[Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes] I’ve been staggered at the response to my recent post calling for a “Community Edition” (and a “Standard Edition”) of Delphi. Even more staggering though was that some people still don’t “get it”, thinking that a free or cut-price version of Delphi will somehow be the financial ruin of Embarcadero.
[Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes] The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things. Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax. Of cabbages, and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings. And why the cheapest version of Delphi costs a new user as much as a pretty reasonable second-hand car. Why even an upgrade costs as much as a half decent new PC (excluding monitor). And what might be done about that.
[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes] If you are using any version of Delphi that is more than 3 versions older than the current version (i.e. Delphi 2005 or older, as of today), the days of upgrading to the latest version will soon be over.
[Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes] This is what I love about Delphi. After almost 15 years of Delphi’ing there’s still new things to learn, and I don’t just mean new features in the latest releases. I mean, basic, fundamental things that have been there for years, just undiscovered (by me). In this case the discovery was a little annoying, but never-the-less educational.
[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes] or: The Search For a Practical Issue Tracking Solution I’m currently evaluating numerous issue tracking systems. I’ve already found one that I intend using myself (FogBugz) because it “just works” (and it’s free for 1-2 users, which will do for me at least until I manage to figure out how to clone myself. Twice). I like stuff that “just works”. I’ll often overlook other shortcomings of pretty much anything that does what it does well and delivers some benefit without getting in my way. On the other hand, you could show me the most capable, feature endowed “Be-All and End-All”, but if the user experience of it is painful, unintuitive or causes me hassle in any unreasonable way shape or form, then I’ll quickly pass.
[Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minutes] For some reason my two most recent posts don’t seem to have been picked up by the DelphiFeeds aggregator. Apologise to anyone who found my posts by other means. I wouldn’t normally be bothered except that I thought that those two posts were worth some attention.
[Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minutes] As is being widely reported “on the wires“, Delphi 2010 is now out in the wild. I for one am interested to know how people will receive this release so I have devised a little poll running on this site for the next few weeks. There is undoubtedly a lot of new stuff in the product as has been blogged about quite extensively over recent weeks, so I’ve started a little poll to gauge reaction in the form of purchasing (and usage) intentions.
[Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes] A welcome new language feature in Delphi 2010 is the introduction of attributes, as previously found in .NET languages. However I am slightly disappointed that the language implementation is also very close to that found in C# and other .NET languages and not more in keeping with what I would consider The Spirit Of Delphi.
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] I don’t think it’s “news” anymore that news of the Delphi (or RAD Studio) formerly known as “Weaver” is starting to appear “on the wires”. I shall not add to the plethora of links to the links to the articles that link to the videos which you’ve no doubt seen already – you can find your way there on your own without my help. Suffice for me to give my first impressions.
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] Whilst it’s nice to see Delphi in the news again in a context other than the Borland firesale, an interview with Wayne Williams recently posted on The Register is something of a mixed bag when it comes to content. There is some confidence inspiring news but also disclosure of some rather puzzling priorities. Specifically: “Williams says cross-platform is now a higher priority than a 64-bit compiler”. The full interview is available here.
