Re: And now my thoughts on Delphi's survival

Large enough so that you don't have a limited supply of people when it
comes times to hire more.

IME, there is always a limited supply of good people regardless of specific
skillset.

Business has no tolerance for being held
hostage by their employees.

In general I agree, but the fact is that they always are. A business
without valuable employees is not a valuable business. There are managers
that get this, and managers that don't.

That is, if they can commoditize their
work force, they strive to do that.

Some businesses do this, but I think this is a self-defeating way to go
about things especially for "knowledge-workers". IMO, it shows a clear
misunderstanding of what building software is all about.

Furthermore, they want instance
gratification. There is no real training anymore. If they want C++,
they want C++ right now. They are unwilling to wait for their
employees to get up to speed.

IMO, all developers require constant learning of skills, techniques, etc
regardless of language and in fact, I would argue it's best to go to a
different language altogether for inspiration occasionally. Again, I think
this shows a total lack of understanding of what this business is all about.

Certainly Delphi doesn't play well in this area, but BCB using the VCL
doesn't play very well either. IOW, MFC is clearly easier to hire into and
get people up to speed; VC++ is a better IDE choice since there are more C++
developers used to using it. Not to mention that I believe that VC++ is a
better compiler with a wider range of library/third party compatibility.

Hence, I don't really see any arguments to persuade me that BCB will apeal
to a larger C++ market. It simply targets a niche market and one that I
wouldn't choose if it were my choice. That said, Borland apparently does
sell enough BCB to keep it limping along, but with all the investment and
improvements in the competitive C++ compiler landscape I think it's going to
yield diminishing returns.

Out of curiousity, how many do you work with?

Delphi programmers? None.

That's not what I was asking.

By that logic, I believe C# would be a more appealing choice going
forward;
heck VB would be the ideal choice if it were about numbers.

Based on the number of VB programmers there are that is probably true.

And C# is making inroads on the desktop. I know of several companies
that are in the process of porting their C++/MFC apps to C#.

Exactly; C# is making inroads on the server side as well.

I think C++ is dwindling on the desktop, but it's still the king for
WIN32 middleware and a lot of the server back-end. And, of course,
Linux.

On Linux C/C++ will always be king. I'm not so certain that C++ will remain
on top on the server-side on Win32, but we'll see. AFAIK, BCB isn't the top
choice for server-side work on Win32 by a mile... IME, communities are
always seem larger when you're in them, and smaller when you're not.

--
Brian Moelk
bmoelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.brainendeavor.com


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