You don't have to look very far for people asking the question "Is Delphi Dead?". StackOverflow had a recent question on it, and Delphi developer JamieI recently created a website to answer the question succinctly.
OK, so it was a darling of the 90s and these days it isn't as high profile as it used to be - .NET hurt Delphi badly because it took Delphi's edge away. However, isn't it part of the job of software professionals to keep up to date with what programming languages and tools and available?
I use Delphi exclusively, yet I still know all about the recent versions of Ruby on Rails, C#, PHP, Java, VB.Net, ASP.Net (etc etc) because I make it my job to know about them. I don't read in technical detail about the merits of each and what the new versions provide, but I'm aware of the other tools available in my industry because they are important to the future of software development.
So if I wasn't a Delphi developer, I'd still know that Delphi 2010 was recently launched, that Delphi had a new owner and that the future wasn't over.
Tim Anderson recently posted a blog about the future of Microsoft Access, and he was asked in a comment what development platform he uses, to which he answered "Visual Studio or Delphi". The reply astounded me:
I used Delphi many years ago, I did not realise it was still going.
Now, this was from someone who called themselves "Freelance Access Developer" which may explain a lot about his or her scope of knowledge of the software industry, but surely if you used to use Delphi, you'd notice in passing a headline about the new version coming out or a recent buyout of the company.
Or maybe I just read too much.
15 comments:
I still use delphi 7 :)
I'm also still use Delphi 7
It's a strange answer from Tim, because he writes sometimes about Delphi, and he wrote a specific blog for Delphi 2010.
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1727-delphi-and-c-studio-2010-is-out.html
It wasn't Tim who said he didn't realise Delphi was finished. It was one of his readers, in response to Tim saying he uses Delphi.
Sorry, I thought at first the answer came from Tim, but I recognized now it made by one of his blog readers.
Sorry again.
I've been away from Delphi for quite a while now, but I'm still hoping to return one day.
I'm sick of the C++ compile times and I'm sick of huge .NET runtimes.
By now, I'm using Delphi 5, 6, 7, 2007 and 2010. Each one in a different development project.
Thanks for the comments guys. Although I'm not sure why everyone is telling me what version of Delphi they use?
dotNet did not take away Delphi's edge. The deadful mismanagement at borland combined with deliberate neglect did that.
The lack of a single core person in charge with a vision for the product's future finished off what little edge was left.
As for whether Delphi is dead? Certainly the Delphi marketing department is dead. Dead and buried.
Maybe it is time to appoint a few new people. Someone with a vision of the future to lead the Delphi dev team, and maybe someone into marketing who has actually SOLD something. Anything. Chocolate bars for their kid's school fundraiser even.
It's sad how absolutely non-existant Delphi marketing is.
Dot Net didn't take anything away from Delphi.
It can do some things that Delphi can't, that I don't want. Like 64 bits bytecode (who cares) and having a big fat runtime library (that's a bad thing), and garbage collection (also a bad thing).
There is nothing, anywhere, quite like Delphi. Anybody who says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about. Or merely has a pretty low standard of what they consider "like" something else.
It is its own little thing. I wish it was better known.
I still have Delphi 7, 2007, and 2009 installed. But Delphi 2010 is the best one ever.
Warren
Delphi 7 rocks, even under Windows 7, if you have the know-how. I don't like the RAD approach, and would rather code in Delphi source code without any visual component.
These days, I managed to convert a database framework from Delphi 7 to Delphi 2009, but it was quite a challenge!
But I also tuned my RTL for Delphi 7 and 2007... so everything is possible!
see http://synopse.info
I use Delphi 2007 and planning to go on Delphi 2010
We use Delphi 5 and happy with it.
Unfortunately, Borland or whatever they call themselves this week has forever muddied the water with changes in the product name.
All their products are hopelessly bundled together, it's not even easy to use the Delphi help because it's muddled together with everything else. Now if you're a software geek, you probably know what all this other stuff is. Presonally, I only use Delphi occasionally and always find it a nightmare to get back into. Yes it's easy to drag and drop things to make a program but it's quite another thing to hook it all up.
They would have done much better to totally separate Delphi from all the other products and to document it in a more friendly way.
It's a brilliant tool but it will never be as big as it should be while the geeks rule the presentation and marketing. Just try to figure out what product to buy for a new project if you don't already know the answer. You won't get much help from the Borland web site. It's such a pity.
I think Lazarus has out lived Delphi, I would even the isdelphidead.com site is dead now!
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