[DUG] Has Malcolm Groves Been Misrepresented?

[David Brennan]

Malcolm was saying that there were only a few big items in Delphi 2010. The
touch/gesture support feature is probably the main one, whereas Delphi 2009
had Unicode, Generics, Anonymous Methods, etc.

 

But instead they added lots and lots of little new features to improve the
IDE and debugging. For some people these will count as big features - for
example the new Data Visualiser support could be HUGE for us assuming it is
relatively easy to write your own (and the capabilities are flexible enough)
as it would allow us to browse our custom data structures much more easily
during debug time. It sounds like all these features do a lot to bring the
Delphi IDE up to true world class level. That's pretty important to me so
Delphi 2010 sounds very worthwhile to me.

 

They also fixed a lot of bugs. Presumably these bug-fixes are not going to
be ported back to previous versions. I accept that and am simply happy that
they have now fixed these bugs and I hope they keep fixing more bugs in
subsequent versions. I know other people have a less tolerant view (possibly
people who are encountering more of these bugs in their older versions!).

 

So as Jolyon says the reality is somewhere in between and will depend a bit
on what you personally value.

 

FWIW I would love to be able to use Delphi 2010 but I don't see it happening
any time soon because I think testing and adapting to Unicode is going to be
too big a project for us to justify in the next 6 months or more, possibly
indefinitely until we get a customer who absolutely must have Unicode (we
could do it more easily by just leaving our database string fields as
ansistrings but that really defeats the purpose - sounds like most of the
pain with none of the gain).

 

Sigh.

 

David.

 

 

From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of Jolyon Smith
Sent: Friday, 16 October 2009 3:17 p.m.
To: 'NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List'
Subject: Re: [DUG] Has Malcolm Groves Been Misrepresented?

 

I also went on - in a subsequent comment - to say that things that Malcom
didn't seem to consider were that big, *were* in fact very noteworthy and
worthwhile additions, imho.

 

I think the actual position is somewhere between the two views.

 

i.e. Delphi 2010 *is* more than just a "bug fix", but it's not as *major* a
release in terms of headline features that 2009 was, for example.

 

Perhaps Malcolm simply didn't express that particularly well in Auckland.
(there's a danger that since people often complain that bugs don't get
fixed, attention is then drawn to "how many bugs we fixed" which then
distracts away from "how much of, and how big, the new stuff is" - I was
commenting on the perception that I felt Malcolm conveyed, not agreeing that
that perception was necessarily correct).

 

I myself was perhaps not clear enough on that point (the observations were
in comments, not a blog post - I spend more time on posts than on comments)

 

 

From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of Paul A Norman
Sent: Friday, 16 October 2009 2:59 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: [DUG] Has Malcolm Groves Been Misrepresented?

 

I was not at the Auckland presentation, and have had to rely on others'
reporting of it. Jolyon who normally appears to be very careful in what he
says and writes has said on his blog:

 

"Malcolm Groves stood up in Auckland and openly told us that in his view,
apart from 1 or 2 things, and really in *his* opinion only 1, Delphi 2010
was basically a bug fix release with lots of little tweaks here and there.
They charged full price for it of course and won't be retrofitting those bug
fixes to Delphi 2009 or 2007 (where they would be of most use).

 

"I stress - that's not my characterisation of the release as not delivering
much in the way of "new stuff", it was his.

 

"David" wrote on Jolyon's blog:

 

"While I usually agree with you Jolyon I don't feel Malcolm Groves told us
Delphi 10 was mainly just bug fixes. What he did say was that there were
only one or two big killer features but there were hundreds of small
improvements. Some of these small improvements were no doubt bug fixes, but
many are enhancements and new features which from the sound of it really
improve the IDE."

 

Please, Jolyon, David and any one who was there, what is what? -- Because
like a lot of people, my decisions on ongoing use and purchase of Delphi
very much depends on whether you have to factor in the next version as a
paid for bug fix or not, on what you buy.

 

Paul

 

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