Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #57
25 Feb
- New Blog: Danny Magin
- Are you guys aware that with the December Update, we distributed some new source code? Take a look at: C:\Program Files\CodeGear\RAD Studio\5.0\source\dotNet\asp\provider and see. It’s the code for the DBXASPProvider that we ship with Delphi for .Net. Give it a look, as it shows a good use of our new dbExpress MetaData classes.
- So I’m sitting at dinner last night, and Hadi Hariri turns to me and says, "I didn’t even know you’d be here. Dude, you should blog about it.". Well, here I am — at EKON in Frankfurt. I’ve actually been here for two days, and Hadi is right — I should have mentioned that fact on my blog. Well, now I have! I’m going to be giving the keynote to a room full on .Net developers tomorrow, and I’m going to sing to them the praises of native code.
Derek –
Thanks for your feedback — my email is nick.hodges@codegear.com. Heck, my phone number is 831-431-1665 (but I’m in Germany right now).
I see you’ve found many of the resources to help beginners — there is a lot of community information and support out there.
I agree — our help continues to be an area needing improvement. Make sure that you run all the updates — there are two or three help updates to Delphi 2007, and continue to keep an eye on things, as we should have another help update soon. The goal is continuously improving and frequently updated documentation.
But I’m surprised that you say that you didn’t get any response on our forums. Which ones did you try? Our forums are patrolled by many able community members, as well as by our volunteers, TeamB (you can find out more about TeamB at http://www.teamb.com). It’s rare for me to hear that a question isn’t answered there.
In any event, please feel free to contact me if you wish — I’m all ears.
Nick
February 25th, 2008 at 11:20 pmThat must be a wonderful song
February 26th, 2008 at 3:37 amAre there any plans including the source of other units (like DBByteBuffer.pas)?
February 26th, 2008 at 4:05 amHi Nick,
This is an attempt to contact you because I can find no other way of making contact with you.
I am a Delphi neophyte and from my lowly perspective of the towering Delphi Product I must alert you to the fact that while the capabilities of Delphi go almost daily from strength to strength, the whole edifice is now founded on sand.
While effort is being ploughed (quite rightly) into expanding the power of Delphi, supporting its present band of skilled users, the need to cultivate and nurture a strong base of future Delphi programmers has fallen off your companies radar.
Why did I buy Delphi and decide to learn to use it?
Not because of an effective marketing campaign, but because of recommendation from an existing user. Without this ‘word of mouth’ recommendation I would not even be aware of Delphi. How does your corporation intend to attract a vibrant new base of neophyte Delphy promoters?
How well is the neophyte supported on their path through the early steps of Delphi Training?
Well, apart from your good series of Camtasia videos and some equally good videos from 3d Buzz and some fragmentary tutorials from Zarco Gajic on about.com, the route from ground zero to even marginal competence is a nightmare. I am adamant that I will learn to use Delphi, but if I had not been so adamant, then I would have given up at any number of hurdles over the last few months of searching for novice support and guidance.
The amazing HELP resource is of no value to the novice and the forum is not supported by any professionals from your company to ensure that all novice enquiries (no matter how basic) are answered - AND UNDERSTOOD.
The future of Delphi does not lay in the hands of the small band of professional programmers you enjoy today. It’s future lays in the hands of those whom today you bring to Delphi and teach to adore Delphi.
So Nick, I post you a challenge.
Publish your email here and on all the other major places where Delphi is promoted and invite anyone with any Delphi query to mail it to you.
If you get masses of mail, this will be an indication to you of just how poorly the neophytes are supported and how much more help your corporation needs to commit to this area.
If you get very few emails, then this is the measure of the future interest in Delphi. It will show you how few people there are taking up this language and part of the reason for that will be that there is no real support available to moving from novice to competence. No where to go to ask ‘How do I xxxxxxx’.
I and others like me really really need somewhere to go to be able to get answers to ‘how do I find out how to do xyz?’
You have my email, please contact me.
Derek
February 26th, 2008 at 4:10 amDerek –
BTW, do I have your email? It doesn’t show on the blog here…
Nick
February 26th, 2008 at 7:25 amDerek,
[sorry for the hijack Nick]
Stop by
http://3dbuzz.com/vbforum/forumdisplay.php?f=220
Ask anything you need to know about getting up and running - even where else to ask questions. Try out some of the code challenges. There isn’t a huge following over there but it is the best place I know of for the neophyte.
–
February 26th, 2008 at 8:48 amDave
Nick,
I entered my email along with the reply.
however, it is derek at execsec co uk
Derek
February 26th, 2008 at 10:44 amDerek: There are many places to get the experience you need to learn Delphi. The depth of answers to your questions by doing a simple google search is massive, I can almost guarentee you that any question you have has been asked and answered numerous times. Then there’s all of the articles that Dr. Bob has posted thru the years (drbob42.com). Many good books are available. And on the forums there are the peers and TeamB members that answer questions. Speaking for myself only, I try to answer some when I can find the time, but there is a responsiblity for each person to do some due dilligence in searching for an answer. I consider myself a very experienced Delphi programmer, and still use Google & Google forums searches on a weekly basis. Only after I’m sure I cannot find the answer on my own do I seek help from someone else.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:49 amA must for Delphi neophytes
http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/
HTH,
February 26th, 2008 at 11:38 amMarco
Derek: sorry, but you shall learn Delphi the way that "small band of professional programmers" did when the Internet was slow, not so widely available (or not available at all), and much poorer of contents: reading and trying.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:00 pmI think it was a mistake to take away the manuals from Delphi, but you can still buy them. And there are some very good books about Delphi.
Until you get a deep knowledge of the Delphi language, VCL architecture and so on, you won’t become part of that band.
And believe me, only some good readings that will drive you along the right path will lead you to that knowledge. Web site articles, example, and forums, may be useful but without sound foundations they will bring you nowhere - you will just scrap the surface and learn fragments. Believe me, nothing can replace a good manual.
There are still some good books about Delphi available, although not so many as before. I’d suggest you Cantù’s "Mastering Delphi" - and then the Delphi manuals. But there are many other - just search…
You will learn everything you’ll need to become a good developer, and then you will be able to take full advantages of forums and the like.
Derek, (and all)
In a way I have to give my voice to Derek and support what he is trying to say!
http://delphi.about.com/b/2008/02/27/how-to-help-novice-delphi-developers-laud-thinking.htm
p.s.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:25 amWhen I realized I have written a full length post here I decide to make it available on delphi.about.com
Gotta go with Derek on this one. I was forced to take over a large project from a Delphi developer almost 3 years ago, and I had never programmed Delphi (or any other Win32 language) before.
The process was a nightmare in many ways. It’s very disheartening for a new user to walk into a bookstore, see racks and racks of programming books, but no Delphi books. I have read some of Marco Cantu’s excellent books, but even those can be daunting for a new user - they don’t really go into the basics too much. If an aspiring programmer has the choice between downloading PDFs to get the basics, then reading a 900+ page book for more detail, or just buying one of Microsoft’s books that cover everything from a beginner’s experience, why should they choose Delphi?
Delphi’s help is better in the 2007 version, but I gotta say, I don’t really like sitting down at my PC and trying to read help files. They seem to be better for quick reference on how to do something, not comprehensive learning on the language/environment as a whole.
I don’t think people that have been programming for years realize how much people with my level of experience don’t like newsgroups. If you get an answer at all, it often assumes you know much about the language, VCL, etc. And new users simply don’t. Asking for clarification often increases that feeling of inferiority that new users have.
Some of the CG blogs almost make things worse. Some of them address subjects so complicated or high-level for a new user that I’ve quit even trying to understand. For example, Allen Bauer’s blog seems excellent, but as a newer Delphi programmer, I’ve just about quit trying to understand it.
I realize that learning everything involved in being a programmer is a different subject from learning Delphi as a language, but if they don’t get tied together more often, and preferably in a form you don’t have to download, how many more new users will Delphi have?
My thanks however to Marco for his books, Zarko for the about.com site, and Neil Moffatt for his delphibasics site. Without those, I don’t know if I’d have eventually come to like Delphi or not.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:03 amGo Marco, and you can’t go wrong.
Marco Cantu’s Essential Delphi
Marco Cantu’s Essential Pascal
Once you have that down, take out your wallet and buy one of Marco’s "Mastering Delphi" tombs.
I have (and cut my teeth on) the one for Delphi 2, and the one for Delphi 7 (That I reference above).
Personally, I have Delphi 2006, and have not purchased the latest version of Marco’s book. Perhaps the next Delphi version that I buy, I will pair it up with Marco’s latest.
February 27th, 2008 at 1:27 amI have been using Delphi for quite some time now, but I’m STILL learning as this is just mainly a hobby, but I find programming fascinating to help create little programs for myself and friends/family that try to make life a little easier and of course the challenge of making something work like you want it to! I’ve never spoken up publicly, but this is my chance to spill out what’s been on my mind, since we’re basically talking about education of Delphi - kudos to Derek for bringing this to the forefront!
1) GIVE IN ORDER TO RECEIVE
just like any business or even trade shows (as an example) - you need to give out free stuff to help get people/companies interested; basic business principle really.
You started to do this with the Turbo Explorer versions, but that’s obviously taken a far back seat these days as compared to say the MS Visual Studio Express editions that are kept up-to-date and quite comprehensive as-is really…or at least that’s my perception. Just 2 days ago…I finally decided to download VB and C# Express to check out the environments; I started programming in VB many moons ago with VB5 so I haven’t touched any of their stuff since those days, but even having no experience in C#, I was able to get a small test program running after figuring out the syntax. BTW - where did C# go…not RAD Studio anymore?
So CodeGear….please do NOT forget the Turbos and how important they are, keep them up to date and don’t make it hard for people to download them and update them or have a tedious registration process + make them more transparent on your home website. And of course…have your marketing dept study how the VS Express site is set up and take the best of what they have and really make it exciting for newbies and existing programmers to download and try the products/languages. That’s what I’m doing with VS C# and VB right now…"testing the waters….so they say".
2) Main Education link on the CodeGear site is VERY disappointing: http://www.codegear.com/education
This page should be LOADED with help, tutorials, code snippets, Nick’s videos (and more), etc. I do believe that learning by visuals is ALOT quicker and easier to comprehend than quite frankly reading a book (extremely boring). Excellent job on the videos Nick! too bad we don’t see anymore of those
Anyway, the Education page right now looks like a paid Courseware page marketed to companies to learn your products rather than for normal folks. I can only imagine a newbie trying to find Nick’s videos….who would think to visit some dude’s blog?…it should be right smack in the middle of the Education page!
2a) You guys should think about approaching the 3rd Party Delphi websites for help in creating your own "compendium of knowledge" in less time rather than reinventing the wheel; as one fella mentioned: the Delphi Basics website is a good source + other sites (DelphiWiki, etc.) that offer a buttload of code examples and snippets to help out programmers.
You experienced devs are like another breed unlike Derek and I…that basically have no idea and learning as we go. I think of it like sending your wife to the hardware store….she has no idea what all those tools are - so you need to explain it to her clearly…even give her a photo of what it looks like to make sure she gets the right thing.
3) Taking the thought of Note #2 - here’s a stupid idea - why not make even a (Delphi) program like Quality Central - to help us pull code snippets, API statements…all that stuff and make it where site Members can post these codes and for everyone to search and use (validated/blessed code of course!)?
I currently use the now defunct KeyNote program (built w/Delphi) to hold all my coding examples that I’ve accumulated over the years, but it would be nice if there was some master central location we could all put these in - run and supported by Codegear - and therefore help each other - WITHOUT having to log into the website everytime! Not to mention the 20 ways of doing things, but what is the "right way and most efficient" way of doing things, i.e. like creating a child window form. I’ve seen tons of different ways, but you guys should let us know the RIGHT way.
4) In this day and age of internet….people helping people is paramount and I’m not talking about UseNet/Newgroups. To make the "community" more transparent to the mass public (and I believe extremely important in getting your name out there as well, i.e. "marketing") - spend $160 for vBulletin and start a Web Forum.
Newsgroups are a pain and not as popular anymore and most people don’t understand how to access them anyway thereby decreasing exposure and involvement! It’s even tough to find a good Newsreader program these days - XanaNews being the best, though! I see the Non-Technical group is by far the most active forum it seems, but most of the posts are major debates that go on and on and on and on….. (boring). Aren’t there any moderators to put a kabash on lengthy threads like that?
But seriously, start a web forum TODAY…it’s "current" and the new thing to do and easy to navigate + vBulletin even offers RSS newsfeeds to each category you set up. Nothing to it….if you guys can develop Delphi and Delphi for PHP - understanding vBulletin for you guys would be silly. All these blogs are "nice" and "personal", but there’s too many of you and too many blog-sites to visit + you guys need a central location that is easy to find for where all of us developers and newbies can hang out that’s not Usenet. It would even be a good place for YOU guys to communicate with each other as well via "private forums" in the Main Forum site. Very flexible, ALOT more fun and alot more personal than Usenet…not to mention you can post screenshots, images, etc. easily + everyone has a browser and NOT everyone has a Newsreader or a Google (Groups) account.
5) Another thing I think is VERY important to help for perception esp. for newbies trying to figure out what product they will settle on, are the quantity of updates. Why come out with major versions every year or less and charge an arm and a leg?? You offer Purchase + Maintenance packages - do you know how hard that is to understand? Finally you guys put up some info on the Delphi page on your site, but still…a strange way to go about it (I think) and not at all straight-forward.
Let me give you an example of a (music) program that has went from non-existent and even spit on in the music software instrument world to virtual fame overnight because of the frequency of updates - www.reaper.net. This software is developed by the fella who developed WinAmp. The dude spits out updates like every week or less…and you know what….folks love that! Not only that…by doing this, he has attracted a massive following in practically no time. Why? Because it’s a reassurance to the public that they are COMMITTED in supporting their program and folks don’t get worried thinking about…"when’s the next update going to happen or is this product for real and will it be around in a year or 2?" + people just love to contribute when given the right tools/medium.
Anyway….study their changelog and surf their forum….it’s unbelievable and it’s a damn good example that the model works. Google is great, but it’s sloppy. I’ve learned more in Forums about everything in general…than just searching (and pulling from) the internet.
One last thing…. the PRICE for newbies (and upgraders). Come on…you’ve got to make it affordable guys…take a look - I pulled the values for your website + did a quick search for VS 2008 in PriceGrabber.com. I’m just talking about for individuals here…not company multi-developer packages licenses or whatever.
1) Delphi Win32 Pro = $899.00 NEW, $399.00 UPGRADE
2) Visual Studio 2008 Standard = under $300.00 NEW
http://software.pricegrabber.com/misc-programming/m/56966672/search=visual+studio+2008/st=sort/sort_type=bottomline
3) Delphi RAD Studio Pro = $1,199.00 NEW, $549.00 UPGRADE
…how you intend to attract "NEW" customers with those prices for your "full meal deals" is beyond me. As a Delphi lover, though…Visual Studio is looking mighty attractive at those kind of prices since it’s cheaper for me to do a new VS 2008 than do an upgrade from Turbo Pro to Delphi 2007! (not to mention the completeness of the Free Express editions) and being the defacto .NET environment. And no…I’m not one of those guys that is hell-bent on using Win32 over .NET.
Sorry for the long post….I finally had to let it out as I friggin’ love Delphi, but I feel like I need to speak out. And as for me…I STILL feel like a newbie as I’ve got SO MUCH more to learn, but it’s not fun when it’s time to search for topics like "how to stop popups in TWebBrowser" and "why doesn’t the keyboard work on Flash games in the browser".
SO…to wrap it up:
1) please get real about educating the public for FREE and get rid of the "courseware" bit on your main "Education" page - it simply just doesn’t look good when there’s hardly any helpful material right there for at least newbies and other folks trying to learn. It may be on your site somewhere, but it’s not easy to get to.
2) offer incentives for existing developers that can help influence others; let’s not forget "word of mouth" is the most powerful form of advertising and these same folks are the ones that usually help the community.
3) Try something new - Keep your products updated and release new builds regularly like Reaper does; surely the whole program doesn’t need to be recompiled and packaged like on a first install - a simple update of the executable and any other dependent (updated) files should be the way. This will help "reassure" the public of your commitment to the products.
4) Right now…Visual Studio at the price that any "newbie" can get it at…despite being all about being .NET….is a sure way of tipping the tables in their direction for anyone really interested in programming. .NET is obviously here to stay, so debating whether it’s good or not against the original Win32 framework, is really moot.
5) Your revenue not only relies on existing professional developers that are basically forced in a direction from their company bosses, but also home (novice) programmers like Derek and I. How many times I’ve come across comments like: "I use Delphi at home, but Visual Studio at the office!"? It should not be this way!!
Anyway….enough said and I’m sorry this post is so damn long, but I just had to finally let loose, so for whatever its worth! LOL!
Cheers,
February 27th, 2008 at 2:14 amFred
So true, the help has improved a bit, but is still nowhere near.
A newb colleague is converting some C functions to Delphi, he asked what is Delphi for return(x)? I said, thats easy its exit. Bad practice aside, neither he nor I could find anything relating to the Delphi exit function in the help, even filtering all you get is C++ exit.
I had to point him to www.delphibasics.co.uk . Its often quicker and better to go straight to google rather than the help.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:02 amFred - amazing post!
) also contribute to this.
I agree with almost anything.
Absence of official support forum available to anyone (even unregistred users) is just noncense today.
Turbo editions is just… too basic.
I was forced to use special customised portable Turbo Delphi Explorer with tweak to allow components installation.
And VS Express is just Delphi killer in educational niche.
These nightmare Turbo editions licenses and bad quality selling staff (in Russia, educational licenses are still #1 of Codegear income
Nick need to understand that Codegear do not have strong developers codebase anymore. So, they need to release something to adapt newbies. Cheap or free. With good help, of course (I still use BP 7.0 due to so good help with examples on almost every page).
P.S. And before telling about positives of native code to Net developers, try to get rid of NET in your own IDE. It clearly deserves this.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:32 amWell, the response has been both refreshing and at the same time daunting.
Refreshing, because it shows that I am not the only person who finds the CodeGear approach of near zero support for beginners to be a huge impediment to climbing the Delphi Learning mountain - perhaps I am not quite the dumbo I frequently think I must be.
Daunting because if all you folks have found the same as me, then there probably really is no structured training resource out there waiting for me to find the right lucky Google click (and I have been very lucky so far in finding the Camtasia vids, 3DBuzz vids, About.com and delphibasics.co.uk)
Nick, I hope that you are taking all this in. I note that you have not posted your email in response to my challenge and indeed have not even contacted me despite noting that you did not have my email. This is a shame, because it was your Camtasia videos that actually broke the jargon ‘ice’ for me and I had hoped you could be encouraged to make another brave step for Delphi’s future.
I have not sat back idly expecting to be spoon fed code snippets to solve my programming needs.
Having purchased and installed Turbo Delphi Pro for Win32 and hit the first wall of Delphi Help instead of Delphi Training Manual (trying to read Delphi Help is like trying to read alphabet spaghetti - surely those words aren’t English, are they?), I moved on to looking for ‘Turbo Delphi for Dummies’. Not only did books of this ilk not exist, but all the later version books only covered the update enhancements. So at that point, I decided that If I were to crack this problem, I would need to start in a different place - or at least in a different time.
I located a second hand copy of ‘Mastering Delphi 2′ and started to read it. It is not a novel, and it is certainly not aimed at neophyte entry level and again, lots of the terminology is ‘alphabet spaghetti’. At neophyte level I was even thrown by Pascal vs Delphi vs Turbo Delphi vs all the versions of Delphi - what was the association between all these, how were they different, where should I be looking for understanding.
I found the 30 Camtasia videos and started watching them - over and over and over. They were like visual and verbal alphabet spaghetti, but at least there were little examples of ‘Hello World’ which could be mimicked if not comprehended and it felt so good to make my own version - ‘Hello Derek’.
I found the 3D Buzz videos and watched those over and over in parallel with Nicks vids. I found Zarco’s postings but they were beyond me, mostly they wouldn’t even work because I was leaving out bits that a guru took for granted.
As the process went on, some pieces began to gel and I realised that learning Delphi is a catch 22 process - you need to understand Delphi in order to understand Delphi. My process of reading a watching repeatedly was slowly building comprehension, a structured teaching process would have been so much more efficient, but in its absence, immersion was going to have to serve to build the basic layers of comprehension and make it possible for me to start to understand Zarco’s posts.
I am a Chemist. I am no stranger to the need for extensive study in order to master ones field and as a Research Chemist I am no stranger to the need for private study and experimentation in order to push the bounds to new levels. But this is Programming - a man made construction. Programmes only do what man has made them to do, so everything a language can do is known and is there by design. In contrast to the world of chemistry, learning a humanly constructed language should be a doddle. But for Delphi that is not the case. However, thanks to some forty odd videos and an old book, I have now elevated myself to the level of a scavenger.
I browse through the heaps of bits of code which I can now marginally comprehend and when I find a bit that does something useful to my current needs, I incorporate it into my projects. Often I have no idea how these bits work, and worse, I have no idea how to expand them beyond their demonstrated use - I do not even know if they are capable of expansion. As a previous writer said - I have no idea of what I don’t know - is it a little or a lot? is it valuable or not? I have no idea of just how big the heap is that I am scavenging over. This is not an intelligent use of my time and it is the least efficient means of education. It is not a route any but the most persistent will be prepared to countenance and if it is the only route newcomers to Delphi must endure then you can be certain that Delphi has no future beyond its present cadre of experts.
In my first post, I referred to ‘Fragmentary tutorials by Zarco Gajic’, this was misleading and I would like to explain. I had just read an excellent tutorial by Zarco covering reading and editing an XL spreadsheet, the first examplary bit of code that explained how to do this, so I eagerly grabbed it and trotted off to my patchwork quilt of my first project programme. I built it in and great - it displayed the contents of any sheet I wanted - BUT - I did not want to edit the sheet, I wanted to search through it for any matching names and dates, doing a Soundex on the names as I went. And that is where I ground to a halt. The example code did exactly one thing and that one thing was not an exact match for what I needed to do. It was tantalisingly close but it did not contain any hints or means for me to take it to slightly adjacent uses, and this is what I meant by ‘Fragmentary’ - it only exposed to me a tiny fragment of the utility of the components I was using (at least I think this is the case, I cannot be sure) and it did not give me any hints at all as to how I might progress to using say the DBGrid in the way I needed.
The frustration dug in as I experimented with code, but this was stupid. Only the exact syntax would have worked and there was an almost infinite combinations possible, and I didn’t even know if what I wanted was even possible.
I needed to be able to ask - "What is the best way to search an XL spreadsheet for a condition that I need to compute (the Soundex) from the sheets contents and then to display the matching records". Easy question, but no one to ask it of. I have a Porch and I have only been shown how to start the engine and the screen wipers - I am sure it can do more but I have no way of finding out except by watching other drivers from the side of the road as they flash past. — I’m not learning very much very fast !!
I need access to an online mentor. I need CodeGear to spend a little of their profits on gauging the depth of the abyss they are allowing their product to slide into by putting up this service and then seeing how much it is needed. The results will tell them if Russia is going to be the only place that Delphi will survive with its million licenses in education.
I have now developed an inkling that Delphi is a great product, it sickens me that I can see it being allowed to die through lack of educational support. Nick, Please Talk To Me.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:59 pmThis is chapter one of Mastering Delphi 2:
February 28th, 2008 at 1:21 am—-
Chapter 1: A Form Is a Window
Creating Your First Form
Adding a Title
Saving the Form
Using Components
Changing Properties
Responding to Events
Compiling and Running a Program
Changing Properties at Run-Time
Adding Code to the Program
A Two-Way Tool
Looking at the Source Code
The Textual Description of the Form
The Project File
Summary
—
If this is not for beginners, well I really wonder what it should be. It is true that the IDE changed a lot since then, it’s a very old book, and something more recent would have helped more, Delphi changed a lot between version 2 and 3. But the language and the way it works are the same.
I do not know if CG sells the manual set to Turbo owners too, I’d try. But there is no "magic bullet" - the first impact may be hard, especially if used to different tools.
And anybody who wants to learn first have to learn to be humble. What’s the problem on asking simple question on newsgroup? Why to be afraid of looking naive, sometimes? It happened and will happen to everybody.
As far as I can see the Delphi community always helps beginners unless they ask questions in a somewhat arrogant way. And if sometimes the answer looks like a RTFM, that’s because many looks to have the F1 key linked to their newsreader. "Why bother to try to resolve an issue when somebody else can do it for me"?
And sorry if CG Chief Scientist use his blog to talk about advanced topics instead of training novices
Of course it would be nice if CG could offer more to beginners, but right now I guess they have other priorities. Its product prices are an issue, even advanced developers would like cheaper tools but CG only makes development tools, and have to make money from them. MS has far more sources to get money from - and can give more away for free.
Thanks Vitaliy…being a marketing major, I tend to observe marketing methods like a lighting engineer naturally observes lighting setups when he walks into a room or building.
I apologize, my REAPER link in my previous post was incorrect and doesn’t look like I can edit my post (another web forum benefit!), so here is the correct link - nice software, though, if you’re into writing music (and FREE for non-commercial use!): http://www.reaper.fm
On the Turbo Editions…there are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to this type of thing. They just need to figure out what is less intrusive to the target market as compared to the competition…Visual Studio Express in this case…and you always need to figure in ways to stay one-step ahead of the competition, product-wise and marketing-wise.
2 pieces of advice that I work and live by:
1) Think out of the box
2) KIS - Keep It Simple
One advice I’d like to give though on the Turbos and if they (hopefully) re-strategize those into a new "express" or "LE" products is - get them onto FREEWARE and SOFTWARE/SHAREWARE sites, i.e Download.com, Softpedia, etc. ASAP! Having a site by itself is going to be extremely hard to attract anyone. The more you have your software out there…the more folks will see it, know your name, and say "cool…this looks interesting, let me give this a shot" and who knows…maybe those same folks never even thought about programming and stumble across it and realize that it interests them! Haven’t we all surfed shareware sites looking for cool pieces of software??
Not to mention…if you have a Web Forum…the more people, the more threads, the more posts - and folks will realize there is alot of support and feel more comfortable jumping in. If one goes to a forum with 20 posts, comes back after a week and there’s 30 posts - they are not going to hang around too long, but with the community and great people Delphi has….a CodeGear web forum would blast off immediately…esp. for folks like Derek and I that NEED that help from experienced developers.
DEREK - just read your post….and you’re exactly right and I’m in the same shoes as you are.
The more we are educated…the more we are knowledgeable, the more we can offer feedback, i.e. "Quality Central" that they want us to participate in. I probably wouldn’t know a coding bug if it hit me in the face…I would simply bear it and think…"well, that didn’t work…let me try something else!"
February 28th, 2008 at 7:37 amJust in case somebody in CodeGear still reads this topic. Please, do not follow the last Fred’s advice. Turbos are not good enough to be pushed to public. After the December update, RAD is finally more or less working. Turbo’s or whatever should be upgraded accordingly before advertised.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:21 pmDerek/Fred,
IMHO, the best book on the market today for Delphi newcomers is Inside Delphi 2006 by Ivan Hladni.
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Delphi-Wordware-Developers-Library/dp/1598220039
-BUT-
A Zarco points out in his review:
"Don’t be mislead by the title of this book. Inside Delphi 2006 might be better titled as "Inside Borland Developer Studio 2006" as it covers all four programming languages included in the BDS 2006: Delphi for Win32, C++ for Win32, Delphi for .NET and C# (for .NET)."
So there is a bit of stuff in there that’ll look like alphabet spaghetti to you - it sure does to me. Having seen the mileage my last "tip" got though …
I sure hope some of the Delphi authors are reading this.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:52 pmDarn!
Zarco’s review:
February 29th, 2008 at 2:57 pmhttp://delphi.about.com/library/dpbr/blbr1598220039.htm
I don’t have all this problems
I use electronic copies of some excellent delphi books - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Borland-Delphi-Developers-Guide-Guides/dp/0672321157 and Mastering Delphi 7 and also other books, Delphi Russian Knowledge base is just a gem.
Excellent russian support forums are still available.
I see very bad trend in Delphi literature - it is almost dead.
Only IDE features are described in new books, all people I know said that they won’t start using such tool if they’ll read this books.
Considering Andrey post - I prefer to use native IDE form Turbos with bugfixings, of course. Current NET-rich version is not acceptable.
Drop this shit you are calling NET based refactorings - buy license for Model Maker Code Explorer instead.
P.S. And move back top chm help. It is just laught that you need to setup many megabytes package just to read help (and it is slow, btw).
March 1st, 2008 at 4:34 amIn response to my own post above:
"neither he nor I could find anything relating to the Delphi exit function in the help, even filtering all you get is C++ exit."
Latest help update 2 fixes the above problem. That was a quick turnaround!
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:46 pmSadly,
The response from CodeGear and particularly Nick seems to be ZERO (or maybe it’s just in the pipeline).
Such a shame when so little basal effort could be so valuable to them in the long run. Maybe I am wrong, but I cannot see mainstream businesses opting to use a language that is not equally mainstream, and to achieve that requires widespread adoption at all levels and to get that, not only does the language have to be good, but support has to be excellent.
Come on Nick, Just put one staff junior onto picking one question from the grass roots and making a Camtasia video to cover answering it. A couple a week and within a year you will have over 100 Camtasia videos covering the issues most frequently encountered by the (hopefully large) band of people who will become tomorrows Delphi programmers.
Today I only have access to 30 of your Camtasia videos, yet I use them over and over, gleaning new pointers or just reclarifying the detail of a specific method. Building on this you could make Delphi the most supported and most popular programming language. The benchmark against which others are measured. It won’t cost you much and you will have a ready supply of real questions to tackle as substance for the videos - real video solutions tackling real questions.
So come on Nick. Step up to the bar. You have set the scene with your 30 Camtasia videos and given us all a taste of how learning Delphi could be. Now how about you stop being a tease and set up a resource that produces an educational facility that equals the power of the language. I’m standing at the bar - come and share your views on the oportunity.
Derek
March 4th, 2008 at 2:05 amDerek –
I did respond — see above.
Please feel free to email me personally at nick.hodges@codegear.com if you’d prefer that.
Nick
March 4th, 2008 at 2:11 amDerek,
when complaining about Nick’s unresponsiveness please take into account that AFAIK Nick is currently at a conference in Germany (he also wrote so in his first comment here).
P.S.: Is it possible that the order of the comments here is not exactly chronological? Especially, it seems that comment #1 (Nick’s) is in reply to comment #4 (Derek’s). Or am I misinterpreting this? Did you even see Nick’s reply, Derek?
Cheers,
Oliver
March 4th, 2008 at 5:04 amI agree with Derek and have commented on the About Delphi site.
No-one has mentioned comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc this a good group (although one very high class idiot) with some really high quality participants. Most "experts" on the group want to see any poster (and particularly newbies) know the why of the solution, not just the solution.
On price I agree that the present intro is far too high. Why not offer Delphi 3 at £25 - £50 ($50 - $100).
Alan Lloyd
March 4th, 2008 at 3:22 pmNick,
My sincere appologies for missing your reply, my only excuse is that you threw me a curved ball by shoehorning your reply in above my first post.
I will give TeamB a try, but I still feel that many more Camtasia videos are the way to go.
Thanks for the reply.
Derek
March 5th, 2008 at 7:22 amIf you want more Camtasia videos, check out Code Gear Guru:
http://codegearguru.com/
March 6th, 2008 at 2:23 pm