Re: The trend is to move away from Delphi...

mr_organic wrote:

I'm happy to see Borland's re-commitment to their C++ toolchain, but
they have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to be competitive
in this space. I've said before that I think they'd do better to just
fork a version of GCC 4.x and hack it to compile VCL sources (easier
said than done, I know). The GCC compiler is in other respects more
standards- compliant and far better supported than Borland's own
compiler.

I hate to be the one to stand up and say it, but I don't think
Borland's goal should be to be competitive with the other C++ compilers
- they are simply too far ahead now, and the resources required to
simply catch up to these moving targets would be vast.

There are two key advantages to BCB today:
i/ For C++ compilers, it has a pretty quick build time. That helps in
agile shops, where you are looking for rapid iterations and frequent
testing of your code.

ii/ VCL. It is still a slam-dunk as the best GUI builder available for
Windows if you are tied to the C++ language (and for those of us who
fell for it, that is pretty addictive!)

On the other hand, it must not be seen to be failing either. Problems
with language conformance must be addressed (and I believe they are
being) but this will never be a feature to compete for market share.
Rather, lack of it will cost market share, and ultimately existing
customers.

Same can be said for optimisations, 64bit compilers, C++/CLI support,
back ends for non-Windows systems etc. At some point the lack of
these features will cost you market share, but Borland/DevCo has a VERY
long way to go before they could turn any of these into marketing
advantages.

I do have one interesting gambit to turn standards compliance back into
a positive marketing feature, by delaying the target date for language
conformance! The idea would be to target full conformance in 5 years
time, but targetting the NEXT standard. In the meantime, work away at
the new language features while catching up the C++0x problems in an
order that makes more sense for the compiler team (they know
problems/opportunities in current code more than anyone) and with a bit
of marketing, BCB becomes the fun place to come to try the new language
features.

Of course , any further discussion of this belongs on the BCB non-tech
group, follow-up set accordingly.

AlisdairM(TeamB)
.

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