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

Brian Moelk wrote:

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?

The initial reaction is Yes. Here's my initial thought process:
If the new BDS could read & parse the D6 DCU format, extracting the interface section for compile-time checking and extracting the compiled code for linking, I think we could use the D6 versions of the DCUs in the new BDS.

But then I realize that those DCUs greatly depend on the architecture of the VCL. Has the architecture of the VCL changed enough since D6 to break compatibility? That's very likely.

In other words, the signatures of the methods/procedures/anything_else has probably changed enough that the new BDS would not be able to find the referenced code to link against.

So, in reality, probably not.

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.

For us, both. We're a small shop, with five developers, and a tight budget. We buy things that we need. But it is difficult to convince management that the cost (money, and yes, especially time) of the upgrade is worth while. In management's opinion, we've been using D6 for the past five years. Why can't we keep using it for another five years?

And in reality, we /could/. D6 works that well for us. But we'd lose out on some major benefits of the new version.

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.

I certainly agree. Unfortunately, I work in an environment where the sales department gets all the credit for the revenue generated from a new sale. Development only gets credit for extras that the customer asks for, POST INSTALL, and we develop for an additional feee.

I've argued for years that Development should get partial credit for the revenue of new sales, because without Development's effort (and expense), there'd be no product to sale.

In that environment, it is difficult to convince Management that expense of an upgrade is justifiable. Particularly, as said before, the current environment still works and will continue to work..

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

Without spending a significant amount of time to determine otherwise, I agree.

Personally, as a component developer and Technology Partner, it would be nice if the DCU signature didn't change so much during the beta period. Or at least didn't impact every third-party library on the Partner DVD the way it does. But I don't have a solution to that.

Jon
.

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