Re: The alternative Delphi roadmap to success

Simon Kissel wrote:

Hi Simon,

Lots of GREAT content here. I'll comment a bit where I can...


c) Community feedback
---------------------

<SNIP>

If we filter out all answers not related to the roadmap, IOW sales,
"no longer a customer" etc, this leaves us with:

- Missing support for Win64
- It does not contain support for Unicode
- Missing Linux strategy
- Bad product quality of recent product versions
- Bad documentation in recent product versions (Help)

Win64 and quality are big themes for Highlander. 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.

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
multiple platforms introduces quality control problems. You'll note
that D5 was quite solid, when we started multi-platform support the
code base was complex, difficult to support and buggy. From the quality
and business perspective, focusing on what the majority of paying
customers NEEDS should be top priority.

Win32 is the top demand, then there are .NET users, then Linux users.
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.

Further, having a look outside this specific poll, there are
indicators that most people that communicate on the Internet about
Delphi are talking about Win32 - delphipraxis.net, Germany's biggest
Delphi forum (548.737 postings) has even closed it's Delphi.NET
subforum completely due to inactivity.

A pity IMO. Delphi.NET is really easy to work with, and integrated very
well with C# and general .NET development. Likely the Doc issues and
quality have not helped Delphi.NET gain much traction, though I also
understand some of the other concerns (in general the perception I've
had is folks have more confidence in the MS solutions to .NET, and if
they move to .NET would rather start clean then deal with a 'dirty'
migration from Win32 to .NET. Again, a pity since the team worked
extremely hard to ensure the migration was reasonable).

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.


d) Borland quality central
--------------------------

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.

The other high-voted reports are about product defects.

For Delphi.NET, the highest voted entry has 220 votes, and is about
allowing the usage of VS plugins inside BDS.

This is a good point - one of the greatest strengths of the BDS suite
was it's plugins/OpenTools api/user customization. I'll check with Nick
to see where this is on his radar.

<Snip>


3.) The current Delphi roadmap
==============================

Highlander
----------

Since the year 2002, Borland is focussing on .NET - for the
last 4 years all product releases had a clear focus on .NET, with
release cycles driven by .NET market needs.

The current Delphi roadmap lists Highlander as the next release,
with focus on .NET 2.0 exlusively. The roadmap says:
"There will be ongoing work for Win32 Delphi and Win32 C++ (such
as unit testing and additional refactorings) but the most of the
new work in Highlander will be focused on .NET 2.0.".

Could have added a lot more focus to general feature cleanup, stability
and performance. A big theme for the next release is 'quality quality
quality'. I'd like to talk about some of the new features and areas
we're targeting, but for now while we're in 'quiet mode' I'll need to
leave that to the DevRel and Product Management folks.


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.

- 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.

- A Linux strategy won't be in highlander

See above.

- 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.
I'll talk to Nick and the management team to see what we can do to make
this more clear. We've had some good news about resources for
addressing the documentation, since the job postings are likely to be
public I should be able to mention that ;) (NOTE and PLUG - if you or
anyone you know is interested in a technical writing position with an
exciting opportunity, please contact me *grin*)

<Snip>

I'll be back but have to run to a meeting.

Chris
.

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