Now the new version is in the open I found me talking to myself yesterday (...) about when and why I should buy the new version. I am curious enough to want to get my hands on it, but really haven't found an argument for upgrading yet. The new features in the language are not the ones that will solve all my remaining whishes for my software. I am using DevExpress components and not using ribbon toolbars (yet), so there's not a lot of new things in the VCL for me.
I do want unicode though, badly, so that is a good reason. But I'm using the DevExpress components so I need to wait for those to be 2009-ready. So, I have decided to wait for them to come with a unicode compatible release of their components before buying 2009. Since everybody says that implementing unicode with 2009 is so easy, it shouldn't take long, but I'm not really sure about that to be honest. We'll see...
What about you? Can you control yourself and find a decent reason to upgrade? Or are you susceptible for the hype-like messages about 2009 and find you running to the shop already?
Bye,
Bart
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
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37 comments:
I want generics, no doubt. There are other improvements and several other new "nice to haves", but right now I am pissed off about the EU markup vs US price...
http://delphi.fosdal.com/2008/08/delphi-2009-pricing-euro-markup-147.html
It depends also how generics will be implemented. I hope they will be well integrated with the existing VCL and implemented by a smart Delphi guru, since having generics without a coherent set of RTL classes won't help much.
Not using new language features, not using unicode, should wait for new versions of DevExpress and some other components, offended by the price policy, not knowing if the bugs from Delphi 2007 are settled, will certainly not rush to upgrade.
For the moment I dont have any plans to upgrade simply because is more expansive then the competition.
Do you really think that Delphi 2009 be more expansive then VS2008 considering that VS2008 haves 4 programming options against 1.
Embarcadero should try to get more delphi programmers lowering the price.
I understand the policy of Borland not lowering the price but we have a new player with Delphi and should try to get more programmers to change to Delphi.
Personally I don't believe in Delphi future. New features after two yers of development are not enough (where is skinning?). I started to migrate my applications to .net.
Skinning? I don't see any big benefit CodeGear would get out of supporting skinning... This is really something a third party vendor can do, if there's economic incetive.
Maybe you want to check out Raize Components if you want some custom colors.
And to Bart,
Sounds like you may want to wait for DevExpress if all your projects rely on that. But it looks like a nice upgrade to me, especially as I write unicode apps only and can finally start using the standard components and large parts of the RTL again, plus generics. :Q__
Unicode is the killer feature that made me decide to move to the new version from my current Delphi 7. But I'll be waiting until all the component vendors fully support it. Due to the nature of my projects, many of the components I use are "string-intensive", and I don't believe that you can just recompile them and go.
Overall, I see that the new release brings life to the Delphi community and it gives me a strong hope that Delphi is going to revive and prosper again.
I firmly believe in Delphi, but I will wait for the next version as I am looking for some specific features that are important to me. Codegear is only now beginning to move in the right direction, after a number of years straying around.
I'm upgrading right away through SA, and will move my projects as soon as it's practical.
Unicode and Generics are my big ticket items, and there are any number of other fixes and improvements. My apps that need Unicode will be much more straight forward, and Delphi 2009's reference counted UnicodeString should be significantly faster than manipulating WideStrings.
Delphi as a language is cumbersome compared to C#, but for Win32 there's not many choices, so I'm going nowhere.
I compile to Win32 (as opposed to .Net) to target as many Win versions as possible (engineering world has many very old apps in use). Therefore, losing Win95/98/ME capability is bad news.
The big excitement, however, is definitely Generics, but it's a brand new feature and bound to be full of issues in version 1.0 (no criticism, it's normal) so I'll wait for a version 1.1 or 2.0 - and perhaps someone can work out a way of wrapping the unicows.dll around Delphi 2009 applications to make Unicode codepage compatible by then!
If I still was on Windows, I'd be upgrading. Generics and better container classes being the big thing for me.
The price for new users is a little steep. But I think the increased productivity (mainly due to the awesome compile speed) should be worth it.
I will upgrade to Delphi 2009 right now, unicode is very important for internet programming. But the very best thing is the new datasnap. It's very very cool!!.
I'm going to wait for those smarter and better at programming than me to run it through it's paces. Then I'll buy. And for the first time I'll spend my own money on the enterprise version instead of the Pro version.
I am a hobbyist using D7. I can code quite nicely without generics and don't need Unicode. The upgrade price is somewhat prohibitive.
What may make me upgrade : Something like Delphi2Javascript similar to Google Web Toolkit or converting a TForm via mapping if necessary to Javascript and other exciting innovative features.
Client libraries for Google and other Web service providers written in Delphi(could be done by third parties)
no, i will not buy it until CodeGear removes those earners-in-the-middle for non-us-citizen... ...or i find a legal way to buy it from within usa.
I'm currently asking this very question in a poll on my blog (www.deltics.co.nz/blog).
So far those with SA have the lead, with enthusiastic updaters fairly close behind.
For myself, the fact that the VCL has not been "genericised", other than in the provision of some generic containers, has taken some of the shine off of generics.
As has the lack of type inferencing (which in general I am uncomfortable with, but which is useful in the context of generics).
As has the lack of generic method support for unit level procedures.
The Unicode issue is also a HUGE hurdle in terms of migrating complex projects that I *know* will not be straightforward as they rely on characteristics of ANSI strings for key performance and implementation details.
And all that aside, using all these new features immediately closes out users of previous Delphi versions as possible users of any code I might right.
I would love to get hold of D2009 to have a play, but I don't see it replacing D7 as my work-a-day Delphi version for a long time yet, and on that score the cost is prohibitive.
So I'll most likely be downloading the trial for those "play" purposes, but not actually purchasing, not yet anyway.
Now, if there were a Turbo Explorer Edition....
While some of the new features sound exciting, I don't need them urgently now. However, I need Win64 executables badly, so I will definitely upgrade once Commodore is out.
No. I stopped buying Delphi around Delphi 2006. I think Borland lost their way, and so has the team developing Delphi.
I switched to C#. It has its faults, but it is free.
DevExpress is the hurdle holding us back too. We desperately need unicode but as we use DevExpress extensively we have to wait the "couple of months" they have indicated for 2009 compatibility.
Paul
I've used Delphi 4 for 10 years with great success. I patiently awaited Unicode, and now that it's finally here, I jumped for the upgrade.
Not an easy transition, though.
Delphi 4,5,6,7 - all excellent products
Delphi 2005 - Very buggy, very expensive
Delphi 2006 - Very buggy, very expensive, not worth upgrading
Delphi 2007 - Very buggy, very expensive, not worth upgrading
So Delphi 2009? - Fool me 3 times, shame on you, fool me 4 or more times, shame on me.
I am recommending that my company does not waste anymore money on this product.
You forgot Delphi 8 - Very buggy, very expensive.
I finally shifted from D7 to D2007, which has become pretty good after several updates.
How easy it was to switch from D7 to D2007, did you have any problems with compatibility of third-party components?
I would buy it any day if I could order it online from outside the US. Why make it so difficult to get a legal copy? Why doesn't CodeGear get rid of local agents that does not add any value?
I upgraded from D7 to D2007 when it was first released. Had a few hiccups along the way but relatively pain free. I actually don't mind the D2007 workings now.
Really debating what I will get out of D2009. Although we are about to get a big AUD price increase and I'm tempted to get it before the price moves. Just don't know how many issues I will have with the 3rd party components that we use given Unicode implementation etc.
Unfortunatly, Delphi is becoming a worse product at every new release. The upgrade price (when you buy this kind of license)is too high. I have buyed Delphi 2005 (aargh!) and Delphi 2007, but I have downgraded this 2 to Delphi 7. Even D2007 is too buggy and is a hungry resource eater. the HELP is terrible slow and incomplete.
The worse thing is that Borland seems to keep a lot of useful information hidden from us: very poor documentation about OTA and no sources from a lot of Units. I still have problems with refactories that doesn't work, unit references almost impossible to find, and a very Unstable and buggy IDE (dude, the object inspector sucks on those new versions!).
D2009 seems to be in the same way as the previous versions, except that IDE looks more like other embarcadero products, and just a little bit more stable.
Im very upset because even today, Delphi for Win32 doesn't have a decent component set to deal with WebServices. I have to use MS Soap Toolkit because HTTPRIO is too buggy, and it doesnt works fine when dealing with String messsages bigger than 1Mb... This problem exists since version 7.
And there are many other bugs like that one. This is just a small piece of a big iceberg.
You can see that DELPHI is almost dead by looking in amazon.com: there is no good book about Delphi since 2005. Nobody wants to write about it...
Delphi is like a wife that has cheated on me once too often. I loved her for so long and I love her so much. But there's no future there.
Delphi 2007 IDE had too many memory leaks. Delphi 2009 still sucks. Delphi is RAD for simple stuff. For complex stuff it is just SAD.
Gosh! I am a Delphi 6 user still (think its great!!). Would like to web enable my app, was thinking of going for D2009 for the web vcl and to upgrade my Win32 user interface. It is a rather expensive upgrade though, would need enterprise version. MattB.
Guys, this is a professional forum, not a shit hole, so save your anger to yourselves.
I agree that Delphi 6 was the best version yet, stable and fast.
I do not agree that Borland is hiding information from us, since the entire VCL is open for exploring, allowing a FAR better understanding of the code.
It it sad that the new .net versions are heavy and complex, this is the major problem with .net in general.
I believe that with the right attitude Delphi could be turned back to the smart and efficiant app we all want.
And to CodeGear guys reading this forum, we all hope you can do it.
Gal
I had programmed Delphi since the very first version, going from one version to the next without pain...until 2009. Is a complete failure. Tons of code didn't event compile and much less ran because I use TStringFields with TIBTable and according to the teamb girls, that's a complete and unforgivable error (using objects what they are intendended for). TstringField is now ANSISTRING instead of STRING! and lots, lots of code crashed in 2009
See https://forums.codegear.com/thread.jspa?threadID=7641
Alvaro (aka Anonymous),
That's not what was said.
https://forums.codegear.com/message.jspa?messageID=74654&tstart=0
Upgraded to D2009 a few months back. Just got around to using it. Tried to port one of our apps to it from D6. You've GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!
All PChar need to be changed to PAnsiChar??? StrAlloc is broke? Strings are all broke.
Really thought the Delphi Team had learned its lesson about breaking virtually all code. Who the heck has thousands of hour to convert existing apps to D2009. And now D2010 is already out. It's been a good run, but in this economy, I have to make decisions to IMPROVE my software, not spend months just converting it to the latest IDE. Unicode just is not that important.
I upgraded to Delphi 2009 from Delphi 3. Yes - I did stuggle for a few hours with unicode... but it does not take long to understand what you need to amend and the benfits of unicode are worth the effort. I found I can upgrade most code in a matter of minutes!
I have found 2009 to be really stable and produce very compact code - It does not have all the overbloated code that 2005 has (I tested that before and did not like it).
After a few years with dodgy .net versions of delphi, I am pleased that Delphi seems to be back on track and I am getting superb results! (With none of the bloated .net overhead)
Overall 2009 is excellent. (And there are books on 2009 - Bob Swart and Marco Cantu have done them!) Go to www.lulu.com to get them!
I worked with Delphi 6 & 7 for over 10 years. Does not want to pay a huge price for D2009 just to keep in touch.
Delphi is prohibitively expensive, compared to Visual Studio. Express versions of VS are free and Professional versions are moderately priced. Unlike Delphi, Visual Studio Professional has most of the capabilities of its enterprise counterpart.
Comparing professional to enterprise, Delphi Professional is like Visual Studio Express edition.
Sorry Borland, Inprise, Borland (again), CodeGear, Embarcadero.
I've been a Delphi programmer for most of my life and I think it's the best damn programming language I've ever used. Delphi 7 was easy, fast, intuitive, and I can program in it with my eyes closed.
The problem with recent Delphi versions is that it's not well marketed, has stability issues, has been bought and sold too many times (Borland, then Inprise, then CodeGear, and now CodeGear is a subsidiary of Embarcadero, etc.) and they charge a million dollars for it!
The way to solve the problem is to come up with an affordable, mass-marketed product that has all of the stability and easy-of-use of Delphi 7, has modern features like Unicode and generics, and can be easily used to develop either desktop or web applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio.net, for all it's popularity, is still harder to use than Delphi. The IDE sucks compared to Delphi. For example, there is no way to search for a component in the tool box or a property in the object inspector. In Delphi you can search both of these by merely typing! Furthermore, trying to do something as fundamental as connecting an application to a Microsoft Access database in VS is a nightmare. I frustrated over it for a day and still didn't get it to work. In Delphi I got it to work in 5 minutes.
Delphi is older, has more history, was the first real RAD tool, and is still the best tool for productive application development out there. If CodeGear can bundle a version of their development suite that gives people the choice to write native Win32 or web applications in C# or Object Pascal, and make the product affordable to the public, they'd make a killing. They could bury Microsoft again, the way they did with Delphi in the 1990s.
To connect your app to any database on Visual Studio, you only need one line of code (or none, if you do it by "server explorer" window).
Delphi debugging tools are terrible if compared with Visual Studio. And the worse thing on Delphi is his Web Framework (IntraWeb, WebBroker, etc...) TOTALLY UNPRODUCTIVE!
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