Re: Is anything spectacular going to happen around Delphi anymore?

From: J O Holloway (respond.to.group_at_your.convenience)
Date: 06/25/04 

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 12:03:17 -0500

The most troubling aspect of this thread is that "regular working
programmers" like zedd are saying there's a problem, whereas those that are
extremely loyal to Borland, such as Rudy V. of TeamB, are saying there's no
problem.

Rudy, I'm not implying you are not a "working programmer", merely pointing
out that you are even more a part of the Borland extended family than, say,
I am, as evidenced by your membership on TeamB and heavy participation in
the newsgroups.

I started with Delphi a scant six years ago. I was recruited from teaching
first and second year mathematics at a small college to do programming at a
local power plant. I know that I'm not the best programmer, not even great
(yet), but I don't need to be a great programmer to know that I have
observed the following to be true:
1) There are now almost NO jobs for Delphi in my area.
2) My current and previous employers are all moving away from Delphi to
either .NET or J2EE.
3) There seem to be far fewer open jobs for Delphi than for any MS tools,
or even PHP.
4) Microsoft is pricing their tools _extremely_ aggressively. There have
been posts on this thread stating that the price for VS.NET is about the
same as Delphi Enterprise, and that's _absolutely_wrong_. You can get, for
just $375, a personal copy of the MSDN, including all their servers, and all
their development tools, with cost-free deployment rights for your apps that
you write with their tools, and more. We might as well admit that VS.NET is
free. In the past, $375 wouldn't have even paid for a development license
of SQL Server. Microsoft is, effectively, giving away their development
tools.
5) Borland is responding to Microsoft's aggressive campaign by putting out
tools that have problems and limitations and a take-it-or-leave-it attitude.
Guess what? I don't know anyone who is upgrading from Delphi 5, because
there just isn't any need to do so and/or the pricepoint is freakin'
ridiculous and/or D6/7/8 just can't cut the mustard.

To Rudy and to Borland in general, I say, you're hiding your heads in the
sand if you really think there isn't a problem in the world of Delphi.

That's just fine with me. My job is to make money to feed my family, not to
support Borland.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Delphi as a Career Choice in the United States
    ... Just about the time that Delphi 1 was ... be teaching since it was the mainstream language. ... that would also depend on Borland having the wisdom to ... Delphi programmer is about three times more productive than a C++ ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Focussed Product
    ... Bob Dawson wrote: ... If TurboPower had been making money in the Delphi 3rd party component ... little to no money to be made servicing a Borland only customer base. ... I'm saying that Borland and Delphi are losing it. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Version after Version
    ... > If you are a free-lance programmer as opposed ... > I've not been in the Borland world since 1994. ... > Borland (C++ and Delphi). ... They don't have 64-bit support or Unicode support, ...
    (alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi)
  • Re: Version after Version
    ... >> If you are a free-lance programmer as opposed ... So I'm probing the possibility of programming Delphi again. ... >It is my conviction that Borland will be history soon. ... >They don't have 64-bit support or Unicode support, ...
    (alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi)
  • Re: Is anything spectacular going to happen around Delphi anymore?
    ... > are extremely loyal to Borland, such as Rudy V. of TeamB, are saying ... Borland is doomed, Delphi is doomed, the competituion is too big, etc. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)