Quote
The sad thing is that they *DID* ask developers about Kylix and their
research led them to make it. So it begs the question:
1. Did they ask the wrong people?
2. Did they ask the wrong question(s)?
They simply didn't deliver for me. The main failing was lack of
components. I needed grids, toolbars and other UI components from the
likes of Raize and DevExpress. Without those, it isn't much good for
developing desktop apps, and the importance of third party components is
something I still don't think Borland understand (witness BCB!).
And then of course there was the pricing debacle, where people like me
bought high, and then got stitched up with bug-fixes coming out as a
charged for upgrade. I felt very bruised by all that when there was an
easy way to set the price high while making it easy to seed the market -
introductory discounts.
Add to that the lack of maintenance and basically it has been horrendously
mis-managed. It also taught me to leave new Borland tools alone for a
version or two, and I read today that bugs will prevent many of the
DevExpress components from working in Delphi 8, which is simply amazing
and shows the lack of understanding again.
All that said, I have been buying third party VCL components recently as
Delphi 7 Pro is a great tool and with the components will provide me with
all I need for the next few years of developing apps for shrink-wrap sale.
I'll be looking at Delphi 9 or 10 for .Net once everyone has found the
bugs, and Borland have decided whether or not to continue developing it.
/Matthew Jones/