To whom it may concern at Codegear,
A Recent posting over at The Doric Temple titled “how do I make the case for delphi (as a target business development environment)” has prompted me to wonder why Codegear has slightly neglected the Turbo family which to my knowledge hasn’t been updated since it’s initial release on the 5th September 2006.
I’ll be as clear as I can about this from the outset: I firmly believe that Codegear would benefit greatly from keeping their Turbo line up to date and built as an appealing overall package in order to attract hobbyist or student developers.
Why would Codegear give all this away for free or for a token sum?
I strongly suspect that the amount of users who pay for a full version of Delphi purely for Hobbyist or Student development is very slim. Who can honestly afford to pay £600 (Codegear Online Store - Delphi Professional 2009 – New User) for a tool which they don’t plan on recouping any of the cost of? With most Development in universities being done on Tools which are Free (such as eclipse), how can a University even justify spending on tools such as Delphi anymore? Therefore creating an appealing package for these users is getting your tool into the hands of Developers who wouldn’t otherwise have it (the current Turbos are arguably not appealing to new users compared to a tool like Visual Studio Express but more on that later).
If Codegear are able to get Delphi into the hands of more developers then this will have an overall “morale” boosting effect on the community. Set aside the debate for now over what the knock-on effect to business development managers more potential new employees skilled in Delphi has. Lets look at this purely based on the effect of the increase in the number of Delphi Developers:
- More Delphi Developers creating online and offline “noise”: articles, blog posts and posts on developer forums will have a positive branding and marketing effect for Codegear, something which they vitally need in order to remain relevant.
- More Delphi Developers contributing community support, newsgroup posts and articles create a more appealing target development environment for potential business users.
- More Delphi Developers create a bigger target market for component developers and will also create more components and code libraries themselves.
Codegear could turn Students and Hobbyists, a pitiful target market in turns of revenue potential, into a great contributor of Marketing and Product Support for their tools which will then be reflected in their revenue further up the chain at a relatively small opportunity cost.
There are Turbos available, why can’t everyone just use those?
Many of you will probably be wondering why the currently available Turbo family are not enough. The current Turbos are several years old and have not kept up with language, compiler and IDE developments made available in the “full” versions of Delphi. Now a more stable IDE and shiny new compiler and language features such as UTF-8 and Generics are not a big deal by themselves and certainly many developers won’t even use these features in every project. But for any prospective student who is beginning Delphi and has been doing their research they’re likely to find Articles, Community forum postings and Resources which do take advantage of these features, leaving them frustrated. In addition to this I’ll be frank: there is an inherent satisfaction factor for any geek in using the latest technology, we’ve all experienced the desire to try out the new phone, a new gadget or the latest and greatest piece of technology. It’s an inherent part of being a geek, this is something that Microsoft understand and demonstrate with their Visual Studio Express line.
Additionally the Delphi.NET Turbo has been withdrawn because of the release of Delphi Prism and I’m hoping that this is a temporary withdrawel and a sign of a Turbo Prism in preparation. I would certainly like to see a Turbo version of Delphi Prism because, in my mind, a .NET offering has the greatest chance of drawing budding new developers away from C# and VB.NET because it allows them to interact with the Framework and concepts that they already know and to utilise the significant existing developer resources available for .NET Developers.
The Turbo site also no longer seems to list the paid-for version of the Turbos which allowed you to install 3rd Party Components. The VCL and range of 3rd Party VCL components available is what sets Delphi apart as a language, how would you expect to sell someone the benefits of developing in Delphi whilst limiting the product to no 3rd party components?
What exactly would you like to see then?
I would ideally like to see the following from Codegear:
- Newer versions of the entire Turbo line - incorporating the fantastic IDE, compiler and language improvements released with RAD Studio 2009. Microsoft keep their Express editions rigidly up to date with the main Visual Studio lines.
- A Turbo version of Delphi Prism – A .NET offering with the power, flexibility and pace of new releases that Delphi Prism has would be a very appealing tool to try to lure existing C# and VB.NET developers into the Delphi community.
- A Getting Started documentation bundle - intended to get new users, students and hobbyists up and running on a couple of fun sample projects immediately, this could possibly be best served through Community authorship. See below. Heck – I’d even be prepared to put together a first pass of this myself!
- Allow the installation of 3rd Party VCL components – Consider what reasons you give when stating the advantages of using Delphi, limiting 3rd Party VCL components limits the appeal of the tool.
- Allow the installation of more than one Turbo Product – In my mind it certainly makes sense to at least allow the installation of Delphi.NET (/Prism?) and Delphi for Win 32 on the same machine.
- If it is necessary to cover costs: A low cost version of Delphi that would allow the ability to install more than Turbo product at a time and the ability to install 3rd Party components priced around the £50-£90 mark..
The Turbo Versions of Delphi were a very popular move by Codegear and I’m disappointed that they have let them fall behind but their intentions were in the correct place. I always felt that they could have made more of them if they had bundled more documentation with them. In my opinion they should include a “Getting Started” pack with a basic introduction to the language and a few fun tutorial projects to get started. This could even be a converted version of some pages from the Delphi Wiki, this way Codegear wouldn’t even have to author anything themselves. For the paid for version of the Turbos they could also look at rolling the cost of a PDF only version of one of the many excellent Delphi books currently available.
I would also happily see the license changed to non-commercial, educational and open source only development with the Turbo line if it meant that we could get a more powerful, more up to date version of Delphi for free or cheaply.
Codegear is a Development Tools Business, they can’t give away Developer tools.
I know. The Codegear VPs and senior managers will probably have a long term strategic objective of increasing the viabilty of their tools as a development tool and as a development environment as a way of increasing demand for their product. I submit that this is simply another method of trying to acheive that aim. I don’t know how much the Turbos Line would cost to maintain but this could easily be offset as a form of marketing cost (which it would be), the returns of which could easily be tracked in the same way as other campaigns (# Google Mentions, # Newsgroup posts, New users, University teaching uptake).
Thank-you for taking the time to read this and consider the fate of the Turbo Family. I would love to hear support, comments or even criticism from anyone who has an opinion on this.
I am a Delphi Developer, .NET and Web Developer and General Geek. I am an enthusiastic advocate of hobbyist development and in particular tools which allow for hobbyist development. Please have a good look around and enjoy anything that you find useful on this site. 
This open letter will have no result
As I understand Nick position, Delphi marketing strategy today if focused on corporations ripoff. They don’t list individual developers or education as their targets. And they don’t like them, even hate, sometimes.
That we have now is bunch of incompetent people developing quite good product. But making it just worse.
For example – unability to install two Turbo products occurs from laziness. Programmers didn’t even bother changing some registry keys.
We also now have this crap of NET assemblies in IDE itself, making itless stable, more error prone and having huge size.
@Vitaliy – I don’t expect this open letter to suddenly redefine Codegear’s corporate strategy but even if it prompts Nick (or whoever) into posting definite statements about the future and their support for the Turbo line I will consider it a success.
Since the Codegear spin off and the subsequent Embracadero acquisition I get the impression that Codegear are able to finally implement their own strategy (free of the Borland influence) and have been doing a pretty good job of it. They seem to be a lot more open and are able to respond to the community wishes a lot quicker than before, this is something which I hope will continue to grow.
So don’t blame the people at Codegear for whatever it is, they’re only just stretching their strategy legs and learning to walk before they run with the radical new strategy for Delphi (As Nick showed us the other week: http://blogs.codegear.com/nickhodges/2009/02/04/39200).
Here I posted my opinion:
http://asimilatorul.com/index.php/2009/02/08/about-turbo-delphi/
Also you can read the comments from some of the StackOverflow readers:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/346492/why-werent-you-at-coderage-iii/346906#346906
Jamie,
I hope your thoughtful post gets an open-minded hearing at CodeGear- I believe you are on the mark with respect to community buzz and marketing, and I can’t believe that low-cost/free non-commercial versions of Delphi would lead to significant lost revenue.
As an academic scientist, I use Delphi because I can write and re-write code quickly, the code itself is quite fast and at my age, spending time learning new languages is unattractive. However, one of my programs (freeware for teaching and environmental modeling) is about to be translated into Java because a) this is what computer science students are taught, b) it is what students (and freeware projects generally) can afford and c) it will run on Mac and Linux boxes. Your suggested strategy would help directly with point b and indirectly with point a. Admittedly, without some type of cross-compilation technology, this project will probably leave the Delphi sphere anyway. However, it is frustrating to see a good project slipping away from Delphi because the language/IDE has disappeared from the student community.
@alexandrul – Absolutely my thinking. You can really see where the Codegear Turbos fall short when you look at the VS Express offerings. SO is still awaiting DNS Propagation for me at the moment but I’ll try later.
@Steve – Your story is one that will be increasingly echoed in Academic circles I fear. It is imperative that Delphi doesn’t lose its relationship with University courses or it really will be the beginning of Delphi being resigned to becoming irrelevant in today’s development world.
As you rightly pointed out: (c) is a problem even with renewed support for the Turbo family. I can do little but point out the roadmap (cross-platform support was hinted at during CodeRage III) and point to Freepascal or Delphi Prism (running on Mono) as an intermediate filler if they are suitable.
+1000
It would be very, very nice to have Turbo version of Delphi.
p.s. I don’t understand Codegear’s attitude to community at all. Looks like they don’t hear anything, they don’t want to hear.
That’s why i keep stick with my Delphi 7 Pro, i have download Turbo Delphi several years ago (when it launched, maybe on 2006?) and i impress that i can have free equal development tool as the pay version (at that time BDS 2006) and guess what, in early TD version, we can install 3rd party component just by listed unit’s on dclusr package LOL and install dclusr into the IDE, 1 month after that “leaked” feature, they’d patched it
If there were any Turbo version of RAD Studio 2009, i’ll sure i will test it off, and spread it… or maybe i will use it as my main development tools (still use Delphi 7 now) . But for paying any commercial IDE, i prefer to wait until commodore (64-bit compiler?) release
I guess pricing is based on getting enough money in to keep the product alive.
It’s far more complex to maintain the heap of old code they have now, with restraints on compatibility, the pull of new features seen in competing language tools, plus a user base that has been bleeding members for years.
@Aleksey – Fingers crossed, at least one person in a position of influence at Codegear will have read this?
@Dels – I just think it’s a shame that they didn’t keep them up to date, they were good little products but they quickly became seen as old and depreciated.
@Ken Knopfli – I suspect that high pricing is a remnant of what is needed to keep the shareholders of a publically traded company such as BORL happy. It may be a more complex code base now but they still have significant revenues (their 2007 results were listed as part of BORLs) to lean on. High pricing isn’t a problem if you can justify it so that people are prepared to pay it.
May be the future of Delpi is in Russia. I think CG delivers it free in this country for academic purpose. And guest what .. it looks well alive according to the number of russian web sites devoted to ‘free’ Delphi and ‘free’ Delphi components we can download from them.
Hi guys,
It is good to hear the community still buzz around Delphi. Working for one of Embarcadero’s (CodeGear’s new parent company) I will try my best to make your voice heard.
Cheers,
CodeGear do not allow the installation of 3rd Party VCL components in Turbo. May it be. But in this case they must provide Turbo with additional preinstalled freeware components. At least with JVCL.
@rap – I seem to remember reading about that deal, if we could find some quantifiable numbers to back up the increased uptake of Delphi in Russia as a result we could have something more solid to show CodeGear. I’ve certainly noticed a lot of sites with Russian domains getting good search rankings for Delphi components recently.
@Alpay – Thank-you for any attention you are able to draw to the issue. As I said, I don’t expect to single-handedly change CG’s strategy overnight but if this even brings forward an internal meeting on the subject I’ll be happy. On the other hand, I would also love to talk to someone inside CG off-the-record about the future of the Turbos.
@Torbins – This would be favourable compared to a complete ban on 3rd Party components. However, I do still think that disallowing them altogether takes away one of the great universal selling points’s and one of the greatest advantages of using Delphi.
Actually, CodeGear has talked a bit about releasing new Turbos for Delphi 2009 for Win32 and C++Builder 2009 — last I heard, they should be coming soon.
https://forums.codegear.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6998᭽
https://forums.codegear.com/thread.jspa?messageID=26679杙
Rick Carter
@Rick Carter – From the sounds of those threads it seems like their plans for the Turbos would go the other way (even more restricted and less flexible). One thread even mentioned no-visual designers – This would be an even less appealing offering than the 3 year old Turbos currently are imo.
The main points of my letter still apply, even more so than ever if the plans in those posts are to be believed.
I work for a small (c. 12 developer and support staff using Delphi) UK-based software house that produces and supports a market-leading product in its specific field and would like to support the comments made in your open letter, especially the bit about geeks always wanting the latest versions of everything to work with.
Just before Delphi 2009 was announced, we made the decision to upgrade from Delphi 7 to Delphi 2007 (had we known about Delphi 2009, we would likely have waited six months for it). Upgrading has been a costly exercise, not just in terms of base license costs but also in the time taken to identify and acquire suitable tools and other third-party components to replace those we have been using with Delphi 7 that either don’t support Delphi 2007 or where existing code produces ‘interesting’ effects in the new IDE. If we had been able to obtain a ‘turbo’ version of Delphi 2007, it is likely that some of us would have installed this on our home PCs and therefore would have already encountered and resolved many of these issues before they became critical for our primary business.
For the past year or so we have also been trying, with very limited success, to recruit new developers. A very common response from recent graduates and junior programmers that we have approached is that they want to become developers in a ‘mainstream environment’: one they have seen (and hopefully used) whilst at university; one that is being talked about frequently on the blogs and forums they encounter; one that they can have a cut-down copy of on their own PCs at home. If it was possible to obtain a turbo edition of Delphi 2009/Prism, we are more likely to encounter enthusiasts who are talking about and using the Delphi IDE.
We don’t get these same problems with our underlying database (most people want to use Microsoft SQL, where we have the Express editions available before we even think about putting support for the new SQL server version into our software).
@Graham Smith – Thank-you for leaving your comment. It’s real stories of how not having a suitably up to date free for hobbyists offering is actually hurting CodeGear in the long term that are needed to persuade them of their folly.
As to your problem with graduates; I have witnessed the same problem but from the other side. I was in an interview last week when the interviewer heard that I was interested in Delphi her only comment was “Delphi, it is cute little language but little used in the modern business world”. I fear that CodeGear’s biggest enemy at this point in time is a negative perception of increasing irrelevance in the business world. This problem could be positively attacked with a set of Turbos to get amateur developers talking about it again. The Average non-delphi developer’s perception _can_ be influenced through the increased visibility of Delphi code samples, forum postings and community activity.
In my opinion a proper set of Turbos could be developed with marketing money that would represent a better ROI than yet more high profile advertising or sponsorship.
An interesting topic. Graham’s notes on ‘migration pain’ reflects my experience (some details below).
I DO see that a Delphi v7.1 is recently released!! ["This update fixes well over 100 issues."], so it seems many users are NOT moving to new headaches, but are demanding a better Delphi 7.
Which brings us back to the starting open letter :
I would like to see a smaller-step, (more politically palletable?) which would be :
The release of Delphi 7.1 as a web release education/hobbyist level product. NOT as cripple-ware ( See Xilinx WebPack SW for an example)
Sometimes personal Delphi release is done piecemeal via magazines, but that is too transient – but a precedent already exists.
My experience: Having cut my teeth on Borland products, and supported commercial products using them, they were a natural choice when I went looking for some Open Source / Community projects to enhance into Bench Measurement and Solar-Experiment/Research applications.
First pass is going to be a ‘Sound-card’ instrument package, as sound cards give good precision, and are everywhere.
The objective here is to get students/schools working with _simple_ software, and that same sw can be a university level project target.
Targets: This software should be a step above console, but not fluff-heavy, and it should run on a Flash Drive. (ie ideally stand-alone EXE)
The Tools should be easy to download, _and_ should run on a Flash-Drive.
The SW should also not be PC-age paranoid – ie work across a wide range of operating systems. Linux support is a plus, but certainly not vital.
Easy, one would think ?
This is what I found, thus far, on the Community landscape:
FreeBASIC :
Pluses: Simple, compact, and works really great on Serial/parallel port projects. Good community forum support.
Minuses: Still improving, lacks a Step-Debug, GUI angle not good, and it’s not Pascal.
FreePASCAL/Lazarus:
Pluses: It IS (largely) portable pascal, it does have a Step-debug, and can import Delphi projects. It is quickly becoming the platform of choice for many community projects. Good community forum support.
Minuses: Not 100% Delphi-version portable (but neither is Delphi itself!)
Code is large by default, but can be stripped to be smaller.
Microsoft Free Editions:
Pluses : They are free, and will actually import/run most projects.
(so seem to have better time-line migration than Delphi)
I was left more impressed than I expected to be.
Minuses: From Microsoft, and a tad large/slow. A couple of times I thought
they had hung. They are also not pascal.
Turbo Delphi:
Pluses : Free download
Minuses: Sadly disappointing. It is HUGE, insists on adding Microsoft Bloat (NET 1.1 stuff, that is now close to obsolete), and refuses to import some Delphi7 candidate projects : (
I suspect they nobbled this too much, and have turned it into a time-sink. Looks like ZERO chance of this monster of many tentacles ever launching off a Flash Drive.
Delphi 7: I have this on one hard drive, and it works great.
Sadly, I cannot move it to another PC with a better sound card, as it is install locked. I hope the hard drive does not die…
It is only a matter of time before Lazarus IS good enough to displace Delphi’s of most flavors. The Turbo Delphi fiasco has not really helped the brand, but release of a Web-Delphi 7.1 might help extend the life of the Delphi brand.
Web-Delphi 7.1 would be an easy, and safe (close to zero sales impact), small step, that would greatly help the education community.
There are some great web sites out there, using Delphi code, but no easy way for new users to actually RUN that resource.
The newest Delphi releases seem to have enough high end features, to allow a base-line web-release very similar in market-model to Xilinx’s WebPack.
That would be a natural second step.
For a forum Model, take a look at Atmel’s AVR-Freaks (and FreeBASIC )
The time could be right. Companies like Mentor get some very good PR, with free training in downturns.
As an update:
Embarcadero have recently pulled the plug on Turbo Delphi!.
Yes, all links on the Turbo Delphi download, now merely point to a 30 day trial of Delphi 2010!.
So, they have shrunk the market base significantly. What CAN they be thinking ?
The good news, is Lazarus/FPC continues to improve, and the latest builds are reported to import Delphi projects more cleanly.
Guys, just download and use Lazarus. I tried it first 1.5 years ago. Now I’m using Lazarus again to make a desktop app – it will work both on Mac and PC! Everything works so far, on Mac and on PC! Compared to Lazarus from early 2008, the current version is much better. The documentation sucks, but once you find your way to look for info (I use the Lazarus docs, their forum, and Delphi help files) – you can make great commercial apps.