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Peter's Gekko

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Strict Delphi for .NET (I want more than backward compatibility)

Well, my last post on Delphi for .NET did raise some eyebrows....Was I to hard on Delphi because it was just a beta ? Personally I don't think so, it was not my first disapointment with Borland .NET stuff. And a beta should behave better than what I saw, especially if the release is anounced to be in 2003. Thats 2 weeks to go... Another reason for being hard is something I blogged about before in a comment on this. Imho Delphi people should be more critical to their own tool. I used to be like that as well. Actually I still am, only the direction has changed. My personal history goes back to Turbo 2 on my first PC, I'm still emotionally involved. And emotion is not allways the best driving force.

I was wrong with strictly, it should be strict. Sorry, I did remember the word wrong. The main point I read from the comments is that Delphi for .NET aims at a great backwards compatibility. Nick has a point when he mentions projects which are started now, targetting Win32, and will be ported to .net sometime in the future. Using Delphi is a smoother ride then, and still nothing beats Delphi when it comes to Win32. But what will happen after the project migrated ? You can mix tools on the .net platform by definition. And Delphi with a dispose method named destroy and a visibility specifier private which actually means some kind of internal would raise some other eyebrows. Looking back it it al made sense but what about the future ?

blog on,

Peter



Comments

Corbin Dunn said:

>> And a beta should behave better than what I saw,
>> especially if the release is anounced to be in
>> 2003. Thats 2 weeks to go..

You would be amazed how much work Borland developers can get done in two weeks. A beta is a beta. It is not a release candidate, or an RTM. A beta will potentially have problems. Two weeks can make a lot of problems go away.

Corbin Dunn
Borland R&D Software Engineer
# December 17, 2003 2:40 PM

Peter van Ooijen said:

Nick, please do comment !

I think you are right that my somewhat academical point will not count very heavy when evaluating the usefullness of Delphi (for .net).

Delphi does have two faces. On the one side there is this OOP language which has so many beautifull features. On the other side Delphi is a very practical way to just get something done. I care about both but am not a only-Delphi guy. C# has its beauty as well and you can be very productive with vs.net.

Danny Thorpe, whom I respect very much ever since his "Delphi Componenet Design" book, formulated the dillema and Borlands choices quite clearly. Productivity (backwards compatibility) comes first and .net will not be the shaping force of Delphi. Which does make sense.

But to be productive you need a tool which does work. No doubt the Borland team can do a lot in two weeks time but Corbin's comment has me puzzled. What are we looking at ? Last month I allready got invitations to buy Delphi for .net. On the sdgn show last week I was looking at one or two beta's (the speakers could not agree whether they were running the same one). And it was really bad, sorry to say so. Maybe I'm spoiled by the clear MS program of .net betas (which are stable and consistent. Not all feautures are there, but what is does do something comprehensible).
So what will we have on december 31st ? A RC ? Another beta ? I don't know.
# December 18, 2003 1:40 AM

Nick Hodges said:

Peter --

I don't know what you were looking at when you saw the demo at SGDN. It is too bad that it looked so bad.

I gave a demo of D8 at our user group here in Minneapolis/St. Paul last Wednesday. I ran it through some pretty tough paces, looked at just about everything, and it ran fine. Not one crash.

I, for one, doubt very much that Borland would release a product on the level of what you saw. ;-)
# December 23, 2003 10:16 AM

Peter van Ooijen said:

Nick, it was just bad (luck).
Let's look at the good side of these discussions, it has made the position of Delphi for .net quite clear.

Delphi .net is being distributed at the moment. Some sdgn people have it now. I hope they will publish some of their experiences (in the sdgn ng's). I still have some Delphi projects which might be ported sometime in the future. For the moment I'll stay with vs.net and COM interop.
# December 24, 2003 8:34 AM

David Champion said:

I want more than backward compatiblity too.
Delphi 8 cannot be considered without comparison to
C# on .NET.
C# will be fundamental to MS development strategy
for the next 5 years at least and has generated huge interest.
C# feels good.

I would like to run C# and Delphi side by side in the same IDE.
C#Builder appears little more than an attempt to leverage the MDA tools acquired from BoldSoft.
By fusing the new IDE, adding ECO technology and licensing the C# compiler we have C#Builder.

I would like Borland Visual Architect for .Net
Delphi, C# and C++ and other plug in compilers.

I would like Borland made compilers not licensed
technology.

I would like to see Borland keep pace with Microsoft
.Net technologies. Generic programming for delphi 8 to arrive soon after C#.

I would like to see Delphi on more platforms.







# January 12, 2004 1:54 AM

Peter van Ooijen said:

The .NET platforem will be central to MS development, not the C# language. Examples will be mainly in C# but could just as well be in vb.net or Delphi. Although both languages are not as much to the .net-point as C#.

I would like to Delphi and C# in the same IDE as well. CSB and Delphi share the same IDE, but I'm not sure if Borland is heading to that IDE as _the_ IDE. On the 20 years Borland meeting I saw a general IDE for all flavors of C++ on all kinds of platforms. And there is Delphi for Linux (Kylix).

My personal prefernece is Visual Studio and I would still like to see Delphi in there. My next stop on this path will be the Delphi trial. I'm not buying yet... And I don't think Borland will give up licensing on their compilers. They are far to good on that !
# January 12, 2004 6:55 AM

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