Re: Turbo questions

Nick Hodges (Borland/DevCo) wrote:
Wayne Niddery [TeamB] wrote:

The idea that the CLR is going to cripple language developers is
nonsense.

In fact, the purpose of the CLR/CLI is to do the exact opposite.

IMHO, this whole sub-thread has been a little bit of a red herring.
I do share /some/ of the concerns about the artificiality of language
innovation within the CLR context - for example, I find it ludicrous
that MS bolted on some arbitrary advantages to VB.NET over C# in certain
areas for no other reason, ISTM, than to somehow justify it's wretched
existence (tho' it certainly didn't work for me <g>).

However, given the broad similarity anyway in both syntax and general
capabilities across the whole range of middle-of-the-road, popular
OO-based languages like C#, Java, Object Pascal and even VB.NET these
days, language innovation doesn't seem (to me) to be /that/ much of a
selling point any more.

Language was never really Delphi's selling point anyway - the VCL is.
The VCL is the beating heart of Delphi - a quantum leap ahead of the
ActiveX model of VB or the hideous MFC of VC++. On the native side, you
would gladly wait for a VCL version of OS functionality to appear for
the advantages it would give you. Any time lag was pretty irrelevant.

For me, the problem now that Delphi has /in the .NET space/ is that the
FCL renders the fundamental idea of a VCL irrelevant - who needs a high-
level wrapper for another high-level wrapper? People wanting to convert
their existing code base? Some, maybe, but a /very/ small number IME.
People looking to start new .NET development projects? An even smaller
number who maybe want to share library code across Win32 and .NET.
And, IMO, even these small numbers will be diminishing over time as the
people who want to fully convert to .NET finally do so and leave the VCL
behind while for the latter group the gap between Win32 and .NET widens
such that any libraries straddling the two idioms become more of a pain
than is worthwhile to maintain.

Without the VCL, Delphi becomes just a Pascal compiler for .NET, and one
suffering from framework feature lag versus the latest C# compiler, chronic
lack of useful help documentation and third party support compared to C#,
and also suffers from a whole host of other minor niggles relative to the
opposition, an opposition I might add who can always screw DevCo on price.
And these are the problems before we even get to basic /parity/. Experience
surely tells us that even basic parity will /never/ be enough to beat MS in
any context, ever. It wasn't basic parity that one Delphi it's small,
profitable foothold in the development tools market.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 64-bit Windows for AMD 64 is here...
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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: 64-bit Windows for AMD 64 is here...
    ... The choice of language is highly subjective, ... Delphi for .NET, OTOH, does not differ greatly from Delphi for Win32. ... they'll have to go WinForms because VS.net doesn't ... > know nothing about VCL. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Why is Delphi more RAD than C++ ?
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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: borland vs. microsoft
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    (comp.lang.cpp)
  • Re: RosAsm Team is Still Making Excuses
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