Re: If Borland had owned Windows for many years now...


"I.P. Nichols" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:43f861ee$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Dan Barclay" <Dan@xxxxxxxx> wrote

MS will not even rev native VB even though they have 5 or 6 million
developers not moving to .Net. There is a great big clue there.

So where are all these 5 or 6 million developers who not moving to .Net
going?

Good question. From my observation most are just staying where they are for
now. It's such a hurdle to move to VB.Net they aren't moving. Likewise
it's a real hurdle to move anywhere else.

Doesn't seem that more than a handful have come to Delphi. Heck if
even say 5-10% had made the move my bet is that Borland would be more
Delphi
and less ALM focused than it is today.

That's my assessment as well, but it would take real initiative to pull them
in. That initiative has not been there with Delphi. I've done my own
assessment and have decided to move this way. Unfortunately, for most
people, doing that kind of longer range planning is difficult. As we put it
down here "When you're up to your ass in alligators it's hard to remember
your objective is to drain the swamp." Note that I'm NOT talking about
marketeer initiative. Hell, I wouldn't market to them until I had the
barriers out of the way.

The inability to attract hordes of VB
(and would be VB) developers has been the bane of Delphi going back to
it's
early days when it was touted as the "VB Killer". Even Kylix was hoping to
attract 1-2 million VB developers to become customers when they switched
to
Linux but then few if any VB developers even switched to Linux.

IMHO, if they made it easer for VB users to transition both developers and
code they would come. The word would spread and it would happen. That was
*not* true 5 years ago. Back then, even if it was easy to move, I wouldn't
have considered it myself. VB was a fine, safe, place to be... so far as we
knew<g>.

Now, imho, there is only the problem of removing the barriers. I can tell
you that it's a *real* pain in the ass to transition, and a lot in Delphi
doesn't help (note coming transition<g>)... speaking of Help <sigh>.

And now the final straw is that even Classic VB developers are not
switching
thus Delphi is on the block to be sold.

Borland was not interested in making this happen, though I think some
individuals were. If it happened that would be fine, but it was clear to me
that Borland wasn't going to put *any* resource into making it happen. That
will never work.

Note also that a very large number of the VB devs I know are not "large
shops". They're individuals or small shops... not even on the radar for
Borland even if they were *Delphi* users.

Oh if there were only more folks
like the Barclay Bros willing to make the big switch. Many-many times you
have told us your reason for jumping ship but can you tell us why there
hasn't been tens of thousands who also felt the same way and came over to
Delphi? One could even claim that the present predicament is all the fault
of those reluctant VB developers.<g>

I've explained my own thoughts on that nearly as many times as I've
explained my own reason for jumping ship. I'll not repeat all of it, but my
comments above point to the highlights. Search this ng for other.

The bottom line is that DelphiCo needs to help *leverage* the VB developers'
VB knowledge in learning Delphi. Adding code conversion tools would be a
big help as well. Right now they (we) are starting over again from nearly
dead scratch. At the same time, those with successful applications (the
ones you really want to come) are still up to our asses in VB alligators as
we keep our apps moving forward.

But then I'm just a dumb ol' country boy. WTF do I know about marketeering
or strategic planning.

Dan


.

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