[DUG] Budget/Turbo editions of Delphi

Tue Sep 22 13:54:20 NZST 2009

FWIW - I think the Academic market is lost to Pascal now.

Academia these days is not as much about learning principles (for which
Pascal and therefore Delphi is ideally suited) as much as preparing drones
for the business world, in which case Delphi - much as we might wish it
weren't so - simply is not as relevant as C#, Java or .NET etc.

BUT - if there were to be an Academic Edition (I think there already is), it
should not be constrained by the entirely separate and different needs of a
personal, part-time hobbyist user (and neither should a hobbyist edition
struggle or contort itself to accommodate the needs of a student).

e.g. students should learn about refactorings and model driven development,
but a hobbyist really doesn't need these things (sure we'd like them for
free, but we don't *need* them - our time *isn't* money).

Plus an Academic license should normally be attached to the seat in the
institution, not the individual occupying that seat in a given semester, so
pricing of an Academic license is more likely to be a volume deal where the
student isn't actually paying for the license (directly - although it will
likely be in the course fees to an extent) as opposed to pricing of a
hobbyist/community edition which specifically targets and needs to appeal to
the pocket of an individual user.

From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of Kyley Harris
Sent: Tuesday, 22 September 2009 1:33 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] Budget/Turbo editions of Delphi

Gary.. I fully agree that cheap or free access to the language tools to
students, or any "Learner" is key to building the success of a development
language.. They will then want to take those skills to any company or work
driven environment.. I think a full blown free version is the best way to
go, with a compiler built in limitation on the EXE execution time... as you
say.. 30 minutes or so.. 

This also lets people build demonstration applications that can be produced
on request to potential employers.

When I first learnt pascal and ansi c, i was 14, and bought a copy of Turbo
Pascal 4 for about $40 and got all my training material via a couple of
Advanced Algorithm books, Database Construction books.. (meaning make your
own DB and indexes.. Lol ) and a bunch of bulletin board tutorials.. Without
this "Free*" resource.. life as a 14 year old would have been impossible

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Gary T. Benner <gary at benner.co.nz> wrote:

[Reply] 

HI all, 

As a Delphi teacher for some many years I found the Turbos irrelevant, as
components are a fundamental part of good OO programming, and it was
impossible to teach Delphi properly without new components being able to be
created and installed in the IDE. 

Personally I'd like to see a $25 fee for Academic Delphi - get's the
Students into the system - and that the compiler be limited to what they
could do ... eg. a nag screen at the start of any application not started
within Delphi, and something like a 30 min time limit for application
execution. .. etc 

Otherwise the Delphi should run as per the real thing. 

Students will get cracked versions otherwise, and they can be very creative
at that. 

HTH 

Gary 

At 12:59 on 22/09/2009 you wrote 

>To : delphi at delphi.org.nz 

>CC : 

>From: John Bird, johnkbird at paradise.net.nz 

>Content Type: text/plain 

>Attached: 

> 

>If Turbo versions of Delphi are not available, it is a great idea to have 

>them as PR to get students getting free versions to learn on. Without 

>Embarcadero losing money on commercial sales. 

> 

>Interested to hear others ideas how such editions could work. 

> 

>My ideas: 

> 

>-Preventing installation of components as in the past is simple - but some 

>large scale commercial programs could still be made, so I think it needs 

>more. 

> 

>-Either disabling printing if included (Rave reports) or all printing 

>carries a water mark "Student Edition - not for commercial use". 

> 

>-All program windows contains some signature eg "Student edition" in the 

>title bar 

> 

>-some smart restrictions on what can be produced.......eg cheap or free DB 

>licences limit to often only 5 connections. Maybe limit units to 4000 

>lines of code, or forms to 30 components total, and listviews and grids to 

>200 lines, 

> 

>-Programs might only run for 1 hour maximum and exit with a reminder
screen, 

>or will not run at all after say 1-2 years. 

> 

>-Alternatively charge strictly on a usage basis - eg start with $20 free 

>credit. Every compile takes 10cents of credit, every debugger run takes 20 

>cents off, editing takes off 1 cent per hour. When credit is used up IDE 

>stops working, and you have to uninstall and reinstall. (Transaction based 

>charging like this is a favourite of mine, incorporated into some of my 

>programs). 

> 

>-Expiry date on IDE, have to uninstall and reinstall to get more. 

> 

>-Student edition could cost say $25 or be free, depending on how
restricted. 

> 

>A combination of more than one of these would mean commercial developers 

>would still get the real versions, and be not too mean on students. 

> 

>Choose what is good to limit, and let them otherwise have a fully
functional 

>version - in reality they won't be writing very large programs, so that is 

>what to limit. 

> 

>Personally I would favour the combination of 

>-Watermarks on printing 

>-limits on grid size and number of components on a form 

>-programs run for 1 hour maximum. 

> 

>John 

> 

> 

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> 

Gary Benner 

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Kyley Harris
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