party trick. 😉
When there are positive things to say, I say them. People only have to look back on this blog to see that. I don’t know about you, I find it means so much more than when coming from people who only ever say positive things. But right now, I’m afraid I can’t say that anything positive springs to mind this very minute.
Maybe visual basic would be more to your liking.
Hey! There’s no need for that kind of language!
(see what I did there?) 😉
Deltics: “the ALM business got a price of $75m cash, compared to less than $30m (of which only $20m was cash) paid for CodeGear”
As someone who was directly involved in many parts of the selling of the developer tools business it is not a simple task to try and characterize the DevTools sale to Thoma Cressy Bravo and the subsequent purchase of Borland by Microfocus. I should also say that I am not an investment or valuation expert.
The Borland announcement to sell the DevTools business was made at the same time as the announcement of the Seque test tools acquisition) on February 8, 2006. Darryl Taft of eWeek covered the news in his article at http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Borland-to-Divest-Dev-Tools-with-Segue-Buyout/.
There were two rounds of DevTools selling activites in the 2+ years between the announcement of the intent to sell (Feb 8, 2006), the announcement that a sale would take place (May 7, 2008) and when we became part of Embarcadero Technologies (July 1, 2008).
During the time between announce to sell and final purchase, we continued developing and releasing developer tools products under the banner of Borland Software, “DevCo” (a temporary name in some of the investor documents and CodeGear (the name of our business unit).
The acquisition price in the May 7, 2008 announcement was stated as $23 million in cash and $7 million in accounts receivable for a total of $30 million. To determine the “real value” if that can be done, financial and investment experts look at many facts including revenues, customers, intellectual property, etc.
Borland definitely wanted to complete the transaction after 2 years of effort and we also wanted to get out of “limbo” and continue to move forward.
A long, detailed and very interesting insight. But I am not entirely clear what it has to do with the idea that the developer tools business was keeping afloat another arm of the business which was valued by the respective purchasers at twice as much.
Whether Borland wanted to complete the sale and whether the “price was right” (for the Dev Tools business) isn’t the point. The point is that if it were more profitable than the ALM business then it would surely have sold for more. There may have been reasons why it didn’t, but this information – as interesting as it is – doesn’t explain that. At least, not to me.
I was hoping to accomplish two things in replying to your and others comments about the $75m and the $30m and what you (I thought) said about the relative worth of the two parts of the business:
1) correct the $20m cash price item you typed to be the accurate $23m cash price.
2) in dollars analysis of the ALM business and the DevTools business you listed in one sentence as some relationship of worth or importance to a business entity, I wanted to point out that they took place at different times and were based on different valuation analysis at each of those times. Any comparison other than purely numerical would take a more detailed analysis of the facts in each sale/acquisition.
I find most of this bickering about how or why EMB didn’t or did announce Marco’s appointment to be petty. If you are unhappy with Delphi then stop using the product and move on to something else like Visual Studio.
A lot of people have and are.
As I observed in the comments, the observation about how it was communicated was just that – a brief observation. It was others that rabidly attacked that observation by trying to rewrite the history of what was observed. Quite why, or what they hoped to achieve by that – other than to use it as an excuse to have another go at me – you would have to ask them.
Deltics posted: “So it was 16 millions and not 60 millions (was the presenter mis-heard or did they mis-speak ?).”
16 (sixteen) and 60 (sixty) – I can understand how someone who was listening and not looking at the stream which had the slide with the text on it (some people are doing other things while listening. GoToWebinar tells us what percentage of attendees are “watching” which means the GTW window is focused. This number goes up and down depending on what is being talked about. The percentage usually goes down when it is slides and Q&A and goes up when it is demos 🙂
Deltics posted: “People who heard the presentation seem to have gained the impression that the speaker was suggesting this was the number of DELPHI developers, which is of course nonsense. The best you might say is that there are 16 million “potential” Delphi customers, but even this supposes that you can sell Delphi to every man and woman (and most likely some children) who is a developer, on any and all platforms for any and all development purposes. Is there a more realistic estimate of actual – or even potential – Delphi developers ?”
Yes – even thinking that the number said was 60 million tells what about the “listener”? I went back to the replay that I am editing with the presentation and the Q&A (will post it on CodeCentral and YouTube asap) and here is what was on the two specific slides:
World Wide Developer Stats:
16 million developers worldwide (source: Evans Data Corp – http://www.evansdata.com/) – note: this is for all programming languages – the number was mentioned in a press release at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/9/prweb8834228.htm
Embarcadero Customers:
3 million Delphi/C++ Developers
I will also post a comment here when I have the replay for download and watch so thateveryone can get to it.
Some useful clarifications there, thank you. 🙂
Thanks for the clarification DavidI, but could you please dispense with the disparaging remarks (” – even thinking that the number said was 60 million tells what about the “listener”?”)?
I obviously mis-heard, something that is easy to do when you’re at work, listening to CodeRage and trying to work at the same time. I also didn’t take the time to check it after the fact. It was an honest mistake, so please remove the proverbal knife in my back. Clarifying facts doesn’t require such commentary.
You’re upset for getting called out for stating a completely wrong number and then using it to make your own snide comments?
What is you drinking? 🙂
If Larry will forgive me for calling it the way I see it: he’s upset for being disparaged – as he sees it – for having innocently misheard a number.
16/60 is easily confused, along with 13/30, 14/40, 15/50 etc… something that happens all the time in spoken conversation on the phone or even between people in the same room. It says nothing “about the ‘listener'” other than the fact that they misheard, and perhaps that the speaker could/should have spoken more clearly.
And if he hadn’t been so condescending, I doubt anyone would have had a problem with it.
Every point that Larry made in his post was valid. His only error was to have misheard 60 as 16.
As for begin “condescending”, I had to stop and think for a minute to be sure you weren’t talking about David I, rather than Larry! 😉
His “drinking” comment was pretty condescending.
My mistake. Some yahoo named Paul made the drinking comment.
Bruce,
I’m not sure what disparaging remarks you are referring to, and I did qualify my comment containing the 60 million with IIRC (If I Recall Correctly). None of the comments I made were based any number. They would apply equally to 500,000, 16 million, or 60 million.
If you want to pick a fight, why don’t you just visit your local watering hole…
I have mistaken Paul’s comment for yours and owe you an apology. You did not make the “what is he drinking” comment, and it’s Paul who deserves to be ridiculed for it, not you.
That said, your “proverbial knife” is imaginary and a little over dramatic.
Um, not wishing to stir things, but saying that an apology is owed and then stating why does not actually constitute an apology. 😉
You know what, I suspect that over a few beers we’d all have an interesting conversation without the need for any proverbials, drama, condescension or non-apologies. Someone needs to invent online beer! 🙂
Thanks for the apology Bruce. With the indentation on this blog it can make it hard to read the comments. As for being over dramatic with the “proverbial knife” comment….perhaps you are correct, but you didn’t get the road apples in your Inbox that I blogged about http://www.tpersistent.com/?p=697.
In re-reading the comments on this blog and some others about Marco Cantu joining Embarcadero as a new Product Manager focusing on Delphi, FireMonkey and DataSnap – and trying to collect all of the product feature suggestions (besides the most stated areas: product quality, improved documentation, better communication) and also seeing if we can get beyond the longevity poll and some questions about the appointment/fit, I think it would be worthwhile to put together the list of constructive feature areas that commenters have asked Marco to specifically focus on – I found only one sort of product feature related item: improve the Download, Installation and Registration experience.
Maybe this post and thread is not the right place. But it would be great if Joylon and others started a new post with product feature suggestions for Marco to focus on. I suspect we might see a few of the following (in no priority order):
1) Delphi ORM
2) Additional features for DataSnap: security, load balancing, fail over
3) Un-dockable form designer for VCL and FMX
4) Improved code optimization
5) Native control support for iOS/Android/etc
6) MVC for Web App Development
7) Dependency Injection Framework
8) BiDi: better support in VCL, add support in FMX
9) Accesssibility support in FMX
10) IDE options, packages migration when installing new version
11) Remove Package/Component compiler version dependencies
12) Parallel / Concurrency support
13) Garbage Collection
First, you rock as always. Keep up the great work. I really appreciate you.
I’d like to see #6. For #7, just incorporate Delphi Spring. #11 would be my second choice.
Great list!
Good suggestions – keep it up. I should have also added Persistence layer for DataSnap in #2, regardless of what implementation(s) someone wants to use for it.
Also should have also added – support for NoSQL databases/datasets via dbExpress and other interfaces.
Have to disagree here. Embarcadero should focus on the language and the IDE itself (maybe start fixing the trillions of bugs in the RTTI?) and not assimilate more 3rd party projects. We all know how that turns out with most of the open source projects that are still being developed on. Better build something that makes it easy to deliver their libraries/components (nuget anyone?)
14) realistic install procedure
15) contemporary compiler
16) realistic longevity of code : e.g. source code written under version n-2 should compile under versions n-2, n-1 and n.
17) fair and non-discriminatory licensing terms (e.g. remove per country clause)
18) help system that can be contributed to under a realistic license model
19) removal of “runtime” requirements for IDE
20) true product descriptions (e.g. win 8 = win 8)
21) please do not use Marco as some kind of excuse girl to make yet a few other rounds of irrelevant product releases
Now were cooking!!! Getting more specific items for Marco to really think about. Some items may be a little harder to determine but they are all in the right direction.
14) realistic install procedure – could you be more specific?
15) Not sure what a “Contemporary Compiler” might be – but would the Clang/LLVM architecture be an example of a contemporary compiler?
16) Gotcha for most of the Delphi language – you can still compile much of the same Delphi language source code from Delphi 1 to now. But, yes, for the VCL and FireMonkey frameworks there may always be some changes.
19) Which removal of “runtime” requirements for IDE? J# and .NET used by the UML modeling features? Maybe there are others but I think this is the big one?
21) I will help make sure that Marco does not become an “excuse girl” whatever that means. Everyone who wants to can continue to beat on me – “The Beatings will Continue until the Morale Improves” – as Kent Morwath seems to believe believe that I make all of the Delphi decisions 🙂
Kent – I miss you. Why won’t you visit me? I’ll give you a hug 🙂
22) DataSnap: Existing services need a very easy way of adding new methods, and deprecating old methods. All examples provided show creating new services from scratch, but it’s the maintenance that is the issue (and maintenance is where we spend most of our time.)
Easily deprecating existing methods would be useful, but adding methods to an existing server is pretty straight forward. Make the changes in the server and make sure it’s running. Then on the client side, right-click on the TDataSnapConnection. It will consume any DataSnap server that it can talk to, whether it’s on the current machine or not.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE3/en/Generating_DataSnap_Server_Method_Proxies