Re: The alternative Delphi roadmap to success
- From: "Simon Kissel" <kissel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:22:32 +0200
Chris,
Lots of GREAT content here. I'll comment a bit where I can...
Thank you :)
Win64 and quality are big themes for Highlander.
Both are not on the roadmap that you are displaying on the web,
it's not on the roadmap DavidI has shown at EKON etc.
See, you've frustrated your customers with Delphi 8, with
Delphi 2005 and to a much lesser extend with Delphi 2006.
If you finally really got it that quality needs to be focussed on,
then this should be written in BIG BOLD letters on each
and any roadmap presentation. Your customers are not
taking this for granted anymore...
Also I think you are mistaken that Win64 is a "big theme"
for Highlander, as Nick has replied an earlier thread that
the once planned compiler preview has been dropped
out. For me, Win64 now again is *3* Delphi releases
away.
Maybe you need internal sychronization on this topic ;)
Unicode is a major
problem since the community also expects backwards compatibility. It's
on our radar and roadmap. Product management is clearly aware of the
demand for a Unicode Win32 VCL, especially overseas.
It's on the radar for far too long. This was a top issue for your
customers even back in the Delphi 5 days. Sure, a phase-in
strategy is just fine. But heck, on the complete roadmap for
the next 3 Delphi releases, Unicode for native code is not even
mentioned.
This wasn't mentioned in my roadmap article, but posted
earlier in the "Turbo Distribution"-thread. 37% of your
customers are using non-US-versions of your products,
plus the even bigger chunk of overseas customers using the
US versions (like it is common in Germany). That's at least
50% of your customers that don't use ascii.
Linux strategy - having been on the Kylix team from 1 to 3, I'm
(personally - take this with a grain of salt) still not convinced there
is a solid business reasons to go after Linux again. Supporting
Yes, and that's why in my roadmap I've focussed on the
area of Linux support that would generate lots of revenue with
little investment.
Doing a cross-compiler for BTG means dragging out the Kylix
compiler source from the archives, getting a report and solutions
from me about the issues that need to be fixed in the ELF linker
of yours (doable in less than a man week), and merging it
into your current compiler. That's it. Even with all R&D, QA
etc, this won't be more than half a manyear, at the very max.
And in return, you get access to a huge market that has
massively grown since your Kylix experiment.
Win32 is the top demand, then there are .NET users, then Linux users.
This is true right now - but keep in mind that your Linux customer
base hasn't seen a single update nor sign of hope during the last 5
years. The number of customers targetting Linux can only rise
for you. For .NET, it will be much harder keeping them with
all the investments your biggest competitor is doing.
We should be gathering data in a future survey on how many of our users
use Linux and purchase our products. If the number is significantly
high - then we'll have a business case.
Yes, you should do this.
However, in this case the 'customer is always right' and your point is
still valid - regardless of what we'd like to happen, it's not
happening.
Thanks.
For Delphi, the highest voted report with 738 votes is
"Create native 64-bit compiler/IDE that targets AMD64 and Intel's
64-bit (IA-32e) extensions". Also, Unicode is on the list (79 votes).
An additional request not mentioned yet is shipping dbexpress sources.
BTW, the team loves the QC reporting mechanism. This is always solid
data, and we care more about it then most likely think.
Cool, this will improve the chance that this fact outlined by me won't
be thrown into the "customers giving feedback on the newsgroup
are only <10%, and all other customers want the exact opposite"-pool
again ;)
Comparing this with the results from our market analyis above,
we come to the following conclusions:
- Highlander does not include a single feature of the most
requested features in QC for Delphi/Win32
- The only highly-voted .NET feature voted for in QC, the
integration of VS plugins into BDS will not be in Highlander
- Native Win64, the No1 request from the customers, won't be
in Highlander
Point taken on this one.
Thanks.
- Unicode, also one of the most often requested features, won't
be in highlander
Some of the initial work will occur in Highlander, but this is a HUGE
beast to tackle.
Then this needs to be communicated. It needs to be put on the road
map. And after all the excuses given during the last 5-8 years on
the Unicode topic, it really has to be *done* ;)
- Product quality isn't mentioned at all on the Highlander roadmap,
neither is documentation quality.
Now this is really too bad - Product and Doc quality improvements are
*THE* two top themes for the project team. It's always been difficult
to include these sort of items into marketing literature and roadmaps.
But it's doable - you don't have to admit that the Help systems for the
previous 3 releases have been unusable to many. You can communicate
that your next product will feature "extensive context-sensitive help".
After all, all customers who joined you after Delphi 7 will think it's
something new to have a working context help ;)
I'll be back but have to run to a meeting.
As always, thanks for your feedback.
Now go clone yourself 10 times please :)
Simon
.
- References:
- The alternative Delphi roadmap to success
- From: Simon Kissel
- Re: The alternative Delphi roadmap to success
- From: Chris Pattinson (Borland/DTG)
- The alternative Delphi roadmap to success
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