The Delphi Survey
26 Oct
Hey, the Delphi Survey is back! It’s long, but well worth the time. Please go and fill it out as completely and as thoroughly as you can. We really read and study and use and act on the valuable information we get from it. Your opinions really matter and really make a difference. Thanks in advance for taking the time. We really do appreciate it.
You guys really need to add "What’s This?" buttons for your "Feature Requests" area. "2-way Unit Testing" sounds interesting, but a Google search doesn’t show anything obvious. I remember thinking the same thing in one of the previous surveys, when I hadn’t yet been exposed to "Edit and Continue" and a few other Visual Studio technologies. It took some guessing to figure out what each of the different "xyz Insight" options represented too.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:59 amHi,
I really don’t understand why this survey is designed this way! Wasn’t there any better way for asking about popularity of features? It is irritating that user has to count number of available features for a given question, then divide 100% among them to show which one is more interesting to him/her! specially when the number of features to consider are more than 4 or 5 items.
The options in each question must have been grouped better, not showing a list of tens of options and just apologizing that the options list is long.
I went through page 1 to 6 (or maybe 7), and there after spending lots of time answering all the questions, I abandoned, because pressing Next button would have loaded the same page, with no error message. After checking the answers twice and filling all the blank fields, it didn’t work, and I abandoned.
Why should a survey be design in such a way? Wasn’t really any better way to conduct a more user-friendly survey?!
Regards
October 26th, 2009 at 8:55 amAli - I agree…that survey is ridiculously long-winded. I got to like page 3 where I saw this HUMONGOUS list of features by 5 or 6 checkbox columns wide…and said "whoa!! are you kidding me!?".
I gave up too then…I just don’t have the stamina for filling out long surveys like that. LOL Make it simpler…10 minutes tops to fill out and then I can participate.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:13 amYes, lot to fill in;-). But interesting question especially … Customzing ones own Delphi … For 15 years I have been praying that this day will come:-)))).
Mike
October 26th, 2009 at 9:21 amIt was long but the later pages do get shorter - I left a number of lists of features completely blank when they didn’t apply to me.
It strikes me it is like voting. If you don’t bother completing the survey then you partially forfeit your right to complain about what they include in future versions. If you care then give it 20 minutes to complete.
October 26th, 2009 at 9:33 amI have always filled out these survey’s and occasionally felt some were a little long but I couldn’t get through this one. Please either make multiple shorter surveys or something we can work on, stop, then re-enter at a later time. I appreciate the quality and stability you’ve added to the product. Wish I had time to investigate all the new features.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:09 amA note for future : questions need to ask for information or opinion, but not both simultaneously unless you run a full matrix.
Getting the options: "I use feature X and love it" and " "I do not use feature X and hate it"
do NOT allow for an answer I am comfortable with. There are many features I use, but do not like. I use them because they sort of do the job and I lack options. And there are many features I do not use, but do not hate, I just have no need for them (now, yet, ever - it varies).
Answer options like that REALLY annoy me and offend me. If I use the option but do not LIKE the option (it works badly or it barely does the job, or causes me almost as much work as not using the option), I am inclined to answer that I don’t use it, but that doesn’t feel entirely honest either.
So ya, that sums it up - I end up feeling like I am being forced into a box that is lie no matter what I answer and neither answer really fixes whatever problem I might have with the feature.
Please, who ever creates the survey - don’t try to words in my mouth. In the long run, you get answers that are only misintrepretable and do not serve anyone well in the long run.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:13 amJust a minor point, but on page 2/17:
Q8. I use Delphi to primarily…
This question assumes I develop for the web, or databases, or simply want to create nice GUIs. This does not address the possibility of a non-web, non-database, core to an application.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:54 amA couple of possible improvement points:
[1] How about using sliders so that I can rate something the equivalent of two and a half. Gets away from making my answer exactly one of your terms when I really want to say, "Yeah, but…" or "A bit better than that."?
[2] Why not use a smarter wizard. If I don’t use a feature (say Prism), then the next sub-sections, all dealing with Prism get reduced to [A] Do you not use Prism by Choice [B] By lack of familiarity [C] by reasons of time or economy.
Secondly, when inputting pricing and upgrade levels, I wasn’t able to express anywhere my full upgrade plan. I opted to increase price by approximately 150 per cent from one version new to the next. I opined yearly upgrades of approximately 50 per cent would be right.
But I couldn’t say that that upgrade price would be only for one version to the next. I wanted to point out that guys like me, who waited till this year to upgrade D7, shouldn’t get the same upgrade cost as the guy who’s given you the 50 per cent a year seven times since. I suggest that the upgrade price jump 10 per cent a year for each of the four next versions. By five different version gapping, you are, in essence, a new customer.
The reason I suggest this, is because I don’t see a D7-D2007/8/9 gap re-occurring again. There are very legitimate reasons I held onto D7. I just can’t see the same level of hesitation for future RAD Studios, although I will, frankly, be very unlikely to purchase D2011. Almost none of the touted features to be added to it, make my must-buy list (I’d STILL love a drop-in tool that would transform all BDE’s to dbExpress components. I know it’s not rocket science, but with a couple of hundred in one project, a wizard would be BRILLIANT!). And the cost of upgrading third-party components is just as much an issue as the cost, stability and abilities of each succeeding new Rad Studio.
At any rate, I thought the survey, while not aimed at me and unlikely to change my future, was worth the time. As one earlier respondent said, if you don’t participate, you lose the right to gripe.
October 26th, 2009 at 3:52 pm"You guys really need to add "What’s This?" buttons…"
Absolutely!!!
So many terms I wasn’t familiar with but was forced to make a selection.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:43 amI just ignored all the bits that didn’t give me an opportunity to beg for 64-bit!!
I actually reckon I’d be prepared to pay almost anything for a 64-bit upgrade (I’d happily pay $5,000 a licence and probably more!!)
October 27th, 2009 at 3:17 amThis survey is brutal, I tried my best to get through it, but, just can’t stand the non-sense 0-100 scale questions. You should pay people to do this survey. Please keep it simple. Break it down to sessions or something. The problem with the long survey is that by the time you guys finish analyzing them, the real-world requirements would probably change. (Case in point, 64-bit vs Cross-platform) Yes, I agree with David, we need 64bit now. This is what our customers have been asking for.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:26 amWhat’s the value of an anonymous survey anybody can fill telling lies? Someone coding alone using a cracked version could tell he’s using architect edition in a team of 100 and having revenues in excess of $100 million. That’s just noise or worse, and can easily skew results in the wrong direction.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:20 amWhy doesn’t Embarcadero send surveys to customers with unique IDs so it can match customers’ licenses and history with survey data?
A few months ago Microsoft sent a survey to registered Flight Simulator users, but unluckily it wasn’t designed to allow for IDs - when some fools published the link ignoring the NDA, the survey was retired because obviously it would not have reflected the views of actual customer, but would have included those of many "non paying" users.
Yikes - too long. And I got through to page 5, clicked next and was presented with page 5 again - but this time blank.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:39 am"It strikes me it is like voting. If you don’t bother completing the survey then you partially forfeit your right to complain about what they include in future versions. If you care then give it 20 minutes to complete."
What good is a survey to a company if it scares most of the folks away and they don’t complete it or only half-ass fill it out? Isn’t the point of a proper survey is to get as many folks as possible to fill the whole thing out in order to have a healthy pool of votes and better data for analysis for the company - not the individual themselves? How is this survey benefiting me personally? Is there a question about pricing? If not…then {sigh}…
I would say break the survey out into several separate surveys or parts - Main/Key Issues, VCL, IDE and whatever else - and just focus on keeping the questions super simple in order to get as many votes as possible and people don’t fall asleep trying to fill it out, i.e.:
QUESTION: What do you want as the main next feature of Delphi?
Option 1: 64-bit
Option 2: Mac OSX
…and so on - pick one and that’s it. They can easily figure out the percentage and put the most popular feature chronologically easy enough. simple. No need to over-complicate things and have 5 options and let us pick all 5 in the order of importance to us….that’s too much and only makes things more complicated come time to sit down and consolidate the information for analysis.
On the other hand….if Delphi 2010 was thrown in as a free deal to compete the survey - then fine, forget everything I said - I’m in. =D
October 27th, 2009 at 9:25 amit’s way too long, I’m not doing it.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:57 amYou can get a better feed back by using a short survey ver.
I’ve just completed the survey…. It was a bit too long for my taste, with all those 100% calculations to be performed (there are any better survey apps/tools to make it more user-friendly ?) but deh .. since I’m quite an old Delphi fan, I’ll like to also "shape" (with my opinion) the Delphi future, so I took all the pain and I done the survey … I hope that the survey it will be important for Embarcadero to drive Delphi safe in future since it includes allot of interesting "subjects" (concurency, cross-platform, mobile …etc) stuff that make perfect sense.
After the survey, hopefully we will see some roadmap impact/updates (with DATES/TIME RANGES !) and the betas to start rolling also.
Off topic (please comment this out):
====================================
Sorry Nick for disturbing you again, but since I have some SA issues I sent you some emails, but had no reply (as usually in the past) so please check your spam folder (look for "RAD Studio SA expiring/ordering issues" + "Updates: RAD Studio SA expiring/ordering issues")
If possible, please take a look into it and "put your shoulder" to fix this … I count on you !
10x for your great support
October 27th, 2009 at 11:29 amCiprian –
I’m sorry — I’m afraid that I don’t have any emails from you.
Please be sure that you are using
nick.hodges@embarcadero.com
Nick
October 27th, 2009 at 1:13 pmFabulous. Thanks for compiliing this survey.
It really matters that there is someone to listen to what you have to ask for.
10x
October 27th, 2009 at 1:28 pmI agree, despite all my grumbling, the most important thing to me is that Embi is taking this seriously and really wants to know.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:48 pmI pretty much agree with all of the comments made on the usability of the survey itself.
I also agree that this should not have been an anonymous survey. This potentially opens the doors to zealots of a particular feature submitting the survey multiple times to skew the results (BTW: does anybody remember whether previous surveys were also anonymous? I wonder whether this is how xplat got pushed to the top? >;) ).
I don’t mind the length myself. I care. I *can* be bothered. I want to.
One more question: Nick, was there supposed to be some sort of confirmation page like a "Thank you" at the end of the survey? When I clicked the "Done" button on the last page I was simply forwarded to the Delphi product page. Has my vote been counted?
Oliver
October 28th, 2009 at 5:38 amOliver –
If you made it to the Delphi Product Page, your vote was counted.
Nick
October 28th, 2009 at 6:04 amInstalled D2010 bc tomorrow is last day for BOGO deal. Tried to access EDN to download. No joy, site is down.
Seriously, how hard it can be to have working website ?????
October 29th, 2009 at 6:48 amNick,
are there plans to make this survey workable? Many of us have posted reasonable criticism about the current survey’s design and implementation, and I note that many are unable to even complete it for one reason or another. Myself, I don’t have the time to trudge through a poorly-designed 17-page survey that I might not be able to finish!
Official comment?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:34 amM J –
Official Comment? Not from me! I didn’t write the survey, and I don’t have any control over it. I’m just letting you know where it is and encouraging folks to take the time to fill it out. If it is too much, all I can say is sorry.
Nick
October 29th, 2009 at 12:12 pmI finished this survey, and I feel, like I completed DOOM 3, took 2 hours to figure out all the errors and stuff.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:20 pmSome of you folk need to buck your ideas up. The form wasn’t that hard. Anyway, you could always just ignore the bits that weren’t relevant to you. It took me around 15 minutes but that’s well worth it. As I see it you shouldn’t complain about the product if you aren’t prepared to spend the time to provide some useful feedback.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:07 pmI’ve completed the survey.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 amHowever I am quite surprised that there is no "human - check" for it.
Results can be easly affected by some bot…
For example: if I need badly 64 bit I order to my bot to create 1000 surveys for 64 bit option.
Or even better, I make 5000 votes for garbage collection
I also ran into the problem with the same page loading again. There was an error message indeed, but not highlighted or obvious at all. It took me four times until I actually got to the next page.
Strangely enough none of the questions touches the topic of maintenance of current products. And the past records of Borland/Inprise/Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero w.r.t. Delphi/BCB aren’t very convincing. It has become a normal method to simply abandon X-1 and X-2 (and all X-n with n > 2) if X is the current product version. Sometimes you even get that feeling for X itself. For that price and with that kind of maintenance policy I don’t even think about upgrading anymore.
Just look at the competition and think again. Apart from that in Delphi I don’t need all the fancy DB-related stuff, SOAP and "web application" stuff. There are (IMO) other and better tools for these purposes. However, with the Pro version I always get these by default and *pay* for them and even worse have the (disk/memory-wise) overhead of them.
Oh and this text field is TOO SHORT!
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:21 pmTo continue #29:
The Standard edition doesn’t fulfill my needs either, because the VCL sources are missing. Don’t know about the command line compiler, but that is another important feature for me.
Oh, and since we upgraded to RAD Studio 2009 (at work) I also want to comment on the very unsatisfying update wizard (InstallAware?). It’s not transparent to me as the user where the files land (need to actually search them) and it’s not obvious how to use them (without downloading them again without the wizard) after re-installing RAD Studio. E.g. on the same machine after restoring a backup of the system disk which didn’t contain RAD Studio in the first place …
The Unicode transition was nice, but it’s a shame Unicode is now the *only* option, instead of making it a preprocessor decision (as in MS’ C/C++). Oh yeah … were is that preprocessor anyways?
Oh well, no reason to rant any further, for my private use BDS 2006 was the last one and it’s going to stay that way unless the maintenance and pricing policy changes a lot (and unnecessary stuff doesn’t have to be paid dearly). I want Delphi 5/6 and its quality and speed back …
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:30 pmBeen away in CA for the last two weeks and just filled in the survey in 15 minutes. Agreed its a nightmare, but you’ve now had my 2c worth.
I could have saved you all those questions though…. Win64, nothing more, nothing less, but you’ve heard that all before. As per other comments, We would pay you $5,000 per Pro license if you delivered 64 bit in the very near term. Shame it’s not going to happen.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:39 am