[DUG] What is the future for Delphi programmer?

[John Bird]

> All I'm doing is pointing out what I consider to be the mistake of 
> thinking
> that iPhone platform support is going in some way to contribute to the
> success of a product with a Windows Enterprise Development price tag.
>

I am being more of an oracle than you are, so this is speculative, but I 
reckon you are still focusing way too narrowly.

The issue to me is not whether Delphi Win 32 bit or Win 64 bit has a future 
against VS.   Its more where the developers will be going in 5 years.  Will 
they still be on Windows at all?   I am expecting office workers will still 
have desktops for years to come.  But more and more will be moving to phone 
and netbook devices, and already have started.

To me the question is what desktops and mobile devices will be running in 5 
years, 10 years, 15 years.  Could be one of these scenarios:

1 - Windows 7 and descendants for desktops, Android, OSX, Google OS for 
mobiles.  Increasing power of CPU's still makes desktops viable.  Doesn't 
look like Windows Mobile will be there on mobiles..  Or maybe mobiles become 
powerful enough to run Windows 7 and descendants.   (Battery life and disk 
size is the main issue to load and run such a big OS on a mobile device 
compared to the other OS's).

2 - Windows desktops start to be replaced by terminal services and RDP 
devices to grunty servers.  These servers run the legacy Windows apps.  Note 
the word legacy.  Windows software starts to move into maintenance mode, as 
Cobol software is today.   Desktops, netbooks and mobiles could be any 
mixture of OSX, linux, Google OS, Windows, Windows mobile, Android.  All can 
do browsing, VNC, RDP connections to the servers.   (I have been watching a 
colleague do all of these things already from an Android phone.  Phone was 
free on a 2 year Vodaphone plan.)   Desktops become a mixture of OS's.   The 
newer development is for these OS, cross platform tools have the advantage. 
All the commercial software we thought had found its ideal and final home on 
Windows has to be rewritten or ported yet again for the newer desktops, or 
run mainly from servers.

3 - Desktops may become largely mainly non-Windows in 5-10-15-20 years. 
Hardware keeps getting cheaper, instead of $500-$1500 for computers, it soon 
becomes $50-$500 for desktop RDP devices,  netbooks and super-phones.  OS 
are either free (Open source as linux/Android/GoogleOS) or have to be very 
cheap to compete (iPhone, Windows mobile) i.e. around $10-$100 only. 
Reason I think this is that linux is maybe making an end run around 
Windows - the top super computers these days are huge linux clusters (like 
Google server farms), and the smartest small devices are also linux or Unix 
based (Android, iPhone, TIVO).

Windows prospered all the years it was the best bang for the bucks on the 
smallest cheapest computers.  Now its starting to look like they can't match 
other OS's on the small cheap devices.   Windows still has the greatest API 
and programming environment and will have for years yet.  But the other OS 
kernels are more reliable, leaner and smaller.   The general aim of the 
GoogleOS is to boot from cold power off to browsing the Internet in 7 
seconds, I have seen examples of a linux device able to boot in 1-2 seconds.

An example of this is to compare Apple versus MS fortunes - when comparing 
OSX to Windows on desktops there are advantages either way, they are quite 
comparable.   However when it comes to putting OSX onto an iPhone Apple wins 
hands down because the Unix or linux kernel can be trimmed down to next to 
nothing so easily.

Another way to read the question is which is easier? Windows to become the 
best OS on mobile and netbooks,  or other OS's to develop the best working 
environments for typical business  (email, word processing, browsing, 
running general software)?

I don't know the answer to that, but as long as phones and netbooks keep 
outselling desktops the market dollars will decide it.

More certainly, iPhone and Android devices will have a growing market, and I 
would love to be able to program for these without having to learn a new IDE 
and language....

John