You don't sound objective (even if you tryed hard) and your site is sponsored by Microsoft. :)

Seriously, if I'm a small shop developping software in C++ or .Net I will use Open Source IDE's like SharpDevelop (.Net) or NetBeans/Eclipse (C++).

But, if I run a large shop (and if I have a couple of hundred dollars to throw through the windows) what product is the more expensive? Not CodeGear's...

Here is the price for the top products from Borland and Microsoft:

CodeGear RAD Studio 2007 Architect Edition: Can$3,299.00

Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers 2005 With MSDN Premium: Can$7,419.99

So, who wins here?

Paul Savard.

Yup, we're sponsored by Microsoft. I always admit that. But even before starting work here a year ago, I had given up on Borland because the prices were too high. I was self-employed and had virtually no budget, and so I used the free Express versions of Visual Studio. If Borland had kept their prices down for the smaller editions of their products, it's possible I would have continued with Delphi, and who knows, I might have not ventured into Visual Studio and might not have ended up with this job. :-)

You're right that for larger companies that do have a huge budget, CodeGear can be less costly. In those cases, I suspect they'll look at other factors besides price. And often as is the case with Microsoft products, people tend to choose Microsoft simply because it's Microsoft.

As for freebies, I did just download Lazarus from http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/, which is supposed to be a pretty good free alternative to Delphi. I haven't installed it yet, but I intend to, and I'll report back what I think of it. I've read good reviews about it.

Jeff

Hi, Jeff:

I can really appreciate your frustration - from a different angle.

I'm 41, and am about to take over the family manufacturing business, which desperately needs new ERP software (we're still running custom DOS stuff!)

About eight years ago I discovered Delphi when Borland was aces over Microsoft for development software that actually compiled the first time. My programming skills are pretty good, but I'm stuck in the '90s before HTML, SOAP, ASP, Java, C#, and the myriad of encapsulated formats that boggle my mind. I mean, I never wrote a component or a package, or a website -- I just wrote database code in Delphi using the BDE engine, nice and simple. I just loved the objects - it got me into Windows programming without having to know every @#*$& windows event message being passed in the background.

A few years ago I hear of Visual Studio coming out...
great - DO OVER!!

I agree that MS is marketing it stronger than Borland, and I agree that Delphi's days might be numbered. Is Visual Studio worth the change?? Is it idiot friendly enough that I can maybe get thru my programming without running into a ton of problems? With Delphi, if I've got questions I don't know who to go to. with VS, is there a network of programmers who can help me out??

P.S. I've got a brother-in-law in MS so I can get products below retail. Should I be asking for an early Christmas present? :)

PPS: The name Jeff Cogswell rings a bell. Did you go to HMC circa late 1980's?

Please keep me posted - I would love to have some valid programming input from the outside world...

"CodeGear, on the other hand, doesn't have anything comparable to the Express editions."

http://www.codegear.com/products/turbo

Did you deliberately leave out the Turbo products?

Thanks for writing, Chee. I'm glad to finally hear from somebody at CodeGear.

I looked at the web page, and now it looks like you're allowed to use the free products for commercial development. Is that correct? If so, I will download them and try them out and report back, as that's good news. (However, according to the web page, I can't install more than one Turbo product on my computer at a time? I guess I'll only be able to install one then.)

Thu 12/06/2007 5:37 pm. Actually I agree with you; the big problem is Delphi costs too much. One of the reasons I purchased Visual Studio 2005 a while ago was it was available on Amazon for $250, which included the .NET languages *and* a C++ compiler. That's way more than lunch, at least in my circles, but Delphi as far as I can tell starts around twice as much. I've complained to Codegear directly, on this theme: give us a cheap/personal/whatever edition -- or they're doomed.

... On the other hand, Microsoft has a gazillion bucks to spend on this stuff, and obviously Codegear doesn't. But I still don't see that "charging enough" will somehow make the product viable....

Oh well; they'll do what they must, and I'll keep using Delphi 5 / Delphi 7 for the odd GUI project....

-- best wishes,

j.g. owen * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
web: http://owenlabs.home.att.net/
email: owen_bda4@yahoo.com
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I've used delphi since 1996 and in every job i took, i introduced it. It was and is still an excellent tool despite the issues with 2005 and 2006.

For the first time in 11 years, I haven't touched delphi in over a year.

I wanted to get myself a copy of the latest, but the cost is too high to justify.

To make matters worse, there are very few delphi VS c#, vb or java jobs, at least in my neigborhood.

So I find myself asking the same question? Does Delphi still matter?

Right to both j.g. and j. paw. Even though there are free editions now that can be used for commercial projects, the damage may already be done. The price just kept climbing and climbing, and during that time people switched to Microsoft products. I remember in the mid 90s there were many Delphi jobs in the paper. Today there are very few. If you want to find work as as programmer, you're going to have an easier time if you are willing to develop with Visual Studio.

Here's a quick (although not really scientific) test. I went to monster.com and searched jobs in San Francisco. I searched for C#, VB.NET, and Delphi. Here are the results:

C# - 84 jobs
VB.NET - 27 jobs
Delphi - 2 jobs

Although not scientific, it's probably a pretty good indicator. (Wow, 84 C# jobs in San Francisco. I might have to move to San Fran. Just kidding -- in case my bosses at Ziff are reading this. :-) )

Delphi may be dying the fastest death (my local monster search is even more stark than yours) of any programming language because everything has to run in the browser (though it really doesn't - desktop apps should be used more frequently). It won't linger forever like Fortran because desktop apps don't have the kind of lifetime that mainframe apps did.
I'll rid my professional life of Delphi next week after a couple years of trying (current job was supposed to transition but didn't).
I have a list of something like 50 reasons C# (even V1) is superior to Delphi; to me it has little to do with price or lack of marketing. One example: in Delphi (like C++), if you want to add a new method, you have to go to a different section, declare it, and then copy that declaration to another section (the IDE makes it easy, but that's a workaround). In C#, you don't have to write and maintain the signature twice.
At one point I was going to post my entire list, but Delphi is now so insignificant it doesn't seem worthwhile.
C#, of course, is getting ever more compelling.

Those are some good points you make.

One reason Delphi requires you to put function and class signatures at the top and then duplicate the signature in the implementation section is to provide for extremely fast compilation. Ten years ago, they had the fastest compiler around, and I think most people agreed with that. But today, computers are way faster and so there's really no difference. So that issue kind of went away on its own.

I'm sure somebody could make a list of why they feel Delphi is better, but I do tend to agree with you that today's languages like C# are excellent languages (especially when you figure that Pascal is decades older). I'm happy with C# myself, and see no reason to go back to Delphi.

>Did you deliberately leave out the Turbo products?

The Turbo products have a fatal flaw in that they have absolutely no ability to do any kind of database access or data binding.

Even the simplest of meaningful projects need some way to handle data; between executions if nothing else. Doing this via explicit, manual code for flat files (or by designing your own streaming system to organize streamed Delphi objects) is way too painful.

You can't even use Turbo to teach Delphi because students immediately want to know how to save, organize, and reload data.

I've Googled for Turbo data handling add-ins, but never found any.

I'm fine with CodeGear restricting the data binding / handling to, say, MS Access or XML. They can save commercial grade databases for the paying customers. But IMHO a language without data handling is useless for even learning commercial development.

I'm decades old, just like Delphi - does that make ME irrelevant?

I've worked in Delphi since the beginning - after years in Turbo Pascal. Object Pascal is an elegant language which enjoys the respect of any serious developer that took the time to learn it. Object Pascal compiles faster and produces tighter code than any VS language - a tribute to the pureness of Object Pascal. The Delphi IDE lead the way in IDE innovation and VS is still trying to catch up.

On several occasions I've tried to port Delphi projects and even start fresh projects in C# with Visual Studio. On paper visual studio looks like a winner, but when you have to deal with the "Framework" and the brain-dead data binding (which didn't even exist prior to VS 2005), I'll take Delphi 5 over VS 2005 for a simple database project anytime. Deployment is another issue. In the enterprises just what do you have to do to get a C# Assembly to play nice in a shared environment from a server. After a nightmare of rights issues, certificates and security settings you might get it to work. My true 32 bit Delphi app (a single exe file) will run from a share with a simple shortcut to it.

Mostly I've programmed my projects with the "pro" versions of Delphi - the upgrades usually cost around $300. The day I can't afford to pay $300 for my primary development tool is the day I should stop being a programmer.

Delphi defines RAD. Moving to VS you didn't just turn your back on Delphi, you turned your back on RAD and all that RAD stands for. Let me know when RAD in VS means the same thing as RAD in Delphi.

Pat Riley

Does seem a little bit dodgy for a Microsoft Sponsored site to be hitting at one of the few credible alternatives in the same field of work!

BRAD>"One example: in Delphi (like C++), if you want to add a new method, you have to go to a different section, declare it, and then copy that declaration to another section (the IDE makes it easy, but that's a workaround). In C#, you don't have to write and maintain the signature twice."

Brad's comment above shows that people should take the time to learn how an IDE actually works - Jeff you would have known that there is a short cut key series for causing auto completion of a procedure or function written in the implementation section to appear at the top? Many other negative points are simillar.

Code Gear in my opinion have so far made a pretty good fist of what had been delivered to them as a difficult situation.

Borland was at the point of letting Delphi drift off and made some bad moves ( e.g. delphi 2005 - which I am still on) which have lost a lot of good will and financial openings - but the Code Gear crew are getting things back on track with language developments, and IDE enhancements.

The upcoming D2008 is said to include even more of these.

So don't dismiss Delphi or other Code Gear products too quickly!

Paul

@Brad

"In C#, you don't have to write and maintain the signature twice."

While I do WAY more C# than Delphi these days, that is NOT a reason to choose a language. You should be writing your signature twice regardless of language, its called "Interface based Development".

The continual argument of "too expensive for the individual developer" has worn as thin as the "Delphi is dead" claims heard over the past 10+ years.

I AM an individual developer. I am a party of ONE and a Delphi developer. It has been this way since 1999.

I control costs by purchasing a Delphi contract each year for about $1,000 for the top of the line product. (You do know about CodeGear's subscription program?) If you can't afford $1,000 a year for your tool, then maybe you need to re-evaluate your business model. (Note: None of my remarks pertain to hobbyist programmers.)

Sorry CodeGear doesn't have wads of cash so it can't afford to shower everyone with cheap and free tools like Microsoft. Have MS send CodeGear a $1.3 billion check, and they will be glad to meet your wishes.

Delphi is still an outstanding tool. Good ideas never die.

I use BOTH Codegear and Microsoft development tools.

To me, it is all about productivity and results.

If I need device drivers, I use Visual C++. Nothing beats it for device drivers.

If I need native Win32 desktop apps, I use Delphi. The apps run on fast on Windows 95 - Vista. Plus, on Linux using Wine, too!

If I need .NET--wait, I don't actually need it after all.

If I need a custom website, I use Ruby on Rails and host it on Linux with Apache and mod_security.

One day, you wake up and realize that your time is the most valuable commodity and loyalty to a technology or vendor is irrational.

Choose what saves you time and helps you produce desired results.

ps

If you get paid by selling your time, then use C++ for desktop apps, client/server apps, etc. because you'll sell more hours and there are many job openings. The compile times alone can make you dozens of extra dollars per day (even if you use pimpl and modern workstations.)

@Brad

What do you think about an UML class diagram? "Oh no! I will have to maintain both a class diagram and my source code!!!"
Interface section of pascal source code has a lot of advantages, althoug you and Anders Hejlsberg may disagree.
When you are just writing some code it can be tedious. But it is much easier to inspect a class interface and understand that class reading a Pascal code than its C# counterpart.
And when it comes to maintenance this is a big advantage.

@Bob RIddle

"The Turbo products have a fatal flaw in that they have absolutely no ability to do any kind of database access or data binding."

This isn't the case.

Im an elder Delphi programmer with my use of borland tools starting with TP3 for DOS and CP/M. Heres my 2 cents if its worth that. ;-)

Even on its best day there were never alot of delphi jobs. Ive introduced delphi just about everywhere ive worked... but Delphi was always best as a contractor or independent consultants language... in other words it was best at getting the job done FAST so it was cost efficient for small shops. It was also affordable and upgrades provided new things that their users needed.

In my opinion there still isnt a better Win32 tool than Delphi, and I think all the .NET, ASP, C# etc. added to the tool has mucked it up.

Delphi waned in recent years for many reasons including too high prices, being virtually ignored by borland for a few years, while they pursued a business (ALM) that still hasnt produced for them, and the fact that the tool hasnt really gotten better at Win32 since Delphi 7 (not 2007, but 7) and thats their bread and butter.

Not to mention Microsoft... who doesnt really need to make money on their dev tools, they should give them away free to drive applications for their platform... but between lower prices, express editions and the general industry microsoft bias its hard for any tool vendor to compete. In fact borland exists today because M$ invested in them a few years back iirc.

I hope they keep in on track as my company has a few million lines of delphi code that I really would rather not port.

At least in my circles .NET isnt all the rage. ;-)

Michael, it's not a reason to choose a language.. but as a freepascal and delphi developer I personally have found this "declaring things twice" a frustating waste of time when it comes to procedures and functions. The

For objects and records it is fine to declare a specification in the interface, but for procedures and functions it gets extremely annoying. I know you are used to it after years, and you think it is helping you as some sort of strong typing.. but it is not helping you. I am critical of it because there is a simpler solution.

Checkout blackbox ComponentPascal where one does not require declaring things twice. Wirth/Oberon have some smart ideas, including a better unit system than delphi and fpc (unit aliases in their modules).

"View interface" tool is available which let's you know which functions are exported from a unit.. without having to declare things twice.

See also my notes in the turbopascal mistakes emails on the Qompute mailing list:

There is a better way to declare units in an interface. Use an exports clause or a public clause. Of course, that would only be if the feature was available in the language.

Have you ever made a DLL and had to use the Exports clause? Imagine having to declare all your DLL exports twice... why you don't have to? The exports clause is smart. The public clause will be a smart innovation in Qompute, IMO, as it offers the best of both worlds: better than ComponentPascal's asterisk symbol, better than declaring things twice.. and yet it still shows you the public versus private interface.

I agree on the pricing bit, but they are making efforts with the turbo delphi editions.

Turbo Pascal was very popular because of the low price.. now borland in the 90's has completely changed to "high price" software with "less sales".

Originally they went for the masses.. now they are more of a niche market so have to put their prices up higher. Could also be maybe too many staff, too many buildings, to high wages for staff... I'm not sure. But that water fountain I saw in a video once, didn't impress me. I don't want to be paying for a water fountain to be running.

@Bob Riddle:

"The Turbo products have a fatal flaw in that they have absolutely no ability to do any kind of database access or data binding."

This is not correct. Only Delphi 6 or 7 Personal had that restriction.

Hi Jeff,

Did you try how much speed development between CodeGear a.k.a Delphi vs Visual Studio as you said is great tools ???

And then, have you find out the error without good explanation from Visual Studio...

Actually, i'm sucks with the VS caused of the stupid error ... error just said 444 - method not applicable.

This is very very stooopid error explanation, where is using traceable-run cannot be traced, but when actual-run its generated ... i hate this.

In Delphi, we can find out what the error with easly... and much of explanation, so you can fast-fixed it, doesn't consume more memory from your brain to search what the reason from that error is.

You may see also from this angle, not only from price angle...

How much of ROI you can get when the MS give to user about re-license even we already buy the original one with the license ???

I'm also confused with MS License, for the example, we buy windows server 2003 originally, but the connection should be buy also, and then renew the license each 2 years ...

If you see that, we spend more more more more bucks to pay to MS...

Did the VS also run on *NIX environment ?

I think you may see from all of angle before you decide it!

"But it was their decision to make their products overpriced and out of reach."

Nonsense, it was Microsoft's decision to try to price Codegear out of the market with the Express editions, as they can afford a loss leader.

What a biased and ill informed blog. Very disappointing.

Funny article, because right now, there is no tool that can beat Delphi to develop Windows applications. Delphi is the best Windows development application ever, and it's still the best, please, don't mention .NET crap.

The price can be a bit high, but sure it pays off because of the development speed, something is *awful* with Visual Studio.

Hello,

one thought about it: M$ doesn't need to make money out of VS. CodeGear needs money out of Delphi. M$ sees the free VS editions as: keeping developpers on the Windows ecosystem.

If the courts had decided some years ago to splitt M$ into operating systems and the rest most free editions surely would have been stopped soon. They would have to earn real money with VS then as well.

And: did you think about how often MS forces developpers to rewrite something because they decide to "kill" some technology? Often enouth you're alone in the rain then...

At Clark Howell:

you should look at the CodeGear newsgroups, available either via NNTP or via web interface on CodeGear.com. Plenty of helpfull people!

It's interesting going through these comments and seeing how defensive people get. (I was curious why I suddenly got all these comments last night; apparently somebody from TeamB posted a link to the blog.)

I'm not claiming Delphi is a bad tool. On the contrary, I think it's an excellent tool. I always have. But it goes back to the old Windows 95 vs OS/2 problem. By all regards, OS/2 was far superior to Win95. But Win95 managed to capture the market and virtually wipe out OS/2. It's about marketing. I would be very happy today if the world used just Delphi. But the majority of shops out there are choosing Visual Studio over Delphi. If somebody is looking for a new job, they're going to find a lot more Visual Studio jobs than Delphi jobs. It doesn't mean Visual Studio is better. But I can say that all my work I've been able to accomplish with Visual Studio, and at this point I just don't have a need for Delphi.

There's no denying that Delphi is an awesome tool, as I said in the blog. (Read it - I never said it wasn't.)

As for pricing, some people have made some good arguments about how to make Delphi work financially, and bring it within reach, although the hobbyists are still a bit stuck.

Thanks everybody for coming by here; these kind of discussions are great.

Attn: doesn't matter,

I totally agree. the so-called M$ MVP's are holier-than-thou a$$holes that think they can answer your questions with a quick, terse "RTFM" post.

Hey, Most-Valuable-Prick, I DID RTFM and now need help, that's why I posted the question.

AFA Delphi being irrelevant, I just can't agree with that. I've been using Delphi since March 1995 and love the ease at which I can build applications. And, although I think CG's pricing scheme is bogus, after trying Visual Studio Express, which leaves me glassy-eyed, I can see why Delphi is STILL the KING of RAD tools.

Don't buy into more of this M$ marketing propaganda. I once said that if Borland had read Michael A. Cusumano's book "MICROSOFT SECRETS" then things might be different.

Jeff,

You're not comparing apples to apples here.

If MS didn't have Windows and Office to produce the majority of their revenues, they wouldn't be able to give away VS for free (at least with all of the editions and functionality). It's not a question of marketing, per se, but a question of revenue from other sources.

I've been a Delphi user since Delphi 1 was released. It was then, and is now, the only really productive development platform for Windows. The latest version, Delphi 2007, supported Vista-only features (Aero, glass, task dialogs) *before* any MS development tool did. Delphi still has better Win32 application support than any MS development product (note I specified Win32 and not .NET, although Delphi's VCL for .NET is pretty sweet too).

And if you were using Delphi as a self-employed person and having trouble affording it, you either weren't a very bad businessman (severely underpricing your work, or buying a way higher version of Delphi than was needed) or a seriously bad programmer. I've been self-employed working with Delphi since 1998, and make substantially more money than the annual $400 cost of upgrading CodeGear RAD Studio. And I don't live in Silicon Valley or Redmond, either, but in a fairly small city in the Northeastern US.

I'm sorry, but your article appears to have been heavily biased. I don't know if it's because you drank the KoolAid or if you just didn't do the research before you wrote the post, but it's wrong in so many places that it's not somewhere I would visit for any kind of reliable technical information in the future.

Hi Ken, you're correct that Microsoft has huge dollars do dump into it, and that ultimately it makes business sense for them that they give away free developer tools so that there would be a huge amount of software available for their operating system. CodeGear, of course, doesn't have that benefit. As for the self employment thing, I was basing it on my experiences with other self-employed people, not my own. Because of my writing, I've always had access to complimentary copies of Delphi, and so price wasn't an issue.

By the way, about the bias, remember where I am: This site is sponsored by Microsoft, which I admit. I, however, don't work for MS; I work for Ziff Davis Enterprise, a totally separate, independent company. And we did run a very positive review of Delphi here on DevSource, a review that I personally approved. Now obviously my sponsor would be a little angry if I said that Visual Studio was a bad product. But for me personally, I switched to Visual Studio about two years before I joined Ziff Davis, because I found it was more suited to my own needs (and for my work I had to do a lot of .NET development), even though I had access to Delphi and love Delphi--but that's just my own experience; other people have found Delphi more suited. And today, looking at the market, there just aren't as many jobs for Delphi developers. I think it's a shame, because I agree that Delphi is one of the greatest development tools ever. But that's the way the market works, for better or worse. One of the readers here, Eddie, said, "I once said that if Borland had read Michael A. Cusumano's book "MICROSOFT SECRETS" then things might be different." And that may well be the case. I've watched Borland make a lot of unfortunate mistakes since their earlier days, and if those mistakes had not been made, then perhaps we would see Microsoft having to fight to get people to adopt Visual Studio and the majority of the jobs being for Delphi developers. (And don't forget, the first version of Visual C++ was probably one of the worst development tools I've ever seen, and right around then, Delphi 1.0 came out, which was way, way, WAY ahead of its time.)

After reading several post what I found is that most of the poster have not been working with RAD 2007 for a long time. RAD 2007 is Delphi, period. It's integrated a C++ compiler that do not work propertly with the VCL, several bugs reported from BDS2006 still on RAD2007.

Codegear is on a hurry, need to sell the product, but do not solve their issues.

VS2008 quaility is ahead of RAD2007. I have to work with RAD 2007 and VS 2005/2008 and I can do much work on VS than on RAD due all the bugs and problems.

I've never understood the complaints about pricing for development tools.
A $2000 dev tool is paid for in less than one week of programming profits, and then used royalty free for years. How is that expensive? Think about the capital outlay traditional business have; a plumber, welder, baker, truck driver, carpenter, etc. all have larger capital outlays required for their businesses, AND those projects have comsumable materials expenses! We complain about a few thousand dollars in a professional field with a high ceiling and wide margins? Amazing. Whether small shop or large, the primary cost of doing business is time/wages, second, facilities cost (rent/utils) if not working from home, and a distant distant third is dev tool cost. Yet we whine. Neither, MS nor CodeGear tools are expensive, people only think they are because we are used to paying next-to-nothing for them. If your dev tool cost isn't in the low single digits as a percentage of annual profits, you doing something wrong, no matter which tool you choose.

Hi Jef,
Basicly All High Level Programing Language Based on C++ compiler.. Soo Where do C++ Compiler Come From ? Assembly language Of Course.. there is Turbo Asembler Call TASM, or Microsoft Call MASM.

You said " today looking at the market, there just aren't as many jobs for Delphi developers..." You Should visit www.scriptlance.com and look arround.. there is many project was need delphi Programers.

We Can't left the old system Project that has been made by delphi... because the old system that was made need maintenance wich it's part of sistem life cycle process...

Finaly, Whatever you do, talking about system project development. is based on your logic bisnis.. not based on delphi or visual studio. delphi / VB / just like weapon for hero... and the advanteges from this weapon just should be effective on the right hand.. :)

it's just comment dude..

For me, the problem is that I can do more using VS. Learning and using C# gives me the most bang for the buck. Now that I've got C# under my belt, I can:

- write Windows desktop apps
- write mobile apps
- write games for the xbox
- write webapps
- write server-apps that can be easily deployed on Linux
- write x-platform RIAs (Silverlight)

Plus I can choose between plenty of jobs in my area.

That's why I switched to .NET.

Jeff,

Just because your blog here is sponsored by MS doesn't mean that you should be free to be biased and spread FUD about one of their competitor's products. As you say, you work for ZD and not MS. Working for ZD makes you at least an employee of a journalism firm (unless ZD has become nothing but MS ads since I last read any of their publications), and as such you are in a position to influence people. Telling outright lies about a MS competitor's products is simply wrong for someone in your position, and that's what your original post did.

You neglected to mention the Turbo Express product line from CodeGear, while touting the free VS Express product line. You also mentioned that the Express line could be used for commercial purposes, again neglecting the fact that the Turbo line you omitted also can be used for commercial applications without restriction. You did, however, spread misleading information about the pricing of Delphi, indicating that it was way more expensive than VS (it's quite affordable at the Professional SKU, even for a pretty new developer; that developer can write software using the Turbo edition until they've earned the money to upgrade to the Pro version of either the Turbo line, Delphi, or the full CodeGear RAD Studio. (The full RAD Studio includes Delphi for Win32, Delphi for .NET, C++ Builder, ASP.NET, and support for code written in C# and VB.NET, all in a single IDE. It also includes an HTML and CSS editor, support for XML, etc.)

You failed to mention the deal that CodeGear just signed with the Russian Education Agency for a MILLION licenses for CodeGear RAD Studio. That's a pretty significant omission too, isn't it? (I'm not sure of the date of that deal - it may not have been signed at the time of your original post, but you also haven't mentioned it in any of your follow-up responses to the original post here, either.)

I recall the original release of VC++ well; I had the misfortune of having to use it for a contracting gig back in the early 90's. It was an even bigger piece of garbage than CA's effort at Clipper for Windows, CA Visual Objects. I had just started looking at VB when a friend mentioned Delphi; I took a look at it, bought it the next day, was producing working code that afternoon, and haven't looked back.

I work in C# and C++ as well as Delphi, but nothing is as productive for Windows development as Delphi.

I don't work for either MS or CG, BTW; I work for a State Governmental Agency and moonlight as a contractor and component vendor. All opinions expressed are my own, not those of my employer or the software company that hosts anything for me. (IOW, my own opinion, unbiased by the undue influence of external parties.)

Ken, let me be clear about something: Prior to this week, this particular blog entry had about 100 page views since I wrote it over three months ago, back in November (which was also two months prior to CodeGear's announcement on Feb 1 of the Russian deal). That's it. DevSource readers are primarily Visual Studio users, not Delphi users. Of the hundreds of thousands of page views we get each month, this blog entry had only about 100 total over nearly three months. That's hardly influential. The readers of DevSource weren't interested in it and largely ignored it when they saw the title. But due to a TeamB person posting links all over to this blog entry last week, it has had several thousand page views in the past few days alone, after sitting stagnant for so long. And with people swarming here in Delphi's defense, the page views keep climbing.

But I'd like to point out that I am not deleting posts; I accepted your post and allowed you to refute what I claimed in the blog. And I'll leave your information here for others to see. But I seriously doubt if somebody who is trying to decide whether to purchase Visual Studio versus Delphi would come to this blog and make a decision based on it.

Jeff,

'Nuff said, except that I appreciate the fact that you're not deleting posts, and that you're being fair enough to allow opposing viewpoints to be seen. Thanks for that. :-)

And thanks for stopping by Ken. I feel bad if I offended anyone; that wasn't my intention. I do enjoy hearing other viewpoints, and you're welcome here any time. Thanks!

I love Delphi. That said, I have to agree with the overall premise here, and even expand on it somewhat.

Delphi work is getting incredibly hard to find, mainly because companies are abandoning it for .NET. Why? Because .NET is virtually free for corporations, whereas Delphi is relatively expensive.

Most organizations require some level of sign-off on purchases over some amount, like $500 or $1000 or whatever. Any way you slice it, Delphi exceeds those limits.

A subscription to MSDN is below those limits, and most organizations seem to get lots of MSDN licenses with their corporate Windows licenses and SQL Server licenses, gratis of Bill Gates & Co.

So from a corporate standpoint, the use of Delphi requires multiple levels of review by corporate bean counters, while Microsoft tools are already available, courtesy of the IT Dept who usually gets site-wide licenses.

Everywhere I've been in the past 4 years, it has been an uphill battle getting corporate approval for Delphi upgrades and component library upgrades. The same question comes up: what would this cost in .NET? Why aren't you using .NET? Don't we already have developer licenses for .NET?

Not to mention that the market is flooded with .NET programmers right now and so they're 1/2 the cost of Delphi people.

I don't know if that deal with the Russians is a Good Thing for Borland or not. I'm only curious why they can't / won't do the same thing for schools here in America.

Borland has not made a profit on their products other than language platforms for years. Their stock has never ever split in the history of the company. They have never been able to demonstrate the ability to build long-term value for their shareholders, even during the best of times.

Now their stock is under $2/sh and their only decent products are priced so high that they're out of reach for most practical purposes. I don't know anybody who's using the Turbo editions for commercial purposes. But I know lots of folks who are using MSDN editions and free editions of Visual Studio to make money.

I paid $16 for an intro book on C#/.NET that had a DVD in it with Visual Studio 2005. I read through the EULA and didn't notice anything that prohibits its use for commercial purposes.

I couldn't even find anything that discssed the differences between it and the full version as far as the language and dev environment went. The full version has more support for other stuff, but you can still add components into the dev environment and use it for just about any dev needs.

Maybe I'm just too unfamiliar with VS, but after working with D2006/D2007 for so long, I can't imagine using the Turbo editions for anything "real".

There just seems to be a qualitative difference between the low-end and full versions of VS versus similar versions of Delphi. The low-end versions of VS can be used productively (as far as I can tell), whereas the low-end version of Delphi can't. Not to mention the price difference of $20-$30 in a book vs. $99 for Turbo editions.

I'll stick with Delphi as long as I can continue to get my clients to pay for the upgrades. But it's getting harder and harder to justify the cost, no matter how you slice it. Besides Delphi, I've got several excellent component libs that cost me over $1000 a year to update.

At some point, it's simply going to become too uneconomical to continue using Delphi. And that point is coming fairly soon, IMO.

-David

I completely agree with Bob, it is especial with it: "Codegear is on a hurry, need to sell the product, but do not solve their issues."

Look at this:

VS.NET ~ year 2000,
VS 2003 ~ year 2002,
VS 2005 ~ year 2004,
VS 2008 ~ year 2007
============================
Delphi6 ~ year 2001,
Delphi7 ~ year 2003,
Delphi8 for .NET ~ year 2004,
BDS2005 ~ year 2004,
BDS2006 ~ year 2005,
BDS2007 ~ year 2006,
What is farther, BDS2008 - > year 2008??? - whether "have much planed" for 7 years?

I use Delphi since version 5-th. Thank the God, that I professionally started to program with Object Pascal (Delphi5)! However for object-oriented development now there is more perspective and perfect alternative - pure object-oriented language C#. For long time I use Delphi 2006 (BDS 2006) - it is necessary to struggle with tons of glitchs so from time to time it seems, that with Delphi 5 (or 7) the same work can be made much faster! I did not use VS yet, so my opinion unbiassedly and Visual Studio vs Delphi cost has no value for me.
P.S. sorry 4 my English... Russian is my native language :-)

I too once loved Delphi. But, it is dying, and soon will be dead.

Price or no price, Delphi is still the best tool for a small software firm in the raging Niger Delta of Nigeria. We use it to develop everything from Business Applications to Real Time Technical Applications and it allows us to do it fast. Our environment does not allow for expensive development times. Heck, the average income is about 2 dollars a day.

Delphi Rocks!!!!!!!

Delphi is a nice environment, but Code gear need to get their act together and have a product plan for Delphi that they plan to stick with.

I started using Borland's products with C++ Builder. I loved it and found it to be a lot better at designing Windows applications than Visual C++. Then in their infinite wisdom, after BCB 6, Borland discontinued it and produced some sorry excuse called BCB X. When that bombed, they decided to go back to the original C++ Builder but by then the damage was already done. BCB has always been the stepchild of the family and killing it off with BCB X despite protests from people on the newsgroups just showed that Borland was giving the finger to its customers.

Then they did the same thing with Delphi, butchering it into a .NET only development tool with Delphi 8 and then realizing that it turned out to be a huge mistake. People buy Delphi to write lean and mean Win32 apps. If they wanted fat and sluggish .NET applications, they would have gone C# or VB.NET. Again, a stupid decision on Borland's part. Realising the colossal mistake that was Delphi 8, they made Delphi 9 do both .NET and Win32.

Then in 2005, they released the Turbo tools and my heart leaped with joy. Here at last, Borland is returning to its roots and supporting hobbyist programmers. Free Turbo Explorer tools, and a $99 Turbo Pro tools. Really sweet. Only problem is, there doesn't seem to be anymore support for the Turbo tools (no updates since 2005? Really?) and it's practically impossible to buy the $99 Turbo tools now.

Don't get me wrong. I love Delphi and I find it a very productive tool. However, Borland/Inprise/Codegear/Embarcadero/whatever-it-will-be-called-in-6-months/etc have demonstrated that they do not really have a clue when it comes to developers. If you invest in a tool, you want to know that the vendor is committed to support it and develop it. Microsoft gets it. Sun gets it. Borland sadly doesn't.