About the Turbo Product Line
You may have been wondering a bit about the Turbo line of products and how they fit into the whole scheme of things.
The Turbo products are a separate line of products, distinct from the Developer Studio line of products. (This was made manifest most clearly by there being no upgrade path from the Developer Studio product to the Turbo product. Turbos were a new product, and thus there was no way to "upgrade" to them.) The Turbos are aimed at a different group and a different market than the Developer Studio product is. (To clarify, the Developer Studio line of products include Delphi 1 - Delphi 2006, Professional to Architect, and — as you might guess — does not include the Turbos).
Turbos are designed for and aimed at beginners, hobbyists, students, and occupational developers. They are geared towards a developer that is probably working alone. They are designed for learning or advancing programming skills. Turbos are meant, in general, to appeal to people who aren’t full-time developers. They might be of interest to professional developers, but not necessarily — our aim is to make the Developer Studio product line attractive to the professional developer, whether he or she working alone or on a team.
When we looked at the developer market as a whole, we realized that to a large degree, it was focused solely on the professional developer. Most of the marketing and feature sets were designed to attract existing developers. We thus realized that there is a large segment of potential developers that weren’t being well served by the current offerings in the marketplace. The orginal Turbo products of the 80’s –most famously Turbo Pascal – were designed to attract new developers; that is, folks that hadn’t necessarily ever written a line of code before. Thus, we saw the opportunity to create a new product line of Turbos to appeal to those folks. We want the Turbos to be a product that attracts new developers and new customers to the CodeGear family. We want our Developer Studio products to be tools that keep professional developers and all those new folks coming back for more.
The feature set of the first release of Turbos mirrored pretty closely the Professional version of the Developer Studio feature set. However, going forward that will probably not be true. As we refine our marketing and product lines, it is likely that the Turbo feature set and the Developer Studio Professional edition feature set will diverge. Since the two product lines are aimed at very different types of developers, their feature sets going forward should reflect that. Turbos will be "featured" to stress learning and development for new users They will be featured to make development easier for non-professionals. They likely won’t be quite as complex as the Studio products.
Now that we are a separate company, it will be easier for us to design the Turbo product to more closely match the needs of the market at which it is aimed. The same is true for our Developer Studio product. Now that we make all of our own product decisions here in Scotts Valley, we can "feature-ize" both of these product lines to more closely match the requests and needs of these two different markets.
We plan on releasing new versions of the Turbo products sometime after Highlander is released, and those products will include many of the new features that Highlander will include. They also will likely have feature sets more focused on the market for which they are designed. So, if you are a long time Delphi customer, the Developer Studio line of products is probably the one you want to keep an eye on going forward into 2007. We are adjusting things to make the Developer Studio line more attractive to those of you who might have felt that the Turbo products were what you were looking for. So keep an eye on the roadmap.
And so keep recommending the Turbos to those folks you know — friends, students, kids, older folks, doctors, lawyers, small business owners, etc. — that might want to start programming.
Added: One thing to note: if you have bought the Turbos, but you “upgraded” from a previous version of Delphi, that’s fine — you are still going to be able to upgrade to future versions of the Developer Studio product. You haven’t lost your ability to upgrade to the Developer Studio line by buying a Turbo.
Traditionally it has been possible to buy upgrades priced at about 40% of a new licence. Will there be similarly priced (170-190 USD) upgrades availble for the second generation of the turbos?
January 6th, 2007 at 10:53 amHere’s what we did…
We’re a small shop (3 developers, 2 of them doing Windows apps). We’re working with Delphi since version 2. We upgraded to 3, 4, 5 (Enterprise) and then 8 Architect (but only because 7 was in the box - we never actually touched 8). We were reluctant to upgrade further. When 2006 came along I got the trial and found that all of our existing products would compile right away. Furthermore, looking at the feature matrix showed that everything we needed for those existing products was by now available in the Pro SKU. Still we were hesitant. Money wasn’t sitting loose at that time and there were numerous reports of open issues.
Along came the Turbos with Pro-equivalent feature set and the hotfix rollup pack. Whooee! (before the hotfix rollup pack closed some holes I was even able to compile all of our products with the Explorer edition!) Nevertheless, it was clear that in the long run we would need the full studio, because we’re planning to do Compact Framework stuff eventually. Also, by that time Highlander was rumoured to be less than half a year away. Unless we bought SA (which is unlikely for reasons beyond this post) it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to buy 2006. Yet, we really wanted all the cool productivity stuff like Refactoring and all that.
So, what did we do? We bought D.Win32 Turbos for all developers to bridge the time until the Highlander release, maybe even until it can do CF.net…
January 6th, 2007 at 1:23 pmMy opinion on this whole thing:
- if Turbo stuff is aimed at non-pro developpers, come up with either TurboBasic or TurboPython. I very much doubt that hobby developpers will learn Pascal
- Borland, CodeGear, TurboExplorer: Too many sites. Move all the Turbo stuff to CodeGear, and kill the site. All links on the Borland site should be linked to CodeGear, if it hasn’t been done already
- Keep things simple: "Borland Developer Studio", "Developer Studio", and TurboExplorer is confusing. If I were in charge, I would either have used a single monicker "Developer Studio" and let users choose which language pack they wanted when ordering the thing (DelphiWin32, Delphi.Net, C#, C++), or just not use the BDS thing at all and just sell Turbo products. Statistically, how many users actually buy BDS and program in more than one language?
- How many people actually use the C# personnality in BDS instead of using MS Visual Studio? Enough to justify keeping this?
January 6th, 2007 at 4:52 pmYou got the point, Vincent. I couldn’t agree more!
January 7th, 2007 at 12:58 amIf you want new developers to find out about the Turbo-explorers and the very fine VCL-component-functions within the full Delphi-versions, then it should be possible in the Explorers to create and add your own VCL-components. In the current Explorers it is not possible because of the license. Just make the create/add-VCL-component-functions open in the Explorers (or maybe limit it to about 10 or 5 components). If hobbyists again start to use the Explorers, they will make some fine free components again that other hobbyists/profs can use. The hobbyist will become a pro and, Whahalah, the hobbyist will buy a Turbo-Pro or the BDS (like I did) and CodeGeare will make more money.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:13 amThis sounds like bringing cala cala to the market since "back then" there was a need for coca cola. Times have changed, MS brought a free version of VS to the market for new users and you guys come up with an old fashioned name with an old fashioned box for a modern public.
Though I love delphi, the marketing is FAR from brilliant IMO.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:36 pmI think this is an interesting post by Nick - here’s my take on it:
At the start of 2007 CodeGear has sat down and looked at the strategy for the upcoming BDS product. They have realized that most professional developers that bought BDS 2006 only use one component of the package - in my case Delphi 2006. This means that they really only need Turbo Professional and not the fully blown BDS. So as it stands when the new BDS is launched most developers will not upgrade and instead waiting for an updated Turbo product. If this really happens CodeGear will lose big $$$ and the release of the Turbo line may well be seen as Borland squeezing the IDE assets before the spin off (which I don’t actually believe). Hence Nick’s post - which I’m reading as "To all loyal BDS users - please upgrade to the upcoming version and don’t switch to the Turbo Professional line. The BDS will be different from the Turbos and will not suite your purpose in the long run". Steve
January 8th, 2007 at 5:57 amI think that the Turbos should be in the
same family tree as the BDS products.
We had a recent project that required the
customer to have the tools to maintain the
application after acceptance of the product.
The likelihood of the customer ever making
a change to the code is pretty slim, but it
was a requirement.
We were able to provide Turbo Delphi 2006
to meet this need. At half the cost of BDS
2006. There was no need for any of the
other personalities.
Having the option to buy a single
personality is a good thing. Throw too much
at someone and they will become confused
and move elsewhere.
The confusion I had with BDS was that it
was marketed as a multitude of SKU’s, my
copy is labeled as Delphi 2006, but
Delphi.Net, C Builder and C# were also
available.
I had to ask several times before I was
fairly confident that I was ordering the
correct thing. Inside the boxes it was all
the same.
Why not keep the Turbos in line with the
Pro version of the products? This will keep
CodeGear’s code-base straight forward and
confusion in their customers minds at a
minimum.
Users of the Explorer version can still
upgrade, as they do now. CodeGear can get
some additional money for upgrades from the
Turbo products to Studio.
Rich Shealer
January 8th, 2007 at 10:40 amI must have missed something but I dont understand the whole spinoff codegear thing and I really dont understand what happened to Developer Studio.
Can you please give it a few lines (without spin) so we can plan our futures
Tks
January 16th, 2007 at 6:21 pmStu
PS We use Delphi and had some interest from clients for C#. Do we have to buy 2 seperate products?
I am very disappointed with the help files in Turbo Delphi for Win32 : they lack the examples that were present in the Delphi 7 help files. This is a vital resource for novice/hobbyist programmers.
January 20th, 2007 at 9:21 amI thought that the set of Turbo Delphi videos by Nick Hodges was excellent. I have watched them all - some several times. Thanks a lot. They are a great way to get started with a new product.
January 20th, 2007 at 9:23 am