Re: Thinking Clearly

Bob Dawson wrote:
Which leaves what as your suggestion for DevCo's .net strategy? Throw in the
towel, and cut ECO loose and just sell it as a VS add-in?

Not at all. ISTM, there's this tendency for developers to think in
binary terms...it's crazy. ;)

It's a mistake to construe my advocacy for limiting the resources
devoted to Delphi for .NET and VCL.NET as "throwing in the towel".
That's like saying that stopping Kylix development was giving up on
Delphi or even Linux as a whole. I want what's best for Delphi and BDS,
I just don't think Delphi for .NET and VCL.NET is it.

What I would advocate is focusing on making BDS not only the best Win32
IDE with Delphi on the planet, but also the best and most productive C#
and .NET IDE on the planet.

This would include, but not limited to, enhancements to the existing
..NET framework pieces. They should be doing more things like ECO that
change the nature of .NET development. They should make it transparent
to import/export VS.NET solution files. This will help get BDS in the
door of VS.NET shops. They should focus on making .NET *better*, not
..NET more *compatible* with Win32. I'm quite certain DevCo has plenty
of ideas in this regard.

But a critical element is that IMO all of DevCo's enhancements to the
..NET framework should be optional to use or easy to not use. For
example, AFIAK, BDS doesn't support a plain-jane non-BDP ADO.NET based
server explorer. Why not? The last thing I want to do is be locked
into Borland's/DevCo's DB drivers.

It also requires timely support of .NET framework updates. It will also
require WPF designers, etc. There's a ton of work for DevCo in the .NET
space simply to stay on par with MS.

IMO, the best long-term strategy for Delphi is a mixed-mode compiler and
Win64. A mixed-mode compiler is Delphi's best .NET story. The best
long-term "pure" .NET strategy for BDS is to focus on C# and make the
..NET framework better.

--
Brian Moelk
Brain Endeavor LLC
bmoelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

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