Re: Delphi 8 ... is it a worthy investment?

From: Christopher Latta (nobody_at_nowhere.not)
Date: 03/03/04 

Date: 3 Mar 2004 00:48:40 -0800

Nick Hodges (TeamB) wrote:

> Thanks for your comments.

Let me take a moment to applaud you on your recent stance of politeness
and non-confrontational posting. I think you leading by example is
really helping to restore calm and rational debate to this newsgroup,
which has been sadly starved of both lately.

> 1. I, myself, don't understand why Borland chasing after the
> enterprise market is a bad thing for developers.

Its probably good for developers, particularly the enterprise
developers. :)

The thing is, I don't really need CORBA support, StarTeam, OptimizeIt,
CalibreRM or other tie-ins to Borland products. I can see how these
things might be great in an enterprise environment, but I don't need
them. I need great connectivity to decent database servers - Oracle, MS
SQL, etc. This connectivity is in the Enterprise edition, so I'm buying
all this other, no doubt expensive to produce, stuff I don't need
simply to connect to a decent database.

Personally, I'd give all that stuff up for some decent refactoring
integration in the IDE, and some cool smarts, like decent code
templates and prompted auto-creation of undeclared variables to local
variable/field/property, and similar such things that would make the
IDE more productive. Yes, I use ModelMaker CodeExplorer, GExperts, and
the like but this sort of thing should be built into the IDE IMO.

> A profitable Borland
> is the best thing for developers of all sizes, and the only way to be
> profitable in the tools business is to court the enterprise market.

For sure, I'm all for a profitable Borland. I'm just saying I don't
need all of the things that the enterprise developers do in the
"Enterprise" edition, but I do need *some* things, so I have to buy the
lot with the price tag that comes along with that. This has never been
a problem for me before - the more toys I have to play with, the better
:-) - but I just haven't gotten enough use out of Delphi 7 Architect to
have justified buying it, for the reasons I outlined in my previous
post. For the price I paid for the upgrade, I could have bought a
decent second hand motorbike, and I kind of wish I had.

> The problem with the Inprise debacle was, in my view, horrible
> management, not the fact that they were going after the Enterprise
> market per se.

The same argument was given then - Inprise had to go after the
enterprise market. I wonder what we will say when we look back on this
last year or so from the perspective of a few years on?

> 2. Having said that -- i.e. that a profitable Borland is good for all
> developers -- you certainly are under no obligation to upgrade.

No, I realize that, and I knew someone would raise this. As I stated in
my post, Delphi 7 looked like a very attractive upgrade, until you
realize in hindsight that it was a diversion rather than a true upgrade
and is not worth investing time in (my opinion, of course). I still use
Delphi 6 for most of my development, and really only use Delphi 7 for
persoanl, interest-only projects.

> I guess I don't see how this "bites hard" at smaller developers.
> Can you elaborate on that?

Because I do actually need a few small things from the Enterprise
edition, I have to buy lots more expensive stuff that I have no
possible use for.

> Can you expand on how you feel you are being
> left in the wake?

I said "some customers"; I don't really feel that, but I do feel that
my development requirements and the tools Borland provides are
diverging rapidly, whereas they had been extremely closely aligned for
many years.

> What do you want to be able to do that you can't
> do now?

Ride my motorbike :)

Christopher Latta

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Wild speculations about the "other" factors
    ... Delphi copies through a direct channel at Borland. ... There are thousands of Enterprise customers that buy Delphi, ... Individual pro developers, hobbyist, and students ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi in the enterprise
    ... enterprise installations aren't going for Delphi. ... If you wanted to put Delphi into a 20+ developers shop.... ... Delphi programmers. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi Community missing the .NET-boat
    ... Just look at Enterprise developers in big fortune 500 companies. ... Borland is definitely targeting the enterprise nowadays, ... Delphi development, ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Is that a joke ?
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    (microsoft.public.dotnet.general)
  • Re: Proposed MSDN Subscription Changes - VERY BAD!!!
    ... and that the developers who are working on them ... tools be included in a Microsoft product which is not VSTS, ... If you need to have Enterprise features, you will need to pay for them, ... >> aren't teally able to steer that segment of the market. ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.clr)