Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #95
15 Dec
- The Delphi Prism Reviewers Guide is now available.
- Also available: A Tour of Delphi 2009 - the latest in our White Paper series.
- I’m getting a lot of great feedback about CodeRage III — seems like it was a big success. David I, Anders Ohlsson, Andreano Lanusse, Christine Ellis, and all the presenters worked really hard and put on a pretty good show. So now that it is over, you can download and view the replays.
- Any of you Delphi guys interested in Ruby? If so, you might be interested to see that 3rdRail is now available for $99, and that Turbo Ruby is a new product available for $49. Find out more.
- Marc Hoffman and I did the .Net Rocks podcast this morning. It was fun to take the message of Delphi Prism into the hear of the .Net community. .Net Rocks has been around for a long time — pretty much since the beginning. I think I heard Carl and Richard say that we were show #403 or something in there. It was fun — but thanks goes out to Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell for having us. We are scheduled to be on 06 January, and I’ll be sure to let you know when it gets posted.
What about 64bit Delphi version?
As I understand you used some unannounced webinar to
say that it won’t be available in near future.
I really see you as main story character in next edition of
"In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters".
So blind and stupid attraction to Java, Ruby, NET, VC interface, and everything that Codegear can’t do good and competitively.
Absolute lack of strategy understanding.
Nick looks like some young miss changing new dresses every hour, quite funny for guy who must track feedback.
But wait… He is so busy wearing new dress, so all these developers… Get lost, shmucks!
Make us new Turbo versions at least. So we’ll have something before CodeGear and Embarcadery will go into history.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:33 pmNick, why we should learn from Pavel’s blog that you prepared "A year in the Life of Delphi" webinar (with Nick Hodges) ?!
http://blogs.codegear.com/pawelglowacki/2008/12/16/38633
Some "Random Thoughts" of mine now …
——————————————————–
A lot of events (PDC 2008, RAD 2009, CodeRage III,…) … but still no roadmap ?!
C’mon, after several promises made by you & others regarding the roadmap I think it is time to better put it on the table … All the SEC regulations & co could not be anymore put in front … so please just let us know were we are "going" ….
CG/EB should be more aggressive when promoting their tools …
Just look at MS that is already public-beta their Win 7, VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 … It is not really needed to follow their path, but PLEASE make all your progress more TRANSPARENT to us. So lets have that ROADMAP published and STICK to it (too many changes in last couple of years !) since ISV using CG tools have their own business plans that may be totally disrupted by your continuous "adjustements" and delays (ex: x64).
In previous x64 related blogs & co … it was mentioned that everything went smooth and Commodore will be released in the mid of 2009 (finally) ..
But suddenly we found out that CG is interested more on "cross-compilation" … (remember that long debate with Simon/CrossKylix ?) so as a BONUS we will get another 1 year of delay (does this means the x64 work will be "freezed" in between ?!) …..
Don’t get me wrong, I really love RAD (2009) and the new Prism … but I’ll like to see more cross-pollination (language/features compatibility) between these two into the future and to also see x64 and cross-compilation ASAP (at least at the rate promised in roadmaps)
Conclusion: Publish "THE ROADMAP" & "STICK TO IT" (c) !
All the Best, Marry Christmas !
December 16th, 2008 at 11:27 pmNick,
Have to agree with what has already been commented. Here is my post from Pawel’s blog, which "funnily" enough is exactly what El Cy seems to have done - seen the "announcement" there, commented, then cut and pasted here.
"I’m shooting this from the hip after just reading this post (and missing the webinar, no post event recording nor roadmap etc…). I will try and stay calm and rational….
No. No. No. As a couple of previous comments have touched on, 64 bit IS IN the roadmap and when the Embaracadero deal was going through we were assured that existing roadmaps would be honoured and followed through.
The prominance of 64 bit was (and MUST be ?!) undeniable. The code name of the release was Commodore, with much play made of the Commodore 64 link etc…
Commodore itself was back tracking on 64 bit i.e. Even if the next Delphi release included 64 bit, that itself was the result of broken "promises" (roadmap changes).
My company is one of those very ISV’s (virtually a Micro ISV), that El Cy mentions and we are furious at this. There is no other printable word for it. I would love to scream and shout about this, throw the toys out of the pram. I feel absolutely incensed. Our product has been in need of 64bit for the last 18 months or more (the time period over which a 64 bit Delphi has been promosed, delayed, promised delayed). In turn we have promised partners and customers the features they need in order to keep investing in us.
Thanks Borland, CodeGear and now Embaracadero, you have just screwed us over yet again. Our whole strategy for the next year will now have to be reworked and product plans revised.
If we could afford it, a 6 to 12 month C# rewrite would be my favoured direction now. As it happens that is not out of the question. We already had a partner meeting scheduled for Thursday where we are due to discuss closer ties with their product. Our partners new products are in a C# framework, their old products are still lingering in Delphi 5. Guess which direction they have been pushing us to adopt for the last 12 months or more ?
We will survive this, but it will be inspite of anything Embaracadero do and not because of it."
December 17th, 2008 at 1:32 amWell, if rumors will be confirmed we are at another U turn like the ones we saw in the past six years that drove away lots of Delphi developers.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:03 amAnd once again long time loyal customers are left in the dark and have to plan their future upon rumors.
We aren’t a microISV selling microapplications to microcustomers. We sell software to large engineering, aerospace and automotive companies, and to law enforcement agencies. We don’t plan for the next quarter. We plan for the next three years - and we need to know where our development tools are going to.
Do we need 64 bit? Surely. A year ago. Do we need cross-compiling? Yes, but not at the expenses of the first. Porting applications to a wholly different OS is much different than porting it to the same OS on an improved processor architecture - and I guess the same is true for third-party vendors.
And anyway, lots of user on Linux and MacOSX are already running 64 bit versions of their OSes - like Windows ones are doing.
We didn’t upgrade to Delphi 2009, and until we are unsure about Delphi future and direction we won’t invest in it anymore - now the question is no longer if to upgrade or not, it’s when to abandon Delphi definitively if this is the way CodeGear works and behaves towards customers.
It’s really unbelievable how you can pile up mistake after mistake, error after error, never performing a relity check and stubbornly chosing the wrong way. You lost the clear "vision" Borland had in the golden years. Now you just run after, ape what MS does unthinkingly, waste resources in fashionable languages people expect to use for free just to lower prices after a while…
The market punished you hevaily in the past six years, but you refuse to learn still.
Luigi, try to read
December 17th, 2008 at 11:40 pm"In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters".
You’ll find exact same primers. History won’t teach them.
They are stupid like cows going to slaughter house.