Is Delphi Dead ?

[NisseHult]

Is Delphi Dead ?

Even though this blog has more urgent matters to attend do like waiting for Rapidshare to allow one more download ;-) this question is dead serious.

At work we are about to start up a big projekt where that product (hopefully) will live and prosper a long time. We have not used Delphi as a mean to develop software before. Me personally have used Delphi (bright burning fan of the product), Microsoft Visual Studio (both the old version 6 MFC as well as new and "hot" 2005/2008) and Java.

My thoughts are if the things we see with RAD Studio 2009 is just something temporary, and in the future there will just be a steady decline of users (probably moving over to "free" software like Java, or go to the more known brand of Microsoft). ;(

The questions has been popping up in my head when I see where the books describing Delphi is quite dead on Amazon (last books probably was Mastering Delphi 2005 and Delphi 6 Developer's Guide) and that component manufactures are not porting to the Delphi 2009 product (webpages have date stamps like 2001 or so).

What do you out there in binary space thing about the Delphi product. Will it shine and prosper into the future? Is it worth the risk of using for a new development project?

 

[asm64d]

Behind a dawn there comes a decline, and Microsoft Visual Studio will lose sometime. And Delphi will return and becomes popular again.

 

[AT4RE]

Delphi will never die as long as OS support Win32
and don't be blind of alternative as FreePascal & Lazarius

 

[jcooper66]

Delphi can only get better ., even become embodied as FreePascal & Lazarus., It will rule Linux, Win64, OsX and Mobiles !

 

[Jipsee4]

Not dead and will never DIE.

I am from a very old school. If I were in one of the EU countries, I would have retired by now. Where I live, we have to work until the age of 65 and it might go upto 70 when my time comes. Who knows.

I have been programming since the days of GWBasic (1987/88) on IBM PC-Dos. Since then I have been jumping around into DOS Basic (Borland Turbo and MS), DOS C/C++ (Turbo/Borland all versions), DOS Turbo/Borland Pascal (all versions), Win16/Win32 Visual Basic Classic (all versions), Win16/Win32 Delphi (Borland CodeGear Embak#####, whatever you want to call them) (2/3/4/7/2005/2006/2007) and finally .NET C# (MS 2003/2005/2008).

My first preference is Delphi for an excellent RAD development environment, where I can connect to any database and tweak the source code of the components to my liking. I can also use COM components if a similar VCL component does not do what I want.

For the quick and dirty work where the client wants plain vanilla applications and is not willing to spend some money, I use Visual Basic Classic (v6), which unfortunately only works on MS OS's prior to Vista.

Going on the path of MS .NET, before you make a big move, just investigate if the DLL hell has gone away.

About the books. Most of the books for MS development tools are duplicate with very little difference in explanation of the tools features. You can get all the free Delphi books (even though they are only a few books) floating around on the net, and find out that the Tool works the same way since Delphi3. You can take the source for a project originally developed in Delphi 3, make minor changes and compile it with Delphi 2007. That is jumping over 7 versions in between. Now take a project written in MS C# from its first version 2001 or even 2003. Try to compile it with 2005 or 2008. You will feel like pulling out all your hair and go to the Himalayas.

:beer:

 

[NisseHult]

Thanks for all the fish ;-)

Jipsee4 you sound like you have about the same "upbringing" as me there. Done a university course on VB6 but never included it in my CV (who on earth want to do a VB6 real world projekt). I didn't know that you had problems running the VB6 IDE on Vista though.

My liking of Delphi is more on the thought "how can I do the most with the time I have for my customer"? And my conclusion there is that the thing I should do is concentrate on the business logic not subclassing and spending lots of time making either GUI components or internet/databas/whatever nittigritty stuff. I have even answered customers request of have this or that GUI tweeked component, that sure I can do it but it will cost you a couple of weeks of work (and the customer of course answered "oops, think we will skip that then").

In the old days as a business manager, project manager and even a developer never wrong to choose IBM as the platform/product to do a new project. Sure it was probably wrong most times as development went, but in the "land of powerpoint" IBM was a solid bet. Nowdays it seems to be the same when choosing Microsoft (sorry Java guys. Java seems not to be the number one choice (no such thing as a free thing when it comes to software, try to consume webservices for a service that some other company has developed in something else than Java).

I would have liked to know how many Delphi/RAD Studio licenses that CodeGear are selling, so that it could give some indication how much chance it is that the product will live at least 5 years more. Saw a report on the ned that they had sold ~9800 licenses in Q1 2007 with a slight decline to ~9300 in Q1 2008. But this include all their product licenses (JBuilder is supposed to be a big one).

Ah well... Think I'd better buy myself a crystal ball. :beer:

PS. I'm in Sweden and when I looked on the news last time, we are among the EU countries. We have to work up to 65 with an option (if you and your company wants it yourself) to work up to 67.

 

[ONIM]

Delphi will never die!

 

[dumpz3best]

Delphi forever?) For crossplatform Lazarus not bad

 

[hmtemp]

Delphi никогда не умрёт
Вон сейчас уже есть 2009-я студия борланда, а люди с удовольствием пишут на 7-ке и не хотят с неё уходить

 

[УуухСерега]

Delphi is the most popular development tool as I know. I can't say nothing about what is better, but from my experience it is very popular. perhaps because of very simple and powerful start in developing big projects.

 

[estalsa]

Delphi is the great tool. Thanks for the contributors.

 

[igorvdm]

Just better and better every day.

 

[razel_122]

hello

Delphi will never die! and it is very good.

 

[nhphan2001]

From my point of view delphi is 1st choice to develop win-form based application and database application because it is easy to use, powerful and flexible. the 3rd BDE replacement also strong and stable (line DOA, ODAC, MyDAC,...).

Although delphi developer community has been shrunken but still a lot of loyalty fans

Hopefully Delphi never die

 

[rikii]

For Win32 platforms Delphi is great solution. Stable and not like .NET with a lot of bugs.

Добавлено через 2 минуты
And another thing. I believe that Delphi will find solution for other platforms.

 

[clubreseau]

Delphi can only get better ., even become embodied as FreePascal & Lazarus., It will rule Linux, Win64, OsX and Mobiles !

 

[debose]

Is Delphi dead? http://www.isdelphidead.com/

 

[Irrezistable]

Well, delphi is Not dead. At least, today (July 2010). It will be dead at, idk... maybe at 2020 or something. Coz today we have a great choice of developing tools, not only for Win32, but for Compact PC, Mobile, iPhone (already 2!), Linux, macOS, android platform and so on... Delphi unable by default to support develpoment for these cool devices. It's a big mistake... And, as much as popularity of such compact devices will grow - it will lead delphi to its RIP date. IMO, year of 2020, or someting like that.

Delphi can die earlier. But... and thats very interesting... professional components for delphi can Revive it and can bring it to a very New lvl. Like today we have Ribbon UI in delphi only by TMS components, and unicode support by tntUnicode. Thats cool. Maybe component developers will grow delphi Up, and it will have long time living.

debose
nice site )

 

[Sarracino]

Pascal is a language very powerfull, and we will see if Borland, Embarcadero or any else made a modern compiler not only for Win32

 

[cunhajr]

I think delphi isn't loosing popularity to others desktop languages, the problem is the market whants web application, this is the point that delphi isn't a good choice ( like any MS "desktop" visual studio environment ). VCL for the Web ( from Atozed ) needs improvments.

IMHO, Delphi is the best IDE to work with, object pascal is the best language.
Lazarus is great as well.

I wanna see the crossplatform in the next version.