I will finish off and say that I read reasonable points on both sides of the argument.. and.. really For all its Faults Delphi 2007 has been an excellent development tool in the main.. I have no idea if the Visual Studio is better, or easier or anything.. so I cant really benchmark.. But if I was not satisfied enough.. i doubt I would have stuck with it. I love Delphi as a language, even if it has not kept up with some of the cooler features yet.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Kyley Harris <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Kyley@harrissoftware.com">Kyley@harrissoftware.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
you know that is is a topic that will just never end in open debate ;)<div class="im"><br><br>"I'm sorry, but I would not commit to writing an application and then
fixing any things its users considered bugs gratis for eternity. I
would consider it reasonable for 3 months as long as it was agreed to
in the original payment schedule, but I would *certainly* not expect it
after 18 months. In the case of a development tool, with the importance
of supporting technology, I would expect new releases every 18 months
and would be concerned if I did not see new releases coming out from
the vendor."<br><br></div>It really just depends on what you are developing.. with most of the major businesses in the world still heavily relying on 10+ year old technology this just doesn't stack up. Advancement for the pure sake of it ony helps the OS providers and programming vendors like E... releasing new cool stuff every 18 months when the old stuff is not sufficient does not help the paying customer.. We have customers still relying on DOS software they have been using for 20 years.. still works, still BUG FREE and yes we stand behind our product. these releases of new technology are not improving their business at all.. what improves their business is the fact that we provided a software package that did the job reliably and still does. Our ability to provide a reliable product is based on our compilers etc also being bug free and reliable.. <br>
<br><br>a 3 Month Policy, or whatever agreed.. thats really up to each customer and provider and also probably depends on the nature of a product. Let me ask this.. do you think to programmers writing the software for 747's and rockets provide a 3 month warranty on peoples lives? no.. I'm sure they aspire to more than that because they know that their laziness or accident will cause lives.. Just like an Engineer, or Architect knows that mistakes will cost lives.. IMHO there are NO PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS.. its not a profession yet.. its just a thing we all do for money. Every professional trade, be it Doctor, engineer, etc all share a simple thing called responsibility and accountability..<br>
<br>I am not targeting this at anyone, or even Embacardo.. I dont have a problem with the pricing of Pro At all, and if I ever upgrade.. $1000 here or there means nothing to me for the value it provides.. but at whatever price they set, they should make sure that it works for its intention.. to claim that at the time of release it is "Fit for no particular purpose" is crap, and a very singular reason to make me want to quit delphi in the future.. the purpose is to allow me to make application Rapidly and successfully RAD.. if there are issues that slow me down.. its failing.<br>
<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div></div><div class="h5">On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Richard Vowles <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:richard@developers-inc.co.nz" target="_blank">richard@developers-inc.co.nz</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5">
Comparing software development to plumbing is a road to madness, surely? Thats almost certainly like saying software development is an engineering discipline, which it has clearly been disproved from being.<br><br>Delphi consists, last I heard, of 26000 different source files - to expect that entire tree to be "bug free" is questionable in the least. Besides, a bug is defined as being something that does not meet the requirements. Given Delphi's "set of requirements" for shipping is determined at the point of shipping, technically it meets those requirements and thus has no bugs. All subsequent "patches" are, technically, not bug fixes but requirements changes. As the quality of requirements set by Borland were clearly much lower than people would generally consider acceptable (for Delphi 2005, and most certainly for Delphi 8), that is really a mismatch in requirements expectations. Remember, we are talking *Borland* here, not *Embarcadero*. Embarcadero, I think, has a pretty good track record, and a much higher bar. But even E have "feature defects" they consider acceptable when shipping. Everyone does.<br>
<br>As an interesting aside, Support and Maintenance on Delphi (and all IDEs from Borland and I am assuming from E but I haven't closely looked at the T's&C's) *specifically exclude* bug fixes. Included are new versions and workarounds (if possible). S&M is also only provided two versions earlier from the current version (from memory) meaning even D2006 is excluded from the attempts for workarounds. <br>
<br>I'm sorry, but I would not commit to writing an application and then fixing any things its users considered bugs gratis for eternity. I would consider it reasonable for 3 months as long as it was agreed to in the original payment schedule, but I would *certainly* not expect it after 18 months. In the case of a development tool, with the importance of supporting technology, I would expect new releases every 18 months and would be concerned if I did not see new releases coming out from the vendor.<br>
<br>Richard<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2009/9/19 Kyley Harris <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kyleyharris@gmail.com" target="_blank">kyleyharris@gmail.com</a>></span><div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Paul. I agree 100% a professional software company, E, should not charge 1cent to license holders for genuine bug fixes and should package free releases independantly of feature releases until they are fixed. Otherwise they are not professional anything </div>
<div><br></div><div>When I pay my plumber to fix a leak. I don't expect to have to pay him to fix the new secondary leaks he caused by being a bad plumber<br clear="all"></div></div></blockquote></div></div><br><div>
<div></div><div>-- <br>---<br>
Richard Vowles, Technical Advisor<br>Developers Inc Ltd<br>web. <a href="http://www.developers-inc.co.nz" target="_blank">http://www.developers-inc.co.nz</a><br>ph. +64-9-3600231, mob. +64-275-467747, fax. +64-9-3600384<br>
skype. rvowles, LinkedIn, Twitter<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Kyley Harris<br>Harris Software<br>+64-21-671-821<br>