Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower View Post
Actually I think teaching programming by itself is not a very useful tactic here because newbies have many options to choose from: C# and XNA, C/C++, Perl, Python, Lua, Java and so on.
I disagree, this is because they still have choice that you can capture new recruits.Though in that reguard Delphi starts with a severe disadvantage as there is no "free" option anymore besides Lazarus.

Also sites like turbo & Delphi3D did thrive a lot on "teaching", just not programming, but games, Ai, graphics, etc.

This is what institutions are for, and dealing with institutions, I think, is quite out of scope for PGD commuinity.
I disagree here too, institutions are in practice either universities (where they usually don't have any serious grasp of game programming) or work-sponsored (and bosses ain't gonna pay for game programming).

My posts were about luring *existing* Delphi developers in here
The problem is that a good deal of existing Delphi developpers are on old versions, sometimes very old (Delphi 7), and XE2 caters to just a niche of the Delphi users.
Even though I wrote some articles about XE2 during the time my trial lasted, I'm still primarily on XE.

XE2 doesn't have any free version, so the situation just isn't like in the turbo & Delphi3D days, when people that found something interesting could go test it.

IMHO this goes beyond any raw cost consideration as it affects mindset: people just don't have the same incentive/willingness promoting "for free" a tool that isn't free.

Specifically for the forums, I would recommend joining together all graphic's libraries forums as well as compilers since there have not been much activity
Agreed.