Re: How would you steer Delphi if you were Nick?
- From: "Atmapuri" <janez.makovsek@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:07:43 +0200
Hi!
As I see it, Delphi is undisputed king for writing W32 apps. But let's be
realistic - .NET applications are going to be developed using Visual
Studio (new apps, at least). What's the point in choosing an
old-fashioned language like Object Pascal, which already has only a
minority following, to write new .NET applications?
What has fashion to do with technical capability?
Over the next decade Microsoft will gradually move the world away from
programming to W32, which is why I think Delphi will become ever more
niche.
Windows Vista 99% W32 5 years after .NET was released?
Ever since JAVA was introduced that was also advertised, but
it never happened. There is one thing if you write software
that makes app user life easier. But it is vastly different thing,
if you concentrate on having the programmers life easier.
In my view, buisness apps and small utility apps that dont require
distribution beyond company borders will become more
..NET based, but for the large part not because people would
make the choice, but because MS left them no choice.
Delphi is an alternative, but since it is not made by MS, it is
not a choice either for many....
In my opinion, there is no future for Delphi in the .NET world - primarily
because it doesn't bring any compelling Unique Selling Point to the party.
There is nothing to make the Object Pascal language especially desirable
when compared with C# or VB.NET,
The future for Delphi.NET is not very bright, but I would not put
the main focus of Delphi to be a .NET development platform but
rather a .NET supporting platform. Instead of offering 1:1 features
against VS.NET I would concentrate on a few o them and do those
well. There are very few people that use more than 5% of the VS
or BDS IDE and their tools power.
and there is nothing to make BDS especially desirable compared with VS.
Unless there's a good reason to choose otherwise, people are gonna go the
Microsoft route for new projects. This paragraph is the crux of my
argument.
Yes. And if Microsoft would have made C# and CLR without GC,
Delphi would be dead and the future would be bright for all.
Surely the only role for Delphi in the .NET world is to allow legacy
applications coded in Delphi to be ported to the .NET runtime. A laudable
aim, of course, but it's only transitional.
In my view a very very bad decision. Nobody wants to port to .NET
because whatever you port, it wont work as well anymore. .NET
has performance, (memory/code speed) and distribution problems.
Its only when you use features of .NET CLR that are not available
in Delphi is when you gain something. But.... That is not the case
for existing apps, simply because they already exist :)
If I were DevCo I'd concentrate on three things:
1/ Make sure Delphi stays the number one W32 development tool (that'll
keep the money rolling in for the short to medium term).
There is nothing short/medium term in C++ which remains primarily
used for W32/W64 development with its .NET features used for .NET
interop and support. That is the place where Delphi can compete...
2/ Make a Borland Object Pascal language plug-in for Visual Studio, and
make it quite cheap. That way Delphi programmers can work in their
preferred language as team members on Visual Studio .NET projects (I think
this might sell quite well if it's priced right).
Why? For charity <g> ? C# is already quite fine.
3/ Look for new target platforms for Delphi other than .NET (which MS has
sewn up). An obvious candidate is Linux, although we would need something
more developed than Kylix. Linux/Unix is going to keep growing
(especially in Asia and the developing world), and there are no
development tools as good as Delphi in the Linux universe.
Resources have been lost on supporting new
platforms. It is time to focus on the one and single platform: Windows.
Regards!
Atmapuri
.
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