Re: Captain Jake's Top Ten List of what I'd like to see inthenextversionofDelphi

Jon Robertson wrote:
I'm not sure about backwards compatible DCUs. But I have some feedback
on how upgrade costs have affected us.

Sure and I appreciate that. But to cut to the chase, would DCU
compatibility make any difference at all in terms of cutting your costs?

When D7 came out, we looked at the new features vs the cost of the
upgrade. This not only includes the cost of Delphi, but also the cost
of upgrading our components. While we always by component source if
available, we prefer to purchase an official upgrade rather than upgrade
third-party source ourselves. Primarily because we don't know the
complete internals of the third-party library and will likely miss
something that should be changed for the new version.

I agree completely. Beyond having the source to learn/debug, buying it
serves as an insurance policy against "bad things" happening. If there
is an updated version of the components provided by the vendor, I'd go
for them rather than hacking around myself.

We're very excited about BDS 2006. There is a ton of new functionality
that will benefit us and our users. However, we still haven't upgraded
and converted due to the "cost", both time and money, to complete the
upgrade.

Cost due to time spent upgrading isn't something that DevCo can solve.
It will certainly not be solved by dcu backward compatibility.

I am curious however as to the real barrier: is it cost of time or cost
of money? IME, it's always been cost of time rather than money concerns
that delay adoption. Time to test, time to coordinate the upgrade, time
to become familiar with the upgrade itself, etc.

Besides, approximately what overall cost are you looking at? 500? 1k?
3k?

Are you looking at a single developer shop or a multi developer shop?

I meant to ask per developer; so both really.

Remember that both Delphi and third-party libraries require
per-developer licensing. Upgrading Delphi and a dozen third-party
libraries can be quite expensive.

Sure, but a dozen third-party libraries is quite a few libraries. If
the application is significant enough to warrant the initial expense of
these third-party products, ISTM, it's significant enough to spend the
money on maintenance of that code base.

Backward compatibility of DCU's does little to address the overall cost
of upgrading IMO.

--
Brian Moelk
Brain Endeavor LLC
bmoelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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