Delphi Roadmap 2005 - 2006
Here are a few notes on our current plans for the next few Delphi product releases:
2005 - DeXter
The next release of the Delphi product family, code named “DeXter” will further advance developer productivity through enhancements in Code Insight, Code Completion, Code Templates, and refactoring across all the Delphi IDE’s language personalities. Significant language and toolchain enhancements have been made to the Win32 Delphi compiler, including support for operator overloading syntax in Win32 and support for inlining compiler magic functions such as Length(). On the .NET side, ECO III has a plethora of new stuff, including property change triggers and state machine definition and management.
DeXter will include support for Win32 C++ programming, ala BCB, alongside Delphi for Win32, Delphi .NET and C#. C++ coders will benefit from the host of IDE productivity tools developed since the BCB days, including Code Insight, Error Insight, and even refactoring. And of course, VCL app development in C++!
Performance analysis has been a hot item for this release cycle. You’ll notice dramatic improvements not only in the DeXter IDE startup times, but also in the runtime performance of your own Win32 Delphi apps! Highly optimized routines from the FastCode project have helped, as well has an all new high performance non-blocking multithreaded Delphi memory manager.
DeXter is currently scheduled to be completed and released this year (2005). It will support development of Win32 VCL applications and .NET 1.x WinForms and VCL.NET applications. The command line compiler will support building apps for .NET Compact Frameworks, though there will be no IDE designer support for CF in this release.
2006 - Highlander
The next Delphi product cycle after DeXter is code named “Highlander,” and will focus on updating the entire Delphi toolset to support .NET 2.0. There will be ongoing work for Win32 C++ and Win32 Delphi, but the largest portion of new work in Highlander will be for .NET 2.0. Delphi.Net language support for generic types, partial classes, and nullable types are pretty much a requirement in .NET 2.0. We intend to have IDE design surfaces for .NET Compact Frameworks up and running in Highlander (using VCL.NET on CF), as well as support for developing and debugging 64 bit .NET apps written using WinForms and VCL.NET.
The current plan is to release Highlander in calendar year 2006. We’re considering releasing tech preview builds for download by registered Delphi customers shortly after .NET 2.0 is released, but that will depend largely upon how quickly we can get the raft of new language syntax nailed down, and upon when Microsoft gets around to actually shipping .NET 2.0.
As always, these plans are subject to change.
Deferals & Distractions
I apologize for the tardiness of this roadmap update. This post was originally drafted in February but was put on hold pending closure of some delicate contract negotiations. When those negotiations were successfully concluded (in May!), I was busy with other Borland business and this post drifted further into the depths of my outbox. Labor Day found me on the on the brink of the DeXter crunch mode maelstrom, thinking that it might be a good idea to push this post on out there. (gee, ya think?) By that time, though, it was considered “too close“ to the planned DeXter “rolling thunder“ campaign, so I reluctantly (and cursing a blue streak) put it back on hold, per Borland request. At last, the holds are released! Fly, be free!
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Posted by Danny Thorpe archive on September 27th, 2005 under Product |
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September 27th, 2005 at 7:35 pm
Excellent news! Talking about Win32 compiler enhancements, is there any support for (optionally) controlling alignment of code (ie. 16-byte alignment)? Most of the FastCoders and us Graphics32 guys would really appreciate this change. Btw, what are the chances of having multi-threaded compilation for Win32 (and .NET)?
September 27th, 2005 at 7:46 pm
Thats good news. But how are the bugfixes coming along on the IDE for .NET application development. Would love to work on delphi without having to restart the IDE 40 times in a day.
September 27th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
As with Andre, I’d love to know if there were going to be a way to control code alignment in Dexter (or a future Delphi).
I’d also like to know what the current thinking is for generics being included with the Win32 (and/or Win64) compiler.
Finally, any chance of a preview of the Win64 compiler making it in with Dexter or Highlander? (Or, at least adding some warnings for common 64-bit issues as was done with Delphi 7?)
September 27th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
vipin,
I suggest you log your issues at http://qc.borland.com
Jeremy
September 27th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
> We intend to have IDE design surfaces
> for .NET Compact Frameworks up and
> running in Highlander (using VCL.NET
> on CF),
What about a WinForm CF designer?
What about a debugger for CF apps?
For me, a debugger is much more important than a designer.
Jeremy
September 27th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
Getting 64bit-bitness warnings in the Win32 compiler in Dexter or Highlander would be very nice to prepare the road to Win64 and demonstrate Borland’s commitment to native-compilation side of Delphi.
September 27th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Oh yeah, does the inlining of compiler magic functions such as Length() mean that it’ll be possible to inline BASM code?
(IIRC Length is implemented as BASM; but the fact that it’s a compiler-magic function makes me ask the question since this could just be special-casing certain magic functions internally).
September 28th, 2005 at 12:49 am
Jeremy:
If you look at previous blog posts in Danny’s blog you will see some comments regarding WinForms CF designer and probably will find the answer why they choose to go with VCL.NET for CF.
September 28th, 2005 at 12:58 am
Great news! What really makes me happy is the improvements in the Win32 area, the enhancements and performance optimizations. Please keep in mind that many people (such as me) use Delphi (and hope to use it for many more years) for Win32 development only. Now back to work Danny!
September 28th, 2005 at 1:24 am
Yeah ! I’ll survive…
I’m very happy to read these great news and like Michel I hope to use Delphi Win32 for many more years…
September 28th, 2005 at 3:10 am
Good new!!!
I was considering to switch to C++ for native applications.Now there is no reason!
Question : will there be generics( or templates ) for Delphi Win32.
September 28th, 2005 at 3:30 am
Will Highlander feature a visual designer for WinFX WPF forms? It is going to be important I think.
September 28th, 2005 at 5:30 am
Awesome.
September 28th, 2005 at 6:10 am
It sure would be nice to have a more stable usable product instead of getting another upgrade we have to pay $1000+ for every year.
Improvements are nice, stability and usability are much more important to me.
September 28th, 2005 at 6:44 am
I agree with David D, Borland has to give much more priority to stability, as the recent past shows us.
Instead of new features, I am interested in how Borland is going to improve the quality.
Maybe they should use their own ALM-features
September 28th, 2005 at 8:15 am
Where do you get those codenames?
Diamondback? I know thats a kind of snake
DeXter?…whos Dexter? and whats with the quirky spelling DX?
Highlander? There can be only one? =)
September 28th, 2005 at 9:09 am
Guys who want Generics in Win32/64 should vote here:
http://qc.borland.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=11168
September 28th, 2005 at 11:01 am
Well how they get the codenames i can’t tell, but the quirky spelling DX i can explain: Delphi X or, in normal numerals, Delphi 10 :)..
September 28th, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Danny said, "…when Microsoft gets around to actually shipping .NET 2.0." What does this mean? .NET 2.0 has been in beta all year, is currently an RC release, and will be released officially first week in November.
I kind of read into this that Borland is doing lots of waiting on Microsoft to finish up .NET 2.0, but this could hardly be true. .NET 2.0 has been stable for some time now.
September 28th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Jeremy:
"What about a debugger for CF?"
You can’t call it a development environment without a debugger. Yes, debugging support for CF is planned. It’s much less of a technical challenge than the designer issue, which is why I’m not as worried about it as the CF designer.
"What about WinForms for CF designer support?"
You can design WinForms apps and then trim down the code to the subset that works on CF. You can do that today with the Delphi for .NET CF preview compiler.
We have more control over the VCL framework and VCL form designer to build the required emulation layer to simulate CF device controls on the desktop .NET hosted IDE. We can get VCL running on CF and build the corresponding VCL designer working inside VCL faster than we can working outside the WinForms black box.
At the same time, we are actively pursuing additional options to strengthen Delphi’s support for .NET CF overall.
-Danny
September 28th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
Will and Andrei:
"Will there be a way to control code aligment?"
This is a fairly minor request compared to the rather major work required on other fronts. If we can get to it, we’ll get to it.
"I’d also like to know what the current thinking is for generics being included with the Win32 (and/or Win64) compiler. "
Same as last time we discussed it: Highly desireable, but lower priority than the primary Highlander work. Status will remain undecided/unscoped until the main work is done.
"any chance of a preview of the Win64 compiler making it in with Dexter?"
No.
"or Highlander?"
Probably not.
"Or, at least adding some warnings for common 64-bit issues as was done with Delphi 7?) "
64 bit warnings will be added as needed to the 32 bit compiler as we gain specific knowledge of 64 bit issues that cannot be resolved silently by the compiler.
-Danny
September 28th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Will:
"possible to inline BASM code?"
No. Inlining requires the ability to reorder instructions and change register allocations. That violates the first rule of BASM: compiler, do exactly what I say and only what I say.
-Danny
September 28th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
Alexander:
"Will Highlander feature a visual designer for WinFX WPF forms?"
Probably, but Avalon support is not a critical requirement for Highlander. If Avalon support doesn’t make it into the release, it’s very likely that it could be done as a drop-in after release.
-Danny
September 28th, 2005 at 3:14 pm
Rommel:
DeXter: "dex" = 10. "X" = 10 in Roman numerals. This is the 10th release of Delphi. Also from "Dexter’s Laboratory", the Nickalodeon cartoon.
Highlander: ya, well, I voted against that one. Worried about the sequels. ;>
-Danny
September 28th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
Tom:
"I kind of read into this that Borland is doing lots of waiting on Microsoft to finish up .NET 2.0, but this could hardly be true. .NET 2.0 has been stable for some time now."
Borland cannot ship product on .NET 2.0 beta. Microsoft has made that very clear. We pushed hard to get license to distribute Borland product with .NET 2.0 beta bits on the CD, but Microsoft flatly refused.
Apparently the only development tools that are allowed to include .NET beta bits are Microsoft tools.
My snide remark about if and when .NET 2.0 actually ships is in regard to the many revisions to the .NET 2.0 release date. Originally (2002), .NET 2.0 was scheduled to ship in 2004. In the spring of 2004, Microsoft announced the ship date had been pushed back to June 2005. In February 2005, Microsoft announced the ship date for .NET 2.0 had been pushed out to end-of-year 2005. As we approach end-of-year 2005, it seems very likely they will finally hit that target, but it’s always the case that you should never bank on Microsoft hitting any date.
We originally intended to release tools for .NET 2.0 in 2005. However, .NET 2.0 slipped out of our release window, and Microsoft refused to let us release on .NET beta bits, so we adjusted our priorities to create DeXter on .NET 1.1.
-Danny
September 28th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
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September 28th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
Just for clarification: Is DeXter including FastMM4 for the RTL or only just for the IDE? Also, can you name a few of the FastCode routines that are incorporated?
September 28th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Danny,
Thanks for your reply. Are you saying that you were not permitted to redist apps built .NET 2.0 beta 2 earlier this year, as the rest of the world was with the go-live license?
We’ve had apps out to our customers based on .NET 2.0 for several months now. We started development prior to beta 2, and were permitted to release to our customers at beta 2, which was in April or May, if I remember right.
September 28th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Lee,
http://blogs.codegear.com/abauer/archive/2005/09/28/21433.aspx should answer this question.
September 28th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
Danny:
First, thanks for your remarks on my other questions. =) Second, as far as inline and BASM code goes, I think everyone in borland.public.delphi.language.basm would be just peachy/happy if "inline", when applied to BASM functions, literally just dropped the compiled BASM in-place (minus the calling convention setup/cleanup). I know it’s not as optimized as having the compiler go in and tinker with the register selection, but sometimes the performance drop for smaller BASM routines is enough to just wish it were possible to avoid CALL/RET.
September 29th, 2005 at 1:11 am
"Highly optimized routines from the FastCode project have helped"
Which of the FastCode routines are / will be included?
September 29th, 2005 at 2:52 am
What about revamping the Help system.
That has been criticized over and over in QC. Seems everybody wants to go back to the simple but effective and (most of all) complete help system in Delphi 7.
-Dick
September 29th, 2005 at 6:33 am
That’s wonderful!
I’ll always support Borland.
I LOVE BORLAND!
September 29th, 2005 at 11:23 am
Lee:
The new memory manager benefits all Win32 Delphi apps, including the IDE.
-Danny
September 29th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Tom:
Microsoft’s go-live license does not permit you to ship the .NET beta bits with your application. The go-live license is primarily intended for ASP.NET applications which have no end-user runtime deployment.
We consider it unacceptable to require customers to download 20MB of stuff online before they can install the Borland product they just paid for. That would seriously undercut our product revenue, particularly in Europe where downloads tend to be more expensive (billed by the byte). Microsoft considers it unacceptable to have .NET beta bits circulating on non-Microsoft CDs.
-Danny
September 29th, 2005 at 11:32 am
Will:
That’s not a good enough reason. You’d still pay the price of setting up the registers for parameter passing, which inlining is supposed to eliminate.
If you’re advocating that inline BASM should be allowed for the special case of functions that take no params, you’re nuts. ;P
-Danny
September 29th, 2005 at 11:37 am
Roman:
"Which of the FastCode routines are / will be included?"
Please see the Quality Central list feature requests implemented for DeXter.
http://qc.borland.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?search=1&proj=10&rib=+10.0.2097.6343
-Danny
September 29th, 2005 at 11:54 am
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September 29th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Will the FastMM work also in DexTer Win32 C++? I’m wondering about it.
Thanks
September 29th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Uahoooooo
Borland is the BEST!!!!!!
I LOVE BORLAND AND DELPHI
September 29th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
Danny,
You’re right, you can’t redist .NET 2.0 beta 2, but if you had an app ready to release Nov. 7, you’d be able to release it then. This could have been worked on all this year, which is my original point.
Thanks,
- Tom
September 29th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
After waiting literally YEARS for the next version of C++ I would be happy to experience less fanfare and see more focus on actual delivery. Keep up the good work cos I’m still waiting
September 29th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
Good new about Delphi.
But…I still looking for a stand along Delphi for Win32 Version!!!
September 30th, 2005 at 5:29 am
Any news on a remote debugger?
September 30th, 2005 at 9:21 am
Tom:
"If you had an app ready to release Nov. 7 [the current .NET 2.0 target ship date], you’d be able to release it then."
And what if we had an app ready to release June 1, 2004, the original release target for .NET 2.0? Or June 1, 2005, the second release target for .NET 2.0? At the time we were informed that the .NET 2.0 release was not going to happen in June 2005, there was no indication of what the new release target would be. Even if there were a new guestimate, we had no reason to believe its accuracy would be any better than the past two targets. The only options we had to make our required revenue for 2005 were to ship .NET 2.0 beta bits or to ship product that was completely independent of .NET 2.0. Our decision was not based on technology or resource constraints.
Microsoft’s continuous revenue stream (from every new machine sold with Windows installed) allows them the luxury of deferring product releases indefinitely. Borland’s spikey periodic revenue cycle does not.
-Danny
September 30th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Well done, great job. Now the overall situation looks a lot better.
But coming back to Nguyen Ngoc Thinh -> believe it or not, some people especially those who still go for win32, I know we are a tiny country - Austria - but with lots of good products based on delphi, really would prefer a delphi that can be installed as win32 only, a good class hierarchy browser is always welcome and editor features too.
I’m very sure this will not be so simple…to seperate on one hand and on the other reuse the same with all the technologies provided….
Mike
September 30th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
… and a win32-only release would continue the past when delphi was a tool worth to pay for ;-). For us "J2EE guys" also using windows native code through Delphi all this .NET stuff is pretty worthless.
October 2nd, 2005 at 1:25 am
Something really bothers me, is that we have to wait another year for .NET v2 support.
People using VS2005 have v2 support since its first beta (2004) and final version will be released in month (Nov 2005).
Anyway, Win32 is enough reason for me to get Dexter or any future Delphi release. I hope this time, installer will have the option to ONLY install Win32 parts without first installing .NET. I wouldn’t like the idea of installing .NET 1.1 over 2.0 which is already installed by VS.
October 2nd, 2005 at 9:29 am
Michael Thuma:
You will have the option of installing only a single "personality" on your machine when you install DeXter. If you’re only interested in creating Delphi Win32 code, you can install just the Delphi Win32 tools.
The IDE will still require .NET to run, as significant portions of the IDE are now implemented in managed code to provide functionality across all the supported languages. The Delphi IDE is built on .NET.
-Danny
October 2nd, 2005 at 3:24 pm
Danny!
is there any new syntax changes in new version of delphi?
-Brian
October 2nd, 2005 at 3:29 pm
i forgot to ask this question also:
Is Borland new IDE based on .NET, i am meaning is it switched from 32bit to .NET ? all parts of IDE or just some parts of it!
October 2nd, 2005 at 7:38 pm
Two things I would like to see:
ECO for win32
Garbage collection for Win32.
Any chance?
October 3rd, 2005 at 1:29 am
Sean!
ECO for WIN32 is not possible because current architecture of ECO is based on .NET !
Garbage collection is allready available in Win32 since version 1! , if you are meaning the same way .NET do garbage collection (background thread)it is different, I strongly believe programmer should free memory itself and do not leave it to compiler, strings in delphi also c# both garbage collected and no need to set them, FASTMM maybe answer your question, it will include in .NET.
GO Delphi.
October 3rd, 2005 at 1:32 am
October 3rd, 2005 at 3:38 am
What about Kylix???? is it dead???
October 3rd, 2005 at 5:30 am
Are you already thinking about LINQ, anonymous types, type inference and so on?
October 3rd, 2005 at 9:05 am
I’m curious. Since Borland was not capable of writing the optimized routines and memory manager in the first place, does this mean that it will also not be capable of maintaining them as they are integrated into the core RTL?
It would really suck to depend on uncommited third parties for updates who may or may not be available to fix things that aren’t "quite" right.
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:38 pm
Johnson!
against you, i believe it is advantage of delphi not it’s disadvantage, why you select delphi? because of it’s full open architecture , because of third party components and support, even microsoft cannot provide something like this, are you sure Microsoft have optimized rootins ??? so, in this greate world ,there are milions of people they made something like LINUX which is 100 times best than WINDOWS, so, just think you vote to Delphi for this issue or you leave it for this!
October 3rd, 2005 at 6:57 pm
Briam Samiee - Hey, if I choose to add a third party component, maintained by a third party, that is my decission. If suddenly unsupported third party components become a fundamental part of the framework and something breaks, I wanna know that
a) the people who included it are qualified enough to review the code for correctness to begin with
b) the people who included it are qualified to FIX it if it is broken.
I think its a fair question. Since borland wasn’t capable of writing the code, are they capable of maintaining the code. Linux has no bearing on the question - period.
Things like TSyntaxMemo from DBRock Software, however, do. The original programer is "unavailable" we are told and for over 5 versions of delphi now, I have been required to maintain the code myself because I chose to include it in projects which live to this day. Luckilly, I am qualified to do that, or I would be in deep crap.
We would be in even deeper crap if borland can’t maintain the RTL, because we can’t count on the original authors being around to fix the routines (or anyone else for that matter).
The question stands.
October 3rd, 2005 at 11:24 pm
Johnson:
it is not right to say borland is not capable to do it, let’s say , there is a better code and you can to use it, as you know it is 100% opensource, so, you have the source code and sure, when there is a critical product with source code alot of people will follow it up, see kylix? it became classic product of borland , but people still supporting it, there are tones of source code come time to time , even CLX is fixed by people, VCL or even CLX have open architecture, and you know this better when there is source code it is possible to debug it and after it publish it in somewhere like sourceforge, search there, even you will find an IDE for programming with 100% opensource architecture, what we are talking powerfull design of delphi, view lazarus (freepascal based ) ,,, see , how it grows, Delphi learn people how become a professional programmer, delphi for huge products is so nice, there are alot of sourcecodes for game programming (I saw many thing regardign to this) ,,, what save a nationality or even a society is support of people what Borland have it, about something like Fasmm i guess borland or thousands of people are able to fix possible bugs , it is not so huge code, about other parts of RTL, Opensource component is better or activex or .NET? when you buy a delphi component always you receive a sourcecode shiped with it, … so,,, sure, Borland will continue it’s live and it’s support, more than 1.5MILIONS programmer are living with this SUPERB IDE and LANGUAGE!
October 4th, 2005 at 1:13 am
Will Highlander support x64 architechture?
October 4th, 2005 at 1:38 am
no! it will not, but it will have mixed IL x64 debuging support (delphians knows it CPU VIEW!!!) , so. in high lander you will have:
.NET 2.00 ,
Generics and some syntax changes to support .NET 2.00 features.
X64 /IL debuging support for X64 machines (win64) ,
in 2007, Borland will come up with 64bit delphi and C++! (i hopes JAVA BYTE CODE! )
October 4th, 2005 at 4:59 am
You guys, I really don’t understand!
I only use, asm and C\C++, and for a long time I only used borland software, but so many years without an update for BCB6, I had to forget borland and go Microsoft.
I have to say that you only think, Delphi, Delphi, Delphi, Delphi…
So with this thinking you have lost me(and a lot of people) as an User of your products.
October 4th, 2005 at 8:00 am
Thanks for the "inside baseball" info.
October 4th, 2005 at 8:07 am
Danny Thrope says :
————————-
Will:
"possible to inline BASM code?"
No. Inlining requires the ability to reorder instructions and change register allocations. That violates the first rule of BASM: compiler, do exactly what I say and only what I say.
-Danny
# re: Delphi Roadmap
————————————
hmmm…… And what you say about this
this piece of code are compiling & working successful in Microsoft VS.NET
(when T is 32-bit type)
template<class T> inline void myfunc(T v)
{
__asm {
mov eax,v //just an example of asm
};
}
……………….
now somewhere in code:
……………….
myfunc<int>(123);
……
eh?
October 4th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
Igor:
I’d say you were using C++, not Delphi.
-Danny
October 4th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
Brian:
"Are there any new syntax changes?"
Yes. Read the first paragraph again. ;>
-Danny
October 4th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Brian:
"Is Borland new IDE based on .NET, i am meaning is it switched from 32bit to .NET ? all parts of IDE or just some parts of it?"
Same as Delphi 8 and Delphi 2005: parts of the IDE are implemented in native Win32 code, and parts are implemented in .NET managed code.
It is a common misconception that the parts of the IDE that are implemented in .NET managed code are only used by the .NET personalities. Some core IDE functionality that applies to all personalities is implemented in .NET managed code.
-Danny
October 4th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Vitor Ciaramella:
"Are you already thinking about LINQ, anonymous types, type inference and so on? "
See the previous post on this blog. ;>
-Danny
October 4th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
C Johnson:
"Since borland wasn’t capable of writing the code, are they capable of maintaining the code"
Borland opted to incorporate a new memory manager developed by the Delphi community because Borland does not have the personnel to dedicate to that task, but wanted the feature in the product. Having a third party implement that feature enabled us to focus the Borland personnel on things that could not be done in isolation, such as working on the IDE and the compiler.
In today’s world, it’s very rare for any complex system to be developed continuously by a single person. I did not write the Delphi compiler, but I have extended it in many ways beyond its original design.
No software developer today stands alone. Every programmer stands on the shoulders of those who came before, who wrote the tools or the OS that today’s developer uses to write the next iteration. If what you write is good, others will still be standing on your shoulders long after you are gone.
-Danny
October 4th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
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October 4th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
Danny - You’ve admitted that Borland isn’t capable of writing the optimized code, but you neatly avoided answering if borland is capable of supporting the optimized code once it has been forced upon us.
Frankly, it is only thing for us to choose to use a third party solution with potential risks, after all, we have the stable, albeit possibly slower stock RTL. Now, we will not have the stable stock RTL, and you avoid directly answering if borland is capable of supporting the new 3rd party code.
I think you have convinced me more than anything that I should NOT upgrade projects to newer versions of Delphi and I should in fact start migration to a platform with better support.
You may not know it now, but I think you have just announced the death of Delphi.
Sad days.
October 4th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
Happy to learn that Win32 will be pushed in next rlz, and hope for remote debugging back !
October 4th, 2005 at 9:16 pm
I stopped using Delphi at version 5 because I didn’t see the benefit for desktop Win32 apps of upgrading past that point. And since then I’ve switched to other languages. I wish Borland would pull a dynamic language into Delphi, such as Lisp or Python. I find these languages far superior from a development time point of view.
October 5th, 2005 at 1:24 am
will it support FULL Unicode in Win32 part ???? any answer plz. I hate to code something like…change the font of the caption of form to my favor font…(I’m from Vietnam). Now I’m usally use TNTUnicode. It’s time to support Unicode in Delphi (now Full Unicode support only in .NET).Thanks for reading. (sorry if I get any mistake in word. I’m not English)
October 5th, 2005 at 7:34 am
You are right Nguyen Ngoc Thinh ! I left Delphi mainly because of the lack in supporting Unicode and Win 64 and also because I do not think Dot Net will make it !
I go on with C, C++ and Assembler. Bye bye Frameworks and Virtual Machines ! So slow…
October 5th, 2005 at 7:41 am
Have any plan in C++ for windows CE.net or Pocket PC and also windows CE 5.0?
October 5th, 2005 at 7:42 am
Danny says:
————————————
Igor
I’d say you were using C++, not Delphi.
-Danny
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No, Denny. It’s Delphi I’m speaking about. As we all know that C++ Builder is to become a component of Delphi.
One cannot insert assembler code into inline and template functions in C++ Builder, while one can do this in MS VC++.
A new version of C++ Builder being a part of Delphi, I’d like to know if this problem remains or you overtake Microsoft?
October 5th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Hi
I’m So Glad To See This News Because Today Is Many Word A Bout Future Of Delphi But I Think Delphi Lives Forever!!!!
Have Fun
Babak Ahadi
October 6th, 2005 at 4:40 am
I hate all interfaces implemented on IUnknown, since that makes any sane (i.e. not COM) usage actually a hack.
D2005 introduces IUnknown and IInterface for Win32, but IInterface is equivalent to IUnknown. Is it possible to keep them separate on all platforms?
October 6th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Danny,
Why is Delphi for .Net 2.0 will only be available long after .Net 2.0 gets released ? (Delphi has lost it’s leadership edge as a propellent and a catalyst for new age technologies).
Why is delphi tightly bound only to one flavour of .Net (Let the developer decide what is best for him)
But it’s happy to know something is happening to do a catch up job (Which i think u guys are bad at, It would be better to fuel new age development which delphi use to excel at.)
Thanks
Rathore
October 7th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
<Quote> Danny - You’ve admitted that Borland isn’t capable of writing the optimized code, but you neatly avoided answering if borland is capable of supporting the optimized code once it has been forced upon us.
</Quote>
At no point did Danny admit anything like that. He simply stated that the team had a different focus. He also stated that Borland acknowledges the contribution of the community in creating FastMM, just like they have with FastCoder.
Personally I would find it impossible to believe that they would not support FastMM once it ships within the IDE. But I have to say that it disappoints me that you find it necessary to use such a condescending tone. This is a forum that takes precious coding time away from Danny for only the benefit of educating us.
Dexter is a positive for the Delphi community, although I sadly agree with Rathore. In the early days Delphi was a revolutionary leap ahead of any other RAD tool on the market. Delphi has continued to make evolutionary steps, however MS is making revolutionary steps. Now instead of leading the pack Borland is following, or at best case is in the middle of the pack. Delphi is still my environment of choice but I am increasingly being forced to use other tools and platforms simply because of the power they provide.
On a similar note, I would kill to see some of the things in Chrome integrated into Delphi…specifically DBC and asynchronous methods.
October 10th, 2005 at 7:47 am
Good Day,
I have been a "BORLAND" guy since 87, and can get enough. My flag ship product will be written in CBuilder and IntraWeb. I am concerned that there does not appear to be much info on if that technology will be available in the new Delphi product.
Is there any hardcare IntraWeb development going on within Delphi, or, is there something else that a Delphi user can employ to go web? I’m am sure you can appreciate that not all users out there are using or have access to .net, so in my mind, building .net 1.x forms is not going to be a good path for me. Then there is the whole Midas Page Producer and WebBroker architecture.
Please advise on "going web" in DeXter.
Thanks,
Nick
October 10th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
IntraWeb is still under VERY active development at Atozed, and they plan to ship IW8 with the release of Dexter.
October 10th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
I’d like to see a Personal Edition of Dexter. I’ve now D9 Personal and
I like to work with it!
October 12th, 2005 at 12:43 pm
I Love Delphi.
I study Delphi for die.
October 12th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
It’s true that it would be better to get a working IDE rather than new .NET improvements.
I’ve bought Delphi 2005, and i’m back to Delphi 7 wich is far more stable.
It’s a pain to have to launch IDE 30 times a day…
October 13th, 2005 at 11:13 am
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October 13th, 2005 at 11:13 am
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October 13th, 2005 at 11:24 am
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October 14th, 2005 at 12:50 am
can pure win32 install without need .net’s patch ? my customer and i all use win2k.
October 15th, 2005 at 9:25 am
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October 15th, 2005 at 9:26 am
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October 15th, 2005 at 9:29 am
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October 19th, 2005 at 11:12 am
Tom says:
————————————
It’s true that it would be better to get a working IDE rather than new .NET improvements.
I’ve bought Delphi 2005, and i’m back to Delphi 7 wich is far more stable.
It’s a pain to have to launch IDE 30 times a day…
————————————
True, true, true and true.
Delphi 2005 brought me so much (oh, and I forget to mention trying to migrate to Indy 10 before getting back to 9) that I considered going back to 7. If at least it had fixed my buggy dbExpress Oracle driver…
If Delphi 2006 continues in that direction then I am certainly not going to renew our 3 licenses.
Restarting the IDE several times a day reminds me of PowerBuilder 4 and 5 on Windows 95. LOL. Borland hadn’t accustomed me to that.
October 19th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
What about Kylix and Linux ? It is really a shame what Borland did to the Linux community. Releasing a great product and than dropping everything without any comment and not even maintaining the product to run on newer distributions.
I really don’t understand why Borland consider that being a follower of Microsoft technology will be of any good for the future. We started using Delphi because of the great IDE and technologie behind it, nothing will remain after going to .NET
October 20th, 2005 at 1:04 am
Marc says:
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dropping everything without any comment
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I am no wizard but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a rotten deal à la Microsoft behind it. Just a guess.
October 20th, 2005 at 6:52 am
I really wish someone would address all the comments about the stability of the 2005 IDE and if anything has been done about it. I, like many others, have gone back to Delphi 7 because of its stability as the 2005 IDE was very unstable to say the least. I couldn’t agree more that the Borland of "New" isn’t as concerned with fixing bugs, but with getting revenue stream generating versions out the door too fast as opposed to the Borland of "Old" that seemed to readily fix bugs and problems, albeit on a much less complicated platform.
I would welcome any Borland comments on what has been done to address the stability issues in the IDE–or even an admission that they truly exist and are acknowledged. I have been a Borland guy for over 15 years, but the past couple of Delphi releases have REALLY tried my patience and forced me to split my programming between Delphi and Visual Studio–especially with the slow and incomplete support for the original .NET releases.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:57 am
2005 IDE is unusuable. But there is a solution, here it is :
"Delphi configuration manager"
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~jed/dcm.htm
With this program you load only the module you really need.
October 22nd, 2005 at 9:56 am
All this "roadmap" stuff is fine and dandy, but I think it would be good if Borland would prepare a roadmap showing how to get to where one wants to go here and now, on its own website, as well as doing all the great forward-planning of future releases.
Every question I try to find an answer to on the Borland website is either not answered or is well hidden. For example, how much does it cost for a Delphi Enterprise Support Assurance subscription, and how do you order?! If Borland’s response is going to be "Call for pricing, and to place your order" why couldn’t they have said that on the website?
October 25th, 2005 at 10:11 am
I think guys at Borland should realize the "burden" that they carry on their necks. In case Delphi dies, we’ll lose not only a programming language and an IDE (though one of a kind), but we’ll lose the whole family of Pascal-like languages. It is undoubtedly that it is due to Borland C++ and Java haven’t got the dominion over the industry. It is solely due to Borland that any Pascal-like language in this world still lingers. Regretfully, C++ and Java monsters are about to reign in the hearts and minds of all the developers. If only Borland surrenders to Microsoft, everything will fail.
Delphi is a great product - very well suited for any kind of application. It is pleasant to hear that it grows. And now, if anyone at Borland can hear me, I’d like to say: DO NOT GIVE UP, CONTINUE TO DEVELOP YOUR GREAT PRODUCT, we (all the Delphi community) will be orphans otherwise.
October 25th, 2005 at 11:43 am
Yup… D2005 is quiet nice with new features, but awfull in their realization…
‘ve been taking part in project with more than 100 units in it… It was pushed recently from D5 to D6 and then to D7… But pushing it to D2005 wasn’t very easy. The firs problem we’ve met was that D2005 was interpreting some of our .pas files as binary ones(thats were because of some russian letters in the first 256 characters(in comments)).
As i know, this project is still running under D7… so new feature are nice but bugless is more important.
P.S.: Hope to the presence of split install options in d2006 installer
October 26th, 2005 at 9:11 am
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November 1st, 2005 at 5:54 am
I see you focus mostly on .NET and that’s ok as long as you fix all the bugs and release the handbrake you left on in the Win32-part of Delphi 2005. I think Delphi 2005 was to Borland what Windows ME was to Microsoft.
November 2nd, 2005 at 3:42 am
Considerable share of developers;
- still prefer Delphi 7 over Delphi 200X,
- waiting for full unicode support; reference counted unicode strings and unicode VCL. Even at the expense of code re-writes and third-party component imcompatibilities - we have to face that one day anyway!
- waiting for 64bit native compiler,
- do (or waiting some improvements to do) cross-platform development and cares about Delphi/Kylix integration.
Dexter has nothing new in these aspects.
I hope that rush/madness on .NET will end in 2007 and, before 2008, we will see some of these improvements.
Just a little bit more patience..
November 5th, 2005 at 9:39 am
Now that the .net Framework 2.0 is out and running, does this mean we’ll have to wait at least a whole year before we can get to use a C#Builder updated for .net 2.0, while Microsoft is just about to release Visual Studio 2005?
November 9th, 2005 at 9:04 am
Has any serious thought been given to supporting Mono in Delphi (i.e. providing an alternative VCL.NET that is based on GTK# perhaps instead of WinForms). This could free you somewhat from having to follow Micro$ofts lead and give your Kylix follows a Delphi option for Linux and OS X.
November 11th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
Support delphi and borland together!
November 12th, 2005 at 3:26 am
I agree that it is really difficult to wait an entire year for .NET 2.0 With most books using C# examples, and VS 2005 having 2.0 support, its hard to imagine another obsticle to being progressive as a Delphi developer. Don’t get me wrong, I love Delphi and will wait, and hope they come through in the 2006 calendar year, but I am considering learning C# as a backup.
What can be done to promore more programmers to use the Delphi language??? If other companies had Delphi (for .net) language compilers build into their prduct suites would that help??? (ie MS Delphi, etc…) Maybe more books would be written, allowing for more newcomers to get up to speed without much pain.
November 14th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
Delphi 2005 is the most unstable app I have ever run on my PC. In a 7.5 hour working day, it needs restarting about 30-40 times, you often lose code, and it can even take down Windows XP without a warning. Therefore I still use Delphi 7, which is Borland’s best release by a long way. I worry that as per usual, Borland are back to the rushed buggy revenue driven releases that mock their name like. It is a real shame, because the poor reputation that surrounds the instability will slowly kill Delphi as people move to stable, cheaper, Unicode and 64 bit ready software development tools such as C#.
November 15th, 2005 at 1:17 am
Gollem:
As far as the quality of Delphi 2005 Update 3 you shouldn’t be having so many difficulties. I used to have crashes with Update 1, but after reinstalling and updating to Update 3 I was plesantly surprised to find I hardly EVER have any crashes. Not one per day, but maybe one per week, and this is using it all day long. (WinForms w/ WebServices on a n-tier program.)
I think they are doing a great job in terms of getting things fixed… but the positive image of that needs to catch up. (Like they say, a customer with a bad experiance will tell 40 people, while a customer with a good experiance *might* tell 4.)
Anyway, for some great fixes have a look at:
http://blogs.codegear.com/abauer/archive/2005/09/13/21124.aspx
If that doesn’t work try QC… so that can know what to fix!
November 24th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
Are there any future plans to add PocketPC as a target for the Delphi compilers?
There are so many PDAs, XDAs, PocketPC phones around today that the demand for apps is going to rocket. I’d much rather use Delphi than Embedded Visual C++, which is what I’m stuck with at the moment.
November 30th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
How easy or difficult is it to port a Delphi 3 application to Delphi 2005 ?
December 6th, 2005 at 6:10 am
Hello Danny
WE saw a post that you have left Borland & joined Google.
Can you confirm this ?If yes can you please tell us why you have left Borland when the complete delphi community loves you & looking forward to make the future Delphi products the best ones?(Delphi 2006 is already getting rave reviews)
December 6th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
Danny
I’ve been reading your blogs for a long time since you started it, but this is the first time I wanna say something.
Macro Cantu just blogged that you’ve left Borland and moved to Google. Its a shock, for me, a loyal Google user, this is the first time I am mad of them even hate them.
Thanks a lot for your hard work for the Delphi community. Without folks like you, Delphi is no way to be such a amazing tool. I started learn how to program from TC,TP7 and D3, since then although I can use C++,Java,c# for doing works, but Delphi always is my first choice, he is the best.
I certainly know this is a opportunity for you, new job, new team, new company, face to a new challenge. Wish you good luck and make firefox, which also my favourite to be the IE Terminator.
Good luck, and thanks again. I’ll miss you.
Regards,
Alex Seaver.
December 7th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Danny,
I suggest that you blog about the future direction of unicode support for the win32 compiler.
Many developers such as myself, have a keen interest in this topic, which probably doesn’t get the level of attention that it deserves. Some interesting questions are:
(1) Will we see unicode versions of ActionBand components;
(2) of common dialog components; and
(3) What is Borland’s philosophy about unicode support? Is it a case of [a] It’s a low demand feature and it is low on the list of priorities; [b] Oops! We made a strategic mistake from the time of Delphi 1 and the standard string should have been implemented as widestring right at the beginning; or [c] It wasn’t in so much demand before, but now is the right time to expand the support for unicode?
Faithfully,
Sean B. Durkin
December 8th, 2005 at 3:38 am
I love Delphi & I Love Win32.
God bless Borland!
December 15th, 2005 at 5:42 am
I’m a bit disappointed that Borland which once was leading in the software development game is now trailing badly. I would have been happier if D2006 could support .NET 2.0. I think borland has alot of work to do, to set new standards and innovations.
I expected borland to offer more that what is in D2006. I would rather use Delphi 6, which i think is still Delphi’s best development tool.
Are these effects of Anders (C# father) leaving Borlard? If so then soon Borlard will be bought by Microsoft.
February 9th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
whatever borland might release. If they are not going to bring down the cost and bring more stability like prior versions and aggressively market their product.Borland will be a history because borland are loosing top notch like danny,heilsberg… It seems they did’nt find interesting in borland. A good tech company should survive.
February 23rd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
I use C# for my .Net development - and I use Delphi for native GUI development on Windows. Stop waisting time developing Delphi for .Net - I want native code generation for both 64 and 32 bit CPUs.
While I’m at it don’t forget the ARM, Power and Cell architectures.
February 26th, 2006 at 3:08 am
Will there be any AJAX tools?