Email exchange with the CEO
First of, my original email to Scott.
From: Daniel Wischnewski [mailto:daniel@wischnewski.tv]
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 6:00 AM
To: Scott Arnold
Subject: I'd like a word about Borland Delphi - on behalf of Germanys
largest Delphi community
Hello Scott,
First off, as you are CEO of a Wall Street company, I am aware that your time is very limited. But maybe you have some time to read this and even answer.
I understand Borlands move toward ALM. Yet, as long time Pascal and Delphi developer, starting back in 1992, when I were just 15 years old, I am afraid of Delphis future.
Somehow it looks like Borland is more and more ignoring the value of Delphi in favor of other ALM tools. Just a few months ago Delphi or the Borland Developer Studio (BDS) was mentioned as part of the ALM scheme. Nowadays ALM concentrates more and more on StarTeam, CaliberRM and Together. Besides the BDS, InterBase seems to got lost on the way, too. While having one of the best database systems, Borland seems to simply ignore it.
As long-time lover of Borland tools, as co-administrator of the largest German Delphi/C#Builder and soon C++Builder community I am scared to my bones what will happen next.
Is there anything you can say either in private or in public about Borlands standpoint on Delphi? I am part of the DeXter field test, I am part of the freelancing developers of DeXter, and I am looking forward to this great release. Yet I am scared...!
Sincerely,
Co-Administrator Delphi-PRAXiS
www.delphipraxis.net
Now his reply:
From: Scott Arnold
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 11:44 AM
To: Daniel Wischnewski
Cc: David Intersimone
Subject: RE: I'd like a word about Borland Delphi - on behalf of
Germanys largest Delphi community
Dan,
Delphi is very much alive, appreciated, and pushing forward at Borland.
In my opinion, the Delphi team is pioneering much of what we are doing in ALM in the java space by incorporating functionality from other Borland products like StarTeam and Together into Delphi to make dev teams more productive. Delphi is also critical to our .NET links to MSFT along with Together for VS and our Caliber version working with VSTS.
As you know from the Dexter field test, Borland is delivering on our promise made last December to the C++ community to create a future for the BCB product inside Delphi as a personality. I have high hopes for the take-up of the C++ personality (and all of the new value available in this release) by that vocal community once we deliver on Dexter.
I shared my views on Borland's opportunity with the Delphi team recently in an all hands in Scotts Valley and would be happy to deliver this message to whomever will listen. I met with Michael Swindell and Steve Todd on Friday to review Dexter's progress and am in touch with Danny Thorpe, Allen Bauer and other members of the team as I am able. I also made time to join in on the 24 hours of Delphi with David I and the DevRel team.
As for IB, Borland remains committed to supporting our customers and will continue to use our database technology in our own products as it makes sense. If you have specific ideas on how to leverage IB better, I'd love to hear them.
Scott
A special Thank You to DavidI for allowing me to go forward and post those e-mails as seen here.
posted by Daniel "sakura" Wischnewski at 8:16 PM
9 Comments:
I agree with you Daniel about Delphi and Interbase, i hope that borland will continue the support for Kylix too .... I know that now is a strong period for the big companies because there are a lot of changes in the software market (open source project that function well, al lot of new competitor and new framework like .Net) but i think that delphi can have market because is one of the most productive tools on the market. With an integration of standard cvs for the project manager (like eclipse), multiple lang. identities and a good support for mono (.Net in linux) i'll continue buying D.
bst rgds
Ivan.
p.s. : sorry, i don't speak en. well
Arnold is just offencive!
"
Delphi is a nice little cash cow. Delphi developers remain incredibly loyal, and it offers Borland a window into the Microsoft .NET market.
"
Delphi is absolutely overpriced now, real unstable product. But, developers still support it and stay loyal. Sayng such things he looks like a blood sucker! No even word about how company is going to pay expectations!
After reading, my 2 cents. First: D9 isn't one the most productive tools. D7A was one of the best tools at that moment. But hey, competitors move ahead and D9 can't make the promise good (eg. like how many large companies are commited to using ECO). Second, we've to think in indenties (object pascal) and not in products (Delphi). So the product Delphi will disappear in time, the identity object pascal won't. But there are more flavours of object pascal (eg. chrome objects works with VS). Third, who are going to use all these tools (good tools, but that isn't the point) when there are so many others. For example: try google or sourceforge for UML tools. BTW these 3 "observations" aren't new, use google for: future delphi.
Borland should drop InterBase and invest into Firebird. There is no reason for keeping IB, as Firebird is free and in constant evolution!
As for Delphi, it will only survive if:
1) STABILITY problems get solved
2) Price drops
Just a word on Kylix. Somewhere I read that the intention of Kylix were to be a C++ IDE for Linux, an of course it failed, but more and more Linux is used for servers and desktop. Why Kylix is not a window for W32 DELPHI programmers to Linux? That seems to be a much larger market.
(Sorry for my english ;-) )
Hi,
Kylix is an IDE for Kylix which supports both Delphi and C++Builder. So you have learned only half the truth, now you've heard the other half of it ;-) Yes, it seems like a big market, but I think the problem was the new CLX-Framework, which didn't go well with most VCL Programmers, either Delphi or C++Builder.
Delphi is in use on a number of US government projects on which I've worked, but they still use Delphi 6 and 7, likely because of their greater stability, greater compilation speed and smaller memory use.
It would be nice to have a switch in Delphi 2005 for .NET to turn off some unneeded "costly" features, while keeping refactoring and other useful additions to the IDE.
Bart
Reading all this I fear the worst for the future of Delphi.
Can I expect a consistent future development from a company that simply dumped it's name and fame for a #$%^&* Inprise adventure?
I have noticed that the amount of tertiary educational facilities that use Delphi as a training language is decreasing is South Africa. Borland should do more to market Delphi with educational facilities and high schools to encourage people from a young age to use Delphi. I can still remember my First HELLO WORLD application and what Delphi and Turbo Pascal thought me.
stephan@eaglesoft.co.za
Proud Delphi Supporter
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