Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
I like tools that I can make games to sell. And I like software that has dedicated developers not volunteers that slowly make their way to a new version on their free time. It's that nice guarantee that tells me that I'm getting something of quality that will pay me back later for my hard earned cash.
I also like software that has dedicated developers instead of just volunteers that is why I have bought Delphi XE2 even thous many pepole advised me othervise. I'm also anually paying for "Support & Maintenance for Delphi" which gives me acces to all the latest updates for Delphi.

Now this is acceptable to me since I have a regular job and earn neough money for this.
But what about students for instance? They have no jobs to earn mone for this.

Embarcadero would say there is a Starter edition which is viable option for this. I have to strongly disagree with them on this. Why?
For the price of Starter edition they are offerin way to less:
- Only 32 bit Windows compiler
- FireMonkey components which have much worse perfomance than VCL. And since you don't have need to use FM on windows as you have on other platforms, probably only few pepole will even use them on Windows
- no code formater and and beutification for source code
- no class explorer
- no live code templates
- no symbol insight
- no code folding
- no class completion
- no resource DLL wizard
- no refactoring
- no UML modeling
- limited integrated debugging
- no database support
- and many other things stripped out
In short the starter edition even have some features stripped out even thou they were available in Borland Delphi 6 Personal edition which was in the end offered for free.


Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
Game developers don't need components. This is a concept for old Windows GUI applications so that any shmoe can make one with little to no code. Game programmers need to know how to program.
True we don't need components we need libraries. These two concepts are quite similar.
So tell me how many Pascal based Graphical engines do we have available and how many of them have full support for the Delphi?
How many Pascal based Sound libraries do we have available and how many of them have full support for Delphi?
How many Pascal based Network libraries do we have and how many of them have full support for Delphi?
How many other Pascal based gaming libraries are available and how many of them have full support for Delphi?

So as you take a look closely you will see that most of them doesn't support Delphi or have verry limited support for Delphi. I know since I'm having dificulty finding suitable gaming libraries for Delphi since I'm using Delphi for game development.
Now why is that? Most of them are being developed by FPC/Lazarus and their developers just don't have enough money to go and buy Delphi for making them Delphi compatible.
Now you might say 200€ for starter edition isn't much but when you take into acount that Starter edition only supports 32 bit compiler you realize that you need athleast Proffesional edition if you wan't your library to have 64 bit support. But that means you will have to pay 1000€ for it. And nowadays you will definitly want 64 bit support if you want to do any serious game so you can make use of more than 3GB of ram.
This results in the fact that more and more pepole are literally abandoning Delphi support for their libraries.
And without Delphi compatible gaming libraries noone will use it for game development.


Another thing that bothers me greatly is how Embarcadero is "evolving" the Delphy syntax by implementing features present in other programming languages.
Now don't get me wrong I'm not against the implementation of theese features, but I'm mostly against the way they are implemented. I don't like when some feature gets implemented almost the same way it is implemented in some other programming language.
The reason why Objective Pascal or Delphi was so popular in the past and the reason why it is still poplar as it is is becouse it always have certain feature implemented differently than other programming languages (better implementation in many times). That is what has been atracting pepole to use of Objective Pascal.
But what Embarcadero is doing now is simply copy-cating features from other programming languages and therefore turning Delphi into crosbreed of other programming languages. ANd this by my opinion is not caled "maturing" of programming language.
What they need to do is learn how theese features work in other programming language and then implement them in new uniqe way, preferably better way.
But I'm afraid that guys at Embarcadero might not be capable of doing this. Why? As some computer scientist once sad:
"Most of the greatest discoveries are not discovered by scientists, but instead they are being discovered by stuedents, hobbyist. Why? Expirienced scientist already learned some path of how things are being discovered and they usually keeps folowing that path. But students, becouse they still didn't learned any particular path, still expiriment in serching of good path and have therefore better cahnce of finding compleetly different path which can lead to great discoveries. Same goes for software development. When you program long enough you develop some patern you folow when developing your application. And the more you stick to your pattern and less you expiriment, the less cahnce you have to discover something new and uniqe."

So that is why most of my suggestions are biased to atracting as many new pepole to Pascal development as posible becouse I hardly belive that only by new blod we have chance for something new to be discovered.
Take a look at big software companies like Microsoft, Google, Aple, etc. All of them are reagulary organizing varous "taletn sercing" events like "Imagine cup" where pepole are given some task and they must find best solution for it. Most often the winners are students and not some expirienced programmers.

So if Embarcadero truely wants to evolve the Delphi as programming language and prevent Delphi comunity to simply fade away they need to start atracting new pascal programmers fast. And yes making Delphi game development friendly is good choice since gaming development is far more popular than buisnies application development and gaming industry is making much more money. So it is no wonder that about 70% of all new programers wants do develop a game first.

Also Embarcadero mist not forget about keeping existing developers in using Delphi. Why? If they lose existing developers from the comunity, there will be noone to teach the very basics to newbies, there will be noone to encourage newbies to reach their boundaries.
And here the Embarcadero isn't doing verry good. Lately I have seen many Delphi developers switching to other programming languages. And main reason doesn't seem the lack of features of the Delphi programming language itsef but the lack of atention of Embarcadero to listen to complaints and suggestions of theese pepole.
Now the rumor for this is that on top of Embarcadero sits Marketing guys and not programmers so they don't view thigs the same.
If that is the truce could someone please remind theese marketing guys of this cruicail marketing saying: Customer is always right!
And yes we developers are your customers, so why are you refusing to listen to us?


I'm sorry if my post has turned into rant.
What I want is best for Delphi wich in turn would be best for me.