I hope my copy comes soon. I want to start up a new dev environment where I use the Borland Developers Studio 2006 for all my Delphi and .NET 1.1 programming. I'll use Visual Studio 2005 for .NET 2.0 development since the Borland Developers Studio will not have support for .NET 2.0. This is unfortunate but I understand it had something to do with Microsoft consistently changing the release schedule for .NET 2.0 and a license agreement between Microsoft and Borland regarding the distribution of pre-RTM releases of the .NET 2.0 Framework. Unfortunately I can't find the link to the blog that explains why this latest release from Borland does not support .NET Framework 2.0. I'll post the URL if I find the link.
Meanwhile, I anxiously wait for my copy of Delphi 2006. posted by Kirby | 04-Dec-2005 11:02 AM | comments (3)
My copy of Delphi 2006 arrived Friday morning. I installed it and quickly played with it. It is a much improved IDE and a must upgrade for any Delphi 2005 users. I'll blog more about it once after I spend more time using it.
posted by Kirby Turner | December 12 06:00 AMMy suggestion is to break the romance with Delphi and drop her gently. VS .NET is probably a better programming environment despite being from Microsoft. Yes, I made my career using Delphi and regard her with fondness and will miss all the great times we had together. To survive as a viable developer, alas, sigh* I had to break the news to her last year.
posted by Jonathan | January 4 11:16 AMTotally understand where you are coming from. There are not as many Delphi jobs out there as there once was. I've experienced it first hand. I was sad to leave Delphi behind back in January 2001 when I joined a company that is owned in part by Microsoft. For the 4 years that followed, I worked exclusively with .NET and C#. I loved Visual Studio and I was excited to work with C#. The experience remained me of when I first started working with Delphi and the excitement I had with the language. But I believe things started changing back in favor of Delphi, or rather the Borland Developer Studio last year when Delphi 2005 was released.
I find the latest release of Delphi, or should I said Borland Developer Studio 2006, offers me more flexibility than I get from Microsoft's Visual Studio. This flexibility has been key not only for the product work I am doing for my own company but also key for my customers. For instance, I had a customer request for an ISAPI filter. Delphi worked out nicely for this task and I was able to deliver this custom software component that I would not have otherwise been able to had I used Visual Studio only.
Borland Developer Studio gives me a single tool to do many tasks, from writing Win32 applications to web applications to .NET applications. I can work with different programming languages from a single IDE (Delphi, Delphi.NET, C#, and C++) and I'm able to do the work faster using BDS features such as refactoring and integrated support for Borland Together.
Still, your point is still very valid. Many organizations are using Visual Studio and not looking at the other development environment options available today. And yet Microsoft has a history of abandoning developers of the past as seen last year with the drop for VB6 support. IT departments and software shops around the world are faced with having to migrate their legacy VB code to a new environment. Meanwhile Delphi code written 10 years ago will still compile today and in most cases can be compiled as managed code with little to no change. This fact alone makes me wonder why so many organizations continue to stick with the Microsoft's development environment.
If I look for the best investment for my code base I believe the clear winner is Delphi. The fact that code 10 years old is still every bit as valid today as it was when it was originally authored is amazing. And if I look for a development environment that gives me the greatest amount of flexibility to do the all the tasks needed for my customers, again I feel Borland Developer Studio is the clear winner.
My only compliant for the moment with Borland Developer Studio is the lack of .NET 2.0 support. However, I do not see my customers moving to .NET 2.0 until sometime towards the end of 2006 by which time BDS will have .NET 2.0 support.
As developers who are ultimately responsible for doing the work, writing the code and delivering software solutions, it's our responsibility to let our employers know what new technologies exists that will help get the job done faster. We should make sure products like Borland Developer Studio are considered. I for one am very glad to be using Borland Develop Studio and I know it is the right development environment for my company.
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