[DUG] Rad Studio Criticism

Tue Oct 9 10:20:50 NZDT 2007

I'm personally pretty happy with the current level of stability in 
D2007, don't get me wrong more is better and I do find myself restarting 
the IDE from time to time, but the IDE is not broken beyond the point 
where it interferes with my ability to be productive. I'd personally 
like to see more (free) training resources made available - I like being 
spoon feed how to do complex tasks and rather not have to waste days 
trying to learn new technologies, I don't have that many free days set 
aside for this - but I try to make an effort. I'm about 1/3 the way 
through Marco's D2007 Handbook - from which I've learned many tidbits, 
some of which are going to save me significant time (although probably 
only seconds each, but every day for who knows how long).

I hope to do a codegearguru video of 100 IDE Tips and Tricks shortly - 
when I have some time, although it'll probably take me quite awhile to 
compile 100 useful nuggets of information (suggestions welcome).

Alister Christie
Computers for People
Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266
http://www.salespartner.co.nz
PO Box 13085
Johnsonville
Wellington 

David Brennan wrote:
>
> Interesting comments.
>
> I can see the reason for people wanting CF support but I can also see 
> the reasons CodeGear haven’t really jumped on board.
>
> Personally I’m much more interested in seeing Delphi Win32 becoming 
> more stable and finally getting some new language/compiler features 
> (eg generics) than I am to see CF support, especially since Codegear 
> are never going to be able to match Microsoft in CF.NET support (since 
> Microsoft own and are constantly moving the goalposts in that area).
>
> I would also MUCH rather see Codegear spend their time implementing 
> into Delphi Win32 the ability to access .NET assemblies as directly as 
> possible (without the current DLL/ActiveX steps). If they can do that 
> then I will be much happier as our customers or partners develop/buy 
> their own .NET assemblies for ordering/accounting systems or whatever 
> that we need to interact with.
>
> David.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz 
> [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] *On Behalf Of *Eric A
> *Sent:* Monday, 8 October 2007 4:19 p.m.
> *To:* delphi at delphi.org.nz
> *Subject:* [DUG] Rad Studio Criticism
>
> Jeremy,
>
> Some thoughts as to why CodeGear aren't actively embracing .NET CF ...
>
> 1) I used Visual Studio and the Compact Framework (versions 1 and 2 
> with all their service pack incarnations!) extensively last year and 
> I'd have to say that the .NET Compact Framework is not a great 
> development environment to work under. Deployment of the CF 
> applications is not straightforward, in fact its a right pain if you 
> want to generate a "click once" install CD, unless you invest a 
> considerable amount of time to set it up properly yourself.
>
> 2) To produce the Compact Framework the full .NET Framework had to be 
> "crippled" to reduce its size to fit mobile devices. The result is 
> that to do some simple things under Windows Mobile 2003 with .NET CF 
> (eg. playing sound) one had to do a "PInvoke" of unmanaged code to 
> call a C++ dll. (you might as well have just used embedded C++!!).
>
> 3) The framework is still in state of rapid change (find the Microsoft 
> document that talks about "% churn" in various classes of the 
> framework - some up to 60%!). Sure there are improvements but its a 
> real effort to keep up with changes.
>
> 4) If you're working with Bluetooth then MS only support their own 
> Bluetooth stack (another MS reinvent the wheel...). Sure you can 
> download the source for accessing the Broadcom stack but its in C++ so 
> you've got to recompile (and adjust the source) to compile under 
> Visual Studio and then write a wrapper to get a .NET accessible stack.
>
> 5) Support for the Compact Framework, unless you splash out and pay 
> the $$ for the MSDN subscription, is really only via the MS CF forum. 
> Responses are slow at best - I've waited for over a week in some 
> cases, only to find that it was an "undocumented feature" in the 
> framework and that there's a new service pack being released to fix it 
> in three months time. Not a pleasant outcome when you're trying to 
> deliver applications on time to a Client ...
>
>
> I haven't had a chance to investigate the J2ME environment in detail 
> but I am aware that quite a number of developers in NZ are using it. 
> There's a lot of functionality in J2ME (quite a number of features 
> omitted from the CF are actually provided in J2ME) and it appears at 
> first sight to be easier to use. You do, however, need to ensure that 
> you have an appropriate Java Virtual Machine for the target device.
>
> Interestingly there's still a large contingent of developers in NZ who 
> are NOT rapidly moving away from the "unmanaged" embedded C++ 
> environment to the .NET CF environment. As I understand it the issue 
> is that they're going to have to write even more code in CF to do 
> things that are currently part of the Microsoft Frustration Class 
> (MFC) plus the issue of keeping up with changes and peculiarities in 
> the framework.
>
> On the basis of the above I can well understand the reluctance of 
> CodeGear to embark down that development track, plus I think that 
> CodeGear already has more development environments to support than 
> they need... To be frank, despite its notable enhancements, Delphi 
> 2007 still has some way to go before it attains the stability of 
> Delphi 7!!!
>
> Eric
>
> From: vss at vss.co.nz
> To: delphi at delphi.org.nz
> Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 08:20:03 +1300
> Subject: [DUG] Rad Studio Criticism
>
> HI All.
>
> Well I installed Rad Studio the other day, and was disheartened to 
> find that there is still NO Compact Frame Work integration !
>
> CodeGear must SURELY be aware of the work done by Jeremy North and 
> that with some small changes, or at the very least integration of 
> Jeremys work (if he agreed of course) into Rad Studio, especially 
> since we can now use .Net 2.
>
> How LONG have people been asking for this? It seems strange to me that 
> CodeGear either 1. dont listen, or 2. just dont see it as important, 
> to add CF Work support.
>
> Jeremy
>
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