Wow –
04 Oct
Okay — quite the feedback. I’m holding in my hot little hands a forty page printout of your feedback. I’ve got it, and we are going through it.
Now here is the hard part. I’m going to take the comments on this post off-line. I know that you won’t like that, but I thought that things were getting a little counter productive, so I decided to remove all the content. But don’t worry, I have it all here and am reviewing it and taking it all in. It’s clear that you all had a lot to say, so I’m hearing all of it, believe me.
I really appreciate the feedback — believe me, I do. And again — I have 100% of all the feedback right here. You’ve been more than heard, believe me. Really, really heard.
Nick,
It loses on a time and cost analysis. I’ve actually got a D2005 box still shrink-wrapped sitting at my main client’s office. And I downloaded the turbo explorer. AND I watched more than a few of the 30 demos. But I still didn’t see the, "Get THIS and save time AND/OR money!"
Assuming all that I do, and will do in the near future, is programming Win32 apps, is BDS2006 more feature-filled, stable and easy to use than D7 with CodeRush, ModelMaker CodeExplorer, the CNWizards and PaletteBar? Do I get back the time customizing Castalia to act like CodeRush and tweaking the desktop to be what I want it to look like (Like D7, frankly)? Is the cost of buying upgrades (and replacements in some cases) for needed third-party libraries coming back in increased productivity? I haven’t seen that evidence.
And finally, we have to be close enough to the release of BDS2007/TDPv2 that purchasing the current version seems rife with the possibility of getting "an old version" and yet might be purchased too early to get a free upgrade to those new versions.
When Borland/Devco reaches the tipping point, I WILL be buying Turbo Delphi Professional. I hope it’s v2.
October 5th, 2006 at 4:54 pmGary:
I had a hard time migrating from Delphi7 to BDS2006. The IDE is not the same, and there were a lot of things that bugged me like hell. However, I was forced to move, and I dont regret it today. I actually know I had the same problem when I moved from D5 to D7.
After a while of use, you get to know the new product. I am now learning nice features each day. Today I am at a point where BDS2006 is my main choice when I need to write some nice and tight Delphi code. If you’d asked me 2 months ago, I would have said the same thing as you did above.
So my advise: Get in there, get your hands dirty and screem in anger when you dont find stuff where it used to be. The important thing is that you stay there and dont look back.. After some time you will start to like it.
BTW: These thoughts will never apply to the new help in BDS2006.. Its a hopeless mess that you will never find as good as the D7’s help.
October 5th, 2006 at 5:13 pmI don’t mind that you took off the posts Nick, and I quite appreciate that you gave us the opportunity to give you direct feedback as to why BDS2006 might not be as popular as old versions.
For a while in the past, I found it really difficult to move from Delphi3 to Delphi5.02 cause Delphi3 seemed so much snappier, but in time (and badly needing support for IDE and compiler features esp class completion) I moved to Delphi5 and could now not go back to Delphi3 now.
BDS2006 is nice and all, but requiring us to install all those prereqs is really off-putting.
ECO sounds nice, UML sounds great, but for the existing projects we’ve got, all we need is the fast experience we’re used to plus some wonderful stuff like refactoring, compiler enhancements and new constructs etc.
What I would also really love is that most features that might seriously impact on perceived performance should be optional. Dotnet and j# dependencies should not exist on Win32 only development. That way, if I want to run BDS2006 like Delphi7, 6, 5 I can. That’s silly you might say, but you shouldn’t worry about it being silly because as long as you’ve got my upgrade dollars, you should be happy.
Feel free to delete this too. I just really appreciate that we are able to tell YOU directly our concerns rather than commenting on some other site where it will never be seen by the people that matter.
October 5th, 2006 at 6:17 pm<quote>You’ve been more than heard, believe me. Really, really heard.</quote>
Thank you for listening.
October 5th, 2006 at 7:31 pmThis thread got a bit emotional, hu?
I think it’s good to let it all out.
Time for a change.
Yeah, a bit overwhelming.
October 5th, 2006 at 9:19 pmDevCo (I use that term intentionally…) will need to turn a 360 when the Apron strings are cut. I think that Alan and Nick will need to push it to the firewall when the bell rings.
The natives appear to be restless….
Help could be a low hanging fruit. There’s no useful standard for a help base this large, so DevCo could set the pace by setting the bar with it’s own offering in this space…
<mantra>
Seed Corn…. Seed Corn…
</mantra>
Nick,
I am really glad you have asked that question. And as you may already realized, there is still huge old Delphi users around the world, who avoided new Delphi for a lot of reasons. If you really heard the wishes, then we’re heading in the right direction.
Thank you.
October 5th, 2006 at 11:11 pmNick,
From my point of view, removing the posts looks like some kind of damage control. How could it be counter-productive?
This was one of the /best blog post I ever read/ with everyone giving their story. I read all of them and while speed and stability, 64 bits and better help were the larger issues, there were smaller one that were equally important.
Like that poor sap that has to pay a fortune to get development products because he is out of the US/Canada/UK. How many more different stories would there be?
Why stop the ball when its on a roll like that? Who knows how many stories you might have had. 200? 500? 1000?
I’m probably stupid, because as a Micro ISV if I ever got that kind of response from my customers I would NEVER have stopped it so soon. But then again, that’s probably why I’m "Micro"…
October 5th, 2006 at 11:53 pmYou can read a short summary (along with my comments) on my blog… (see link above)
October 6th, 2006 at 12:06 amDefinitely as case of damage control and cover-it-up-policy here. You probably started something you can’t handle.
October 6th, 2006 at 2:14 amIt is quite simple why d7 is more popular. The road towards d2006 was just too rocky. We bought D8, D2005 and lost huge amounts of code in the process due to buggy IDE. We do have d2006 now, but only one version and only Profession because of the D8 and D2005 Arch costs. d2006 works fine, but the cost is driving us to switch to vs2005 for all .NET and we are probably staying with the current d7 licences and 1 d2006 for w32 development.
October 6th, 2006 at 4:20 amNick,
Why was the previous post removed? "It was counter productive"…what did you expect from passionate Delphi users. These issues have been simmering within of what is left of your customer base. These people have actually taken the time out to make their sentiments heard and you say it is turning out to be "counter productive"? What do you expect when you survey customers about your product? Do you expect them to say nice words and a nod that they will upgrade blindly. Your customers, people who buy and use your product, are telling you what they want, what they need and don’t need. You received a tremendous response in such a short time, why would you stop it? A product manager in any situation should be thankful.
I can only guess that Borland management ordered Nick to stop that previous post. It is the same Borland management that fell hook, line and sinker to this whole .Net thing. Instead of being a leader, the company is now a follower. Innovation doesn’t exist in being a follower. I know Nick is one of us. The only difference is he now know works for Borland.
IDL
October 6th, 2006 at 7:48 amSame Borland mentality at work again.
- I know you won’t like it, but I’ll remove the content.
- I know you won’t like it, but we are changing the IDE.
- I know you won’t like it, but we will add slow and useless help system anyway.
- I know you won’t like the instability, but we will going to sell half-finished Delphi versions anyway.
- I know you don’t have enough money, but we won’t offer upgrades if you bought one of our previous products.
Yes, thank you for these. Everything is the same. Don’t get me wrong Nick, I know it is not your fault, you probably ordered to do so.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:24 amBecause your product is of poor quality.
October 7th, 2006 at 4:42 amBecause your company’s attitude is also of poor quality.
It’s because of the lack of functionality. Besides some great new components (like the XML stuff) I would say I’m more productive with BCB5 than with C++ Builder 2006. BCB5 offers a class-view including a create method/property/field wizard. An equivalent feature is still missing in BDS2006. Furthermore I’ve experienced some compatibility issues with a least one component that doesn’t work with BCB2006 (every migration-guide failed), but with BCB5 and 6. This also might be a minor reason why I feel more comfortable with my version 5.
October 7th, 2006 at 9:41 amThings we need right now and don’t have with BDS 2006.
1. Stable IDE - this is first and foremost before anything else. I don’t want to see a single feature added to the IDE until it is super stable.
2. Fast IDE - It needs to meet the speed and response of D7. If this cannot be achieved with .NET then I suggest they switch to native only code for IDE. Obviously to support .NET this is probably not an option. But your customer base is claiming they don’t want .NET they want native code. And those that do want .NET 2.0 have already moved onto C# or Chrome/VS combo.
3. MS alternate choice - As I see it the reason Delphi became so popular is because it offered a different and better choice then MS products.
- Easier and more powerful implementation of Win32 API and GUI via VCL
- Fast native code compiler vs a slow VB
- better database support
- better language features than VB (True OOP)
- 3rd party vendors releasing components with source (unheard of in the VB world)
Fast forward to today and it almost looks like:
.NET + Chrome + VS + ReSharper or CodeRush
would be the better choice than what Delphi is offering. If Delphi was to provide a comparable framework to .NET that would be native compiled code and in future support 64-bit, that would be a different and innovative choice. It also might just bring back those Delphi people who decided to move to .NET and VS 2005. If it built a better GUI windowing system vs WinForms/WPF/XAML that was cross platform (Linux, OSX) and rendered fast then that would be a different choice.
I think it has already lost the .NET race and is too far behind to try and compete with C#/VS combination. It would make more sense to offer package with a plug-in for VS IDE and a new Delphi language like Chrome for .NET than to try and play catchup. People who want .NET 2.0 have already moved to VS and C# or Chrome.
Key problem is that Borland was known for true innovation in the past and offering different choices. Then due to mismanagement they lost alot of key people to MS, specifically the designer of Delphi/VCL. And we can see from the attractiveness of .NET and C# that he did bring his influence to MS in its design. So the choice Borland management is left with is to get onboard with MS since they did not want to fund the resources to do anything innovative with Delphi and the VCL. That money went to the Core SDP and Inprise crap.
Today we have things like AOP in Java, Generics, Reflection, true full Serialization of objects, and hugh open source projects supporting both Java (Hibernate, Spring, Struts) and .NET (NHibernate, dotNetNuke, Atlas Control Toolkit, Piccolo, Mono).
But if you look at the VCL it is just not up to snuff when compared to todays modern frameworks. And the choice Borland/DevCo leaves you with is to move to .NET for these new things.
Delphi offers ECO, but look at the options .NET has:
http://csharp-source.net/open-source/persistence
DevCo, I think needs to stop thinking like Borland and do some radical and innovative things. But, first deliver what their customers need today, right now.
- Stable and Fast IDE
- Good Help system in IDE
- Generics and a better Collections Framework in Win32
- More RTL functions from FastCode project in Win32
- Unicode in Win32
- streaming and serialization of objects (both binary and XML) in Win32
- first class open Tools API and fully documented, so that 3rd Party can focus on IDE enhancements (i.e. JetBrains, DevExpress)
- mobile device support (Palm, CE)
- version control support for Subversion, PerForce, etc.
Then announce that 64-bit native compiler is in progress and started.
And eventually announce what new features are planned for the native VCL/RTL:
- RTTI expanded to offer full Reflection like modern languages
- ECO for Win32 or a simplier persistence framework, maybe one based on Hibernate/NHibernate
or release the Bold Source to opensource
- MVC framework making use of tech. like AOP and XML based GUIs (i.e. XUL, XAML)
- Cross platform support for Linux and OSX in the native compiler
- easy to implement multithreading programming support for dual cores
- native code interoperatibility with .NET code, I know Java can iteract with .NET
- new TWebBrowser built around Mozilla XUL or ActiveX XUL control
Java Spring is a good example of the innovation we need to see in the VCL. Spring allows developers to add cross cutting features to all their code with having to change any code using AOP programming. So I can add persistence, logging, transactions, security, MVC implementation, etc without changing my code. And it makes it so flexible that I can choose what persistence or MVC implementation I want to use and can switch it out with no changes to code or classes. All this is done via the technology of AOP. However, native Delphi would need language improvements in RTTI (full reflection) and more powerful interfaces to be able to accomplish anything like this.
I think Borland needs to get back to its roots of offering developers different choices than Microsoft. Thos classic Borland market and customer base was built on their customers love of fast compiled native code and easy to use VCL. And I think DevCo should focus on just this right now.
Maybe DevCo could still use .NET at its core but have Delphi compile it down to native code. And wrapper the WPF GUI framework into its VCL and have it generate native implementations that use fast hardware accelerated features. Maybe it could even generate native GUIs for Linux and OSX in future versions from the same code. It could then market as, Hey, use .NET but make sure you use Delphi so it compiles to a fast native code application for any platform. Wow, would that be impressive. However, I am not even sure if one can take a VM language and make it compiled. But I thought I have seen this done before for Java.
October 7th, 2006 at 4:18 pmI must agree with *everything* that Jeff.C said!
The addition of .NET, while possibly a useful tool, was both untimely and unneccessary. To force .NET upon the developers who didn’t trust the technology, back in the unstable 1.0 days, was very unkind. Thanks to .NET and SpeechTools I reformatted my computer 8 times trying to get a stable install of Windows. What came across to me, a hobbyist and developer, was that Borland was actively courting Microsoft without any heed to its userbase.
The roadmap/list of innovations and improvement that Jeff posted are extremely needed. I’m not a professional in the sense that I use Delphi to earn myself a living, I am just a hobbyist, but I am still very interested in those features. Better help and built in unicode support are some things that I would love, so that I could use XML to provide translation data with my applications. And the option or possibility of integrating Mozilla/Firefox XUL into my applications gives me so many more possibilities then the ActiveX/IE version that I find myself almost jealous of the other languages.
I am using the Turbo Delphi Explorer edition right now and have no intention of upgrading to the professional version. I cannot actually afford that, nor does it provide anything truly useful to me. And while the new compiler is nice, I migrated from D6 Educational Edition, there is very little new features that provide power to me, the hobbyist. Refactoring is probably the only thing, plus Sync-ed editing, that I use in the entire ‘new features’ list.
Nick, my entire mindset right now about Turbo Delphi is summed as this: Innovate … or migrate. And I will do so if there is no innovation. FreePascal is starting to look good, and so are other languages even though I very much enjoy pascal. I hate to make that sound like an ultimatim though. DevCo needs to seperate from Borland so that they can lose the influences from them as well as MS (a majority stockholder I think).
October 8th, 2006 at 8:37 amI personally would like to see more cross-platform ( oooo dirty word ) support. I have even started looking into using the opensource FreePascal ( http://www.freepascal.org ) compiler because it works on Win32, MacOS X, Linux and a host of other Operating Systems as well as generating 64bit native code. The downside is that they are only Delphi 5 compatible. I’m really starting to think that this is a small price to pay for such a wide variety of OS support. Heck they even managed to get the compiler to create Game Boy Advanced executables ( http://itaprogaming.free.fr/tutorial.html )
October 8th, 2006 at 12:22 pmI would rather use a DevCo product, but since .NET cross-platform capability is the only option I may have to say no thanks and look at FreePascal and their fledgling RAD IDE called Lazarus ( which also works on MacOS X and Linux ).
I recently had to upgrade the firmware on my ADSL modem to support VOIP. The upgrade failed and the modem was usless. The manufacturer’s response was that they don’t support that model anymore. They did suggest that I ‘upgrade’ to their newer models.
I did upgrade, but I looked for another manufacture - one that had a recovery procedure for failed firmware upgrades and support and releases of firmware for old versions of their harware. I found one!
After failing with D2005, and no support, I’ve moved on, in a similar mode as for the ADSL modem.
If I don’t support old versions of my products ( use D7 for this) I would be out of customers by now. Why would they come back for a new version when the last one does not work/is not going to be fixed? How come it takes you guys, with fleshed out marketing etc depts so long come to realise this ?
October 8th, 2006 at 9:07 pmThere is an existing Delphi Gecko VCL available at http://www.ftp.newbielabs.com/Delphi%20Gecko%20SDK/ that uses the Gecko SDK. This might be an alternative to using the IE engine for Help by not being tied to a specific version.
Bill
October 8th, 2006 at 11:43 pmI am have been using delphi since D5 and I just wish that more tools were available for me to do the thing I want.
I am currently using D7 pro - I have copies of D8 and D2005 pro
1. An easier way to ftp sftp etc…
2. An easier way to talk to a web services…
3. more components with the IDE
4. extra standard components with more features.
90% of the controls I use are third party controls.
I think about upgrading to D2006 every so often and probably will once I here that the IDE has become rock solid.
October 9th, 2006 at 5:21 amNick,
I have been a loyal Delphi user since version 1 and currently running D7. The real issues are
1. I have no need at the present time for Delphi .NET (1.1) except to experiment with the 1.1 framework. For C# I would go to VS2005 and .NET I cannot justify the price of BDS2006 or Turbo explorer Pro
2. I feel you should offer loyal users of previous versions an upgrade price to Turbo Delphi (Win32) for a reasonable amount $100 or $120 adjusted for local markets.
So I may await BDS2007 and see what happens.
I wish you & DevCo/ToolsGroup all the Best
October 9th, 2006 at 5:36 amSo, Nick… you heard a lot about why people are not willing to upgrade or update…
One thing is quality… the other pricing .. another: missing features, that are available in MS VS.
We all know, that Borland spends a lot of money doing ALM-Software… I am a developer and I am still confused about the direction of Borland. Maybe they earn a lot of money with ALM, but this has nothing to do with the Borland Company we all know.. (I started with turbo Pascal on DOS).
To be in the market next year you have to be better than MS VS. I laughed out loud, when I listened to DAVID I. He excused the missing of .NET 2.0 with the policy of Microsoft. He honestly told us, that Microsoft would not tell Borland all the specifications of .NET 2.0. This is silly, because at this time you could by books on NET 2.0… can’t you guys read ???
I use VS to develop applications for Compact framework. You know this word ? Compact ???? 3 years ago, MS was on the market with the fist IDE to develop for mobiles etc… Borland ? Nothing… and today still nothing… WAKE UP…
I am totally embarrassed about DEVCO… This is going on for 6 month now… or longer… and with no effect… the only effect I see is, that people are moving to MS or other "free" software to develop… I am still developing software with Delphi.. BDS10 to be concret… a lot of things don’t work like in D5 odr D7, but there are a lot of things, that are quite good…
October 9th, 2006 at 12:55 pmI want to go on, using Borland or DEVCO Software to develop, but I don’t think, that in the year 2009 anyone talks about you, if you do it the way you did it the last year.
>> This is silly, because at this time you could by books on NET 2.0… can’t you guys read ???
You assume alot. I think they are working at a much lower level than the API information you would get in a book. The CIL layer is where they would be working at and I am sure at the point they were in development the MS spec for this lower level functionality was probably not signed off on.
October 9th, 2006 at 2:38 pmSo, Microsoft treated RemObjects (Chrome) good and Borland (Delphi) bad? Possibly. But I cannot believe that they refused to sell an MSDN subscription to Borland so that they cannot use all the .NET 2.0 previews and cannot make Delphi 2006 run on .NET 2 as well as on .NET 1.1.
For a VS 2005 user installing .NET 1.1 for Delphi 2006 is a pain. I agree it is not exactly a downgrade, but it feels like one.
DevCo people themselves understand pretty well that there should be no reasons why Delphi 2006 cannot target .NET 2 by just referencing .NET 2 assemblies. They even promised a demo showing how to do that.
October 10th, 2006 at 12:14 amI was away for a few weeks when this post came through so I only got to see the comments made after the content was taken down. I have to say though that it is amazing how people are always dissatisfied, regardless of the detail.
I can also give you a long list of reasons not to upgrade to D2006, but then again, I could do the same for D6 and D7. And if I did go through the forty pages worth of comments, chances are most of my concerns will have been raised.
The point is that Nick did two things that deserves praise:
1. He asked the question
2. He took down the comments
The first one, it seems everyone acknowledges as a very good and very un-Borlandlike thing to do. I simply don’t get why he is getting so much flack for the second one.
The reasoning why he had to stop taking comments is simple - if he has forty pages worth of feedback, it will take very long to work through it. And fact is, that if I had added my reasons before he took it down, there would likely have been a lot of overlap with the forty pages worth that he has already taken. You need a cut-off point or the list will become impossible to go through - "counter-productive" as he said.
Thing is, the Borlandlike thing would be not to ask the question at all, and if you did and the response was so great, it would simply be abandoned - refer to the hordes of QC reports that has been there for years if you need confirmation of this.
He didn’t remove the post so you couldn’t post comments anymore, or for some silly cover-up. He simply drew a line in the sand and notified us.
My biggest gripe with Borland even since the early days of Delphi has always been the complete lack of transparency or even feedback on any important issues. With Alan going up in the ranks and the arrival of Nick, this situation has been almost completely reversed. Give them credit and stop whining over potential for conspiracies.
October 10th, 2006 at 2:45 amUsing D7 and happy. To change to a new version requires new third party components which may or may not be available and not worth investigating unless there is some supreme advantage with the newer Delphi version which isn’t evident.
Switching from D5 to D7 was a drag because my app wouldn’t compile. D7 came with Indy components replacing the previous Internet set (can’t remember the name) and I had to re-write everything connected to that. I am afraid if I switch to anew version I will have major headaches again.
Also, I am adverse to change especially with the IDE and once familiar I want to keep it the same. I don’t like the XP windows Start Menu..prefer Classic Start Menu. Some things are best left unchanged. (clue: who drinks new coke?) If it works, leave it alone.
My wish for Delphi is Unicode VCL support and controls that rival today’s web controls. There used to be so many third party tools for Delphi and now there is very little new stuff available. Very sad. I am waiting to see who is devco otherwise will have to follow MS. That is as as much as an emotional change as a divorce.
October 10th, 2006 at 5:31 pmI will upgrade soon as I start programming new version of my product.
October 11th, 2006 at 6:17 amI’m another loyal user since D1. Yes, D8 and D2005 created a lot of bad will (our company probably spent 25k on the two upgrades - both unusable). We have upgraded to D2006 and are reasonably happy. In fact, after a lot of testing, we said, yeah, the last two versions were dogs, but this version is pretty good - and Borland is on the right track (we upgraded before the split). I thought the split was a fine idea - but what the heck is going on? We were told months ago an announcement would be made in September. I want to be told EVERYDAY that DevCo is investing in Delphi and it is going to be a real player in the future. When was the last company announcement about Highlander?
Unlike many of the posts we stayed with Delphi specifically because of its ability to do win32 and .net (at least in theory). Our target market wanted to hear that our company has a .net strategy. While I personally believe that outside of ASP.net (which is pretty good) .net is a solution to a problem that does not exist (not if you are a good developer using a good language like Delphi), Microsoft dominates the market (at least ours) and they push .Net hard - if you are an ISV selling to businesses and non profits - you have to address the .net issue (although this is abating somewhat).
Here is my opinion - as both a developer and the president and CEO of one of the fastest growing companies in the US, of what DevCo needs to do with its product:
Must Haves - and soon (next three months)
1) Focus on the quality of the development environment and resulting code - ALM on top of a sub-par development environment = no sales. Get the development environment right first. AND FIX THE HELP ENVIRONMENT.
2) Provide outstanding native Support - be the first to really tout 64 bit support - it’s great for ISV’s like us - and we spend lots of money on development tools. With the issues with Vista and .Net (removing much of the .Net code to make it responsive) - developers not doing .net have a strong case for native code.
3)Provide .Net 2/3 support (yes, I want it all) - I saw an advertisement in programmers paradise for Turbo - and how you can create .net 1.1 applications - that’s embarrasing - .net 2.0 has been out for a long, long time. With limited resources, focus on web-based interfaces (ASP.Net) and Web services that support Ajax. It would be nice to create a native 64 bit web service that can easily be called by a .net control or service. Ideally - creating services in Native 64 bit code that can be called my any other language (Java, .Net, etc) would be ideal, e.g., Create the service, Select the wrappers you would like to put around it, compile.
1 year down the road - this really depends on the depths of the pockets of your acquirer. What would I love to see and could actually increase revenue for DevCo (but may be a pipe dream):
1) Mac is making a move - big-time on the desktop and on the server - and it is Unix based. I see it in our clients who before would never even consider buying Macs but are now aching to buy them - but won’t because there are no business applications for them. I do not know what the technical challenges are, but I do remember Delphi for AS/400. I think the ability to write once for Mac and PC is a strong counterpoint to .Net. AND Mac people will pay money for software, like windows users. Leave the open source market to the do gooders. It is also a space that MS will not attack - they exist to push their operating system - so creating a development environment for the Mac is not a high priority for them.
anyway, my 2 cents.
October 11th, 2006 at 8:24 amYou ruined the help - you took all of the friendly examples out, which has left me (who dabbles with Delphi as a hobby - I am not a professional developer) confused and frustrated
October 12th, 2006 at 9:39 amA while back I would have considered upgrading. BCB 5’s compiler was so slow and the linker next to useless. Now, with the third party compiler boosters and ULINK to do the linking I can’t see any point in upgrading. I have fast and stable builds!
I have no need for .NET and all of the 3rd party component libraries I use support BCB 5.
Unless giving you some of my hard earned $$$ would give me something in return I can see no point in upgrading.
October 17th, 2006 at 5:49 amI actually have upgraded, from Delphi 5 - mainly because my add-on components are starting to drop support for D5. But I’m having a heck of a time making the transition. I hate it. Can anyone point me to a link that makes the change less painful?
October 19th, 2006 at 10:41 amFor me are Delphi 4, Turbo Pascal :), Delphi 7 and kylix best Borland products
i’m prefered Delphi 7 it is stale Framework 1.1 is working 2 on this product and it have good quick Interface
newest versions are unstable to much bugs in interface and in .net compiler
October 31st, 2006 at 2:13 amI was waiting for full unicode support back in the good old days when I still used Delphi 5. I was sure it would be remedied in D6 but no, then D7, D8, D2005 and D2006 and STILL you have to use the free 3rd party TNT Unicode Controls to get unicode support in your win32 development.
This is my single biggest issue with Delphi (and I’m using D7). Granted I can write .NET code in BDS2006 which has full unicode support, but I want to keep my win32 codebase and get full unicode support in the VCL.
Does anyone know if there are any plans for full unicode support in the upcoming BDS 2007?
November 8th, 2006 at 10:44 am