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.
It’s interesting that with each of the past two releases, the question of whether to upgrade or not has become increasingly complicated. I think many people expected Delphi 2010 to be a no-brainer. I know for a fact that for some the Unicode hump in Delphi 2009 was too great and offered no benefit and a lot of risk, and those people were waiting for the 64-bit support supposedly coming in Delphi 2010.
Of course, with that now deferred to Delphi 2011 – at the very soonest – Delphi 2010 still represents little more than a Unicode hump, bringing too much work and too great a risk to consider. And the 64-bit issue has been further clouded with talk of much broader cross-platform support.
So as well as the intentions of the Delphi buying community, I – and I think many others – would appreciate a proper update to the Delphi Roadmap, so that we can be clear about where we are going.
For the poll itself I have limited it to a single answer so I’m afraid you will have to choose the one answer that is most applicable to you.
To expand on my vote: on SA, but won’t switch straight away because we’re close to a product release deadline – not a good time to change tools. As soon as the product has been released we’ll probably switch.
We’re also getting pretty desperate for 64 bit support 🙂
Spot on Jolyon and I of course agree with Alistairs comment about 64 bit, only we’re desperate and not pretty desperate.
I’ve just registered for CodeRage in the hope that the product address and roadmap presentation will contain solid information. If 64bit support is left vague or just hanging behind other developments, it may be the last nail in the coffin, at least for our server code. The last thing we want to do is redevelop in VS, but it may come to that if 64 bit is not forthcoming.
I put “no intention of upgrading”, primarily because it looks like our development is heading into C#/.NET territory. Mostly because our parent company prefers that environment, and the little Delphi app I work on is sort of an aberrant beast obtained through an acquisition. Nearly went on SA with Delphi 2009, but didn’t, because it’s more expensive to do that for one product than it is (comparitively, looking at all the products I use) for my MSDN subscription (Visual Studio, SQL Servers, XP/Vista/Windows 7, Office, etc.)