Re: Delphi 9 and win32

From: Brett Watters (bwatters_at_geometrix.bc.ca)
Date: 04/26/04 

Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:56:10 -0700

mrDelphi4ever,

Remember that 99% of things running on Windows today
are Win32 applications. This includes everything from Office,
MS SQL, video drivers (at least interfaces to them), etc., etc.

First, even if MS wanted to make life as short as possible for
Win32, it need to rewrite a lot of it's applications. That is a
significant amout of stuff for it to rewrite.

Second, there are a lot of 3rd-party applications which
folks simply couldn't do without. If you accounting system
(or some other critical system) doesn't go .NET for three
years, then a company simply can't go .NET. Even if there
is a .NET version, companies might not wish to upgrade
due to features, IT time, training costs, etc., etc. It only
takes one app which isn't .NET and you can't go .NET
only.

Third, a lot of application will not port well to .NET. Games,
printer drivers, SQL databases, services, CD burning
software, DVD players, etc., etc. either can't be ported,
are difficult to port, or won't run well under .NET.

Forth, even software able to be ported may never (within
any reasonable amount of time) be ported. For example,
a .NET version of Word which is slower (scrolling,
redrawing, saving, printing, etc.) is hardly likely to sell
well. Most .NET benefits are not for the end-user -- and
in many cases there are drawbacks for the user using .NET --
app size, memory usage, load time, and performance in
some areas. Single .EXE, "save coding", etc., etc. aren't
readily appearent to an end-user -- performance is and
they'll be comparing it to a Win32 .EXE.

Fifth, .NET is v1 technology. Already there are lots of things
discovered "wrong" with it. MS already announced that
WinForms are going to be rewritten and obviously other
changes will occur. A lot of folks will certainly hold off on
the .NET game until these issues are worked out. Unlike
Win32 which was based on Win16 various parts of the
.NET model have yet to be figured out or proven.

Sixth, .NET is v1 technology and will have bugs. How
many and how bad remain to be seen when large number
of apps get deployed, but they could easily slow adoption.
Folks don't like JavaApps because "they" crash alot. In
fact the Java VMs have lots of bugs, but the app of course
gets blamed. I doubt .NET will be so bad, but many
developers will want to wait and see.

Seventh, .NET is another "change" game. In the 16-bit
days there were lots of databases, development systems,
and tools. MS has long since played the "change" game --
offering new technologies, interface standards, etc. -- to
gain an advantage by emilinating those which can't keep
up. How many companies kept brought their 16-bit systems
into the 32-bit, compiled, OLE, COMM, Active-X, SOAP,
multi-threaded, etc., etc. world of today. In fact, only MS,
Borland, and maybe a few other specialty development
systems exist today. It's hard to keep up with the Jones, then
the Jones keep moving. There will be a natural reaction (by
some) not to jump to .NET for such reasons. If no one can
keep up, except Microsoft, you are basically locking yourself
into MS-only solutions.

I second those folks guessing that Win32 will be around
at least for the next 10 years also.

Thanks,

Brett

"mrDelphi4ever" <eisoph@sky3l.com> wrote in message
news:408c55e2@newsgroups.borland.com...
>
> How long will Delphi 7 and 9 programs be
> able to run on Windows. I know they will
> run on longhorn, but will the version of
> Windows after that run win32 programs?
>
> If not, what's the use?

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