Re: The Delphi Brand

In article <45e52253$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dennis Landi says...

Delphi even now
has connotations of quality, excellence and elegant design despite its
problems with recent product releases.

Erm, not around here. It used to be that way, but now Delphi is a
byword for product confusion and declining quality (the latter caused by
the decline from D7 -> D2005, and the latter by everything that has
happened in the last ~18 months).


Now this is confusing to some, because in recent year's Borland changed the
name of its version of Object Pascal to "Delphi" to match the name of the
IDE product in which it was housed.

aiui they started calling the language in _public_ by the name it had
been known in _private_ from the start.


This of couse was at the same time that
the company was forming plans to introduce multiple language personalities
in the same IDE...

You may have noticed that the IDE is no longer called Delphi - it is
called Borland Developer Studio or Turbo. Delphi is just one language
that the Studio supports, OR one language for which a Turbo IDE is
available.


Clearly the mistake was made a few years ago when Borland's <i>version</i>
of Object Pascal was renamed.

My feeling on this is that the name change of the language was just a
documentation issue - everyone referred to the language as Delphi,
knowing that it was a variant of Pascal.

Q: What language is that application written in?
A: Delphi

Would have been a typical exchange, from the days of Delphi 1.0. A
supplementary question might have been:

Q: Delphi? What's that?
A: A variant of Pascal


However, naming the LANGUAGE Delphi was a mistake; especially in
light of plans to house multiple languages in the Delphi PRODUCT.

The formal, public adoption of the Delphi language name was a
foreshadowing of the fact that Delphi was no longer going to be the name
of the IDE.

So it made perfect sense then. It still made sense today, right up to
the point that a Delphi product was announced that was neither Delphi in
language NOR IDE.

It is noteworthy that Delphi for PHP is not a product for which the
Delphi Product Manager is responsible!


I can point to a very successful renaming of Object Pascal : CHROME. That
is a brilliant re-naming of Object Pascal. Its screams NEW AND SHINY and,
frankly, sexy. So it can be done. A little imagine is required.

Notice however that in Chrome documentation, "Chrome" is used
interchangeably to refer both to the language and to the IDE integration
implementation.

Notice also that there wasn't any previous "Chrome" product.

i.e. RemObjects didn't have a Chrome Visual Studio plug-in that was an
implementation of (e.g.) FORTRAN, so the new name for a new product was
able to define itself however it chose.

"Delphi" doesn't have that luxury.

Depending on your p.o.v, Delphi means either:

- A particular IDE product
- A variant of Object Pascal

But Delphi for PHP is NEITHER OF THESE.

Clearly there is no Pascal involved. So the IDE?

But even here, the IDE is _like_ the STUDIO IDE but is not the same IDE
in fact. Notice also that the IDE is like a Studio IDE, but UNlike any
IDE that was actually CALLED Delphi.


I'd like to see the Delphi language renamed to something more sensible.

So having established that Delphi is the great standard under which
CodeGear product should muster, we then change what Delphi means.


Here is another Codegear asset that is ripe for branding: The VCL. This
also screams excellence and elegance when I hear it. So when I saw the
announcemt for the VCL for PHP, I said "Yeah! Somebody at Codegear get's
it".

THIS I agree with 100%

:D

--
Jolyon Smith
WHILE INKEY$ WEND
.

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