Re: Why aren't you upgrading?

Hey Chad,

nice to see you back around here :)

You keep focussing only on .NET while the big majority of your
customers and 3rd party tool partners want native development

IMO at the time it was right - but its been so flubbed up over THREE
versions now that the opportunity is lost. DTG still has a reasonable
size of core users on native - focus on them.

The root of the problem really is lack of developer resources (=investment)
at Borland. During the recent years, we've seen "Microsoft already did
the coding work for us, so let's just re-package it as ours". It was a cheap
way to get the product going.

Unlike Win32 back in the days, it obviously didn't work out. For Win32
there was a need to repackage and create a nice usuable OOP layer on top
of it. This isn't needed for .NET. People that really want to go the
non-native
route and wish to accept Microsoft vendor lock-in forever simply can use
what Microsoft offers them, they don't need Switzerland Borland anymore.

The only chance Borland had regarding .NET would have been to add value
to .NET. They didn't have the resources. Instead they are now 3 years behind
Microsoft's .NET release schedule.

And hell, people who really want to go with .NET and be tied to Microsoft
won't accept this. They want the latest and greatest, and they want it now.
And
they realize Borland just can not provide this.

So, the few .NET users Delphi ever had mostly now are gone to
Visual Studio, the rest will follow shortly.

What is left behind are the Delphi Win32 users, the native code guys, and
all the developers that DON'T want to be locked into Microsoft Windows
forever, but wish to keep options for the future. For them there currently
is
no such easy route away from Borland as for the .NET guys. They'll keep
their
current projects running with Delphi/Win32 - and for new projects, they are
asking themselves what to do and if DevCo will give them any future. But
everything this enormous user base is asking for gets ignored by Borland.

To sum this up:

- To only get a SLIGHT chance to ever become a relevant player in the
..NET market, DevCo would have to multiply its efforts in this area. All
features
available in new .NET version would need to become available to Borland
customers the moment they become available to Microsoft customers. This
would need a gigantic amount of resources.

- To stop losing the customers that pay your bills, DevCo would need to
finally do what those customers ask them to do. To make this possible, also
a lot of new resources would be needed. One has to keep in mind that
besides all the relevant technologies (Win64, Unicode, Linux etc) that
Borland
has not cared about for the last years, Delphi itself including the VCL
really looks DATED these days and also would finally need some love again.
One has to remember that 90% of what Delphi users like about Delphi now
is *10 years* old.

So, not losing the Win32 customers should be the most important thing for
them, because it would be easier to do than getting new or not losing
current
..NET customers.

In any case, DevCo needs far more developers than the few guys Borland
has left. If they are only able to double their team size, they should drop
..NET and
focus on a quality native release. If they are able to multiply their team
size by
4-5, they should do both native and .NET.

And if they think their team will stay with its current size and keep
falling
behind each and any relevant development technology, they should tell us
"Delphi is dead", as with the current Delphi team size, they'll never manage
to catch up, and probably won't even be able to stick to their lousy
"ask us about things you need NOW again in 3 years" roadmap.

Simon


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 64-bit Windows for AMD 64 is here...
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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: VB6, VB2005, or Something Else?
    ... I once thought the same way, that Microsoft could have done better, let's say like Borland did with Delphi. ... OO and structure changes could easily have been added without breaking existing language features. ... I understand that you've got burned by the VB.NET changes, but what I don't understand is that you are moving completely to Delphi. ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: Stop the negativism!
    ... We've heard this for a few years from Borland, ... told that it's strange that they are not doing what their customers ... Download Counters data has covered all countries Borland does ... The number of registrations since Delphi 2005 does not give them ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi 8 ... is it a worthy investment?
    ... the directions Borland has taken is effecting people personally. ... are solo developers - ... That puts a lot of Borland's customers in the same position as me. ... Up until Delphi 6 this was not really an issue - it was always easy to ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: My rant about the "throw out delphi and re-write it in C#" crowd.
    ... fired across the bow of the Microsoft C++ products were AWESOME. ... Borland was fearless in putting itself out there and asking developers ... Programmers traditionally defied conventional ... don't recall seeing a Delphi ad in those for years. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)