[DUG] More Delphi news...

[KuetFung.Chong at sungard.com]

Should we bet on .Net?

Read these articles:

(1) http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/dotnet/dotnetWrappers.htm 
Quote:
Executive Summary
Five versions of the .NET framework are analyzed for their use of
unmanaged code. The analysis measures how many methods are implemented
as Intermediate Language (IL) and how many are implemented in unmanaged
code. It also measures how many method calls are to methods that are IL
and how many calls are to methods that are implemented with unmanaged
code. These measurements give a metric of how 'managed' the framework
is; and the more managed, the better.

The results show that all versions of .NET from 1.0.3705 (the first
version) to 2.0.50727 (the released version of .NET v2.0) contain
unmanaged code in the framework library. Furthermore, the proportion of
managed code increased steadily and reached a peak at the version
1.2.4322 (the version supplied with the first publicly available version
of Longhorn). However, after that version the proportion of managed code
in the framework has decreased for versions after 1.2.4322. The current
version of the .NET library (2.0.50727) is the worst yet in terms of the
number of calls to unmanaged code, and the second worst (to 1.1.4322) in
terms of the number of methods implements with unmanaged code.

The conclusion to be drawn is that Microsoft made an effort to make the
framework as managed as possible in versions of the framework up to and
including 1.2.4322 (the first version of Longhorn), but after this
Microsoft retreated from this aspiration and now it appears they are no
longer determined to make the .NET framework entirely managed.

(2) http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/dotnet/vistaAndDotnet.htm
[The article is not available at the moment, being updated]
Some quotes:
"...This is one of several articles that I will use to present my
evidence that Microsoft no longer wants to 'bet the company' on .NET.
..."

"... If anyone tells you that Visual Studio .NET is a managed
application, you instantly know that they know nothing about .NET.
Simply typing dumpbin devenv.exe /headers (assuming you have devenv.exe
in your path) will prove this: the location in the COM Descriptor
Directory is zero. 
 ..."

"... My conclusion is that Microsoft has lost its confidence in .NET.
They implement very little of their own code using .NET. The framework
is provided as part of the operating system, but this is so that code
written by third party developers can run on Vista without the large
download of the framework. Supplying the .NET runtime for third party
developers in this way is similar to Microsoft supplying msvbvm60.dll as
part of XP. 
 ..."


I don't know how much you can read into these, or how reliable are these
research; but interesting reading none the less. If MS is really *not*
betting on .Net (hard to believe), why is the bandwagon so full?

Cheers,
Kuet-Fung


-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz
[mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz]On Behalf Of James Sugrue
Sent: Friday, 28 April 2006 09:57
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: RE: [DUG] More Delphi news...


>The world is not black and white. Plenty of "C" people can see the
>benefits in a readable, more-readily maintainable language with a
>rich component base - provided its performance and reliability is up
>there.

>The trick is to get more of them to try it in the first place, if
>it's to become a developer-driven language again. Maybe Borland or
>DevCo have some ideas in that direction.

Yeah, fair call. I'll rephrase - I personally find C/Java style syntax
much
more readable and maintainable than Pascal style syntax and the majority
of
C/Java programmers I know would agree.

For me Delphi was never about the syntax - I much prefer C Style as I
have
stated - it was about the VCL, ease of use, no dll hell and the
developer
community.

My point I guess is other platforms have caught up and at the moment
Delphi
isn't different/better enough now to say to developers on those other
platforms - "Hey look at how quickly/easily I can do this in Delphi
compared
to x". I think Borland is completely to blame - they dropped the ball.
They
let Delphi stagnate over the last few years and a lot of Delphi people
switched to other languages. You just have to look at the names on the
.NET
list group to see that. A fair chunk have come from here.

Maybe DevCo can turn this around - time will tell.

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