Delphi 2006 in production

[Sascha Willems]

According to the Borland Developer Network (short BDN) ('http://bdn.borland.com'), Delphi 2006 has gone into production and will be shipping very soon.

Nothing really spectacular you might say, but there is one ''small'' detail that differs from the product announcement. Just read this open letter ('http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,33404,00.html') and you'll see that Borland didn't finish the C++ personality of the BDS in time and so the C++ personality that ships with Delphi 2006 will only be a technology-preview and the final C++-Personality should come with an update during december.

Though that C++-Personality is nothing we Pascal-Users should worry about, it still makes me wonder about Borland's release strategy. It's now mid-November, so why don't they just wait another month (I mean, it's a Developement-Tool, not some hyped game that needs to earn millions of dollars before other games steal it's thunder) and release a fully working product? I guess they didn't learn that much out of what happened with D2005.

So we'll have to wait and see if D2006 will ''turn the tide'' for Delphi, or if it's just another one on the long list of not-so innovative releases. And hopefully they'll take a look at Microsoft's strategy with their new Visual Studio and release the PE of D2006 for free again.

[marmin]

I don't think they will release a free personal version.. not even a discount. it's all $$$ :)

[tux]

im afraid that borland wont recover from this.

my boss has got me learning C# in visual studio 2005 and i have to say that its pretty good. if borland drop the ball with delphi 2006 then i might be moving over to C# for windows apps as well :(

[WILL]

Maybe you should show them a copy of Lazarus. ;)

EDIT: Actually, you know it might be a lot cheaper to change to Lazarus instead of having to change their entire code-base and purchase all new software.

Plus it has the added benefit of being cross-platform and licence free software with regular upgrades and included source code on top of it.

[rgrove]

I had no use for Visual Studio, but 2005 is pretty nice and generics is a hard carrot not to go after for me. I got Chrome so I could start playing with it a bit. I hear BDS 2006 is nice, but I chose to pass on this one. It was hard. Much tossing and turning in bed as I've never passed by on a Delphi version, but frequent looks at the feature matrix couldn't get me to want it for any reasons other than because I want it. :) In the past that was fine, but our first child came this year, and those darn diapers are expensive after a while!!!!

[WILL]

You know the funny thing about Delphi is that each other one is really crappy. :P And the pattern continues still IF you do not consider Delphi 8 for .NET a part of the series.

I mean, technically it doesn't compile a single bit of native code anyhow. Plus it was just Borland's bastard child project to try to make a .NET compiler. So I don't consider it a 'real' Delphi studio suite.

So here we have;
:arrow: Delphi 1 -- New, revolutionary, set tons of future standards! Wasn't great, but it was Object Pascal and it was in Windows :o :thumbup:
:arrow: Delphi 2 -- Umm... what was new about this again???
:arrow: Delphi 3 -- Wow, everything was fixed from 1 and 2! It had it's bugs, but it was a great version from the first 2.
:arrow: Delphi 4 -- eh... not much changed...
:arrow: Delphi 5 -- CLX support! :D Bug-fixes galore, much more stable. Plus the changes to the GUI and documentation were rather nice.
:arrow: Delphi 6 -- Minor changes and updates.
:arrow: Delphi 7 -- Toted as possibly the last best Delphi yet, had very good CLX support, nicer GUI and tons of bug fixes and stability issues addressed.
:arrow: Delphi 2005 -- Ouch! After so long... oh... oh so crappy. :doh: To be fair though they are still new to the mysterious M$ .NET technology.
:arrow: Delphi 2006 -- :think: We shall see... (pssst! Borland, make this one kick ass, ok? *wink wink, nudge nudge*)

[Sly]

:arrow: Delphi 2 -- Umm... what was new about this again???
It was a 32-bit compiler, whereas Delphi 1 was 16-bit.

:arrow: Delphi 4 -- eh... not much changed...I went to the Australian launch of Delphi 5 and the Borland rep apologized for the buggy state that Delphi 4 was released in.

:arrow: Delphi 2005 -- Ouch! After so long... oh... oh so crappy. :doh: To be fair though they are still new to the mysterious M$ .NET technology.And they dropped CLX from the shipping product. Mind you, I don't think that was a bad thing because I never used it. The documentation sucked though. I still use Delphi 7's help file in preference to any of the later offerings.

:arrow: Delphi 2006 -- :think: We shall see... (pssst! Borland, make this one kick ass, ok? *wink wink, nudge nudge*)I'm not getting my hopes up. :)

[marmin]

I think Lazarus is a pretty good competitor to Delphi 2006. I use Delphi 6 personal , and the interface of Delphi 6 is better, working is more stylish and he debugging is much better, and the exec is a lot smaller, but it see myself switching again and again to Lazarus. I mean, Delphi code is 99 % compatible with Lazarus. i compile my game on both tools with only minor changes. And Lazarus is free, even no registration required.

Heck of course if will prefer Delphi 2006 over Lazarus. But I do think Borland will miss the boat, seriously, if they will not provide a personal copy for us Indie game developers. Even if it is stripped from some gadgets.

[LP]

Heh, Delphi, Lazarus... I'm moving to C# + VS2005 in the end of next year... http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/mad/mad0188.gif

[WILL]

Hmm... well thats disappointing to hear. :? But do remember there is still Chrome. Object Pascal in Visual Studio 2005! ;)

Lazarus is not bad at all. In fact I love it. I am using it for my latest game project and I consider it to be my 'Delphi 9'. :)

[LP]

Hmm... well thats disappointing to hear. :? But do remember there is still Chrome. Object Pascal in Visual Studio 2005! ;)
I've been in contact with Jarrod Davis from Softbeat, who have found some bugs in Chrome already. I think Chrome still needs to mature to be a proven development environment.

As for myself, I'm pretty much linked to Delphi for at least a year, since have too much material and work done there already. However, C# cosmetic beauty and power are rather attracting, as well as mobile devices market. ;)

[Paulius]

Offtopic, but what?¢_Ts so good about c#? I have no experience with it, but from my point of view it?¢_Ts just a JAVA rip-off, which MS came up with after dumping J++, because JAVA license did not allow putting their own stuff into the core.