Month: March 2007

Delphi 2007 — Oops!

Earlier this month I blogged about my enthusiasm about Delphi 2007 and CodeGear. I did so before D2007 was shipping based on what I saw in the betas. I meant every word of it.

But.

Hold on a bit. D2007 has shipped, but there exist a couple of serious problems. Suffice it to say I can’t build a production-level application with D2007 due to some nagging open issues — issues that should never have made it into the final release. It appears that CodeGear was so in need of revenue in 1Q 2007 that they simply had to get it out the door this month. Unfortunately, this means that it’s not good for releasing applications until they release a hotfix or two to address two major issues:

1. Task bar button stuff. Applications compiled with D2007 just don’t work right in this respect.

2. Applications compiled with D2007 don’t show up on the Windows task list. Ouch!

Of course, there are workarounds, but this is pretty disappointing. I’m not disclosing anything that comes from beta testing — this is stuff from the released version of D2007.

Why am I writing this? I opened my mouth (er, typed my keys) and said how great D2007 is. I owe it to anyone reading my blog to update them on it just in case it matters to them. D2007 is great, to be sure, but it’s just not done!

This isn’t really new, of course. D2005 wasn’t done when it was released either, and eventually became usable. D2007 is way better than D2005 — it’s just frustrating that some very visible issues still need to be fixed before it can actually be used in a production environment.

CodeGear is great.

Back when Borland tried to sell off the developer tools group of their company, I received a few emails from people who know I use Delphi warning me that I need to switch to something else. I wasn’t too worried then, and I am not worried at all about it now. Borland couldn’t find a buyer, so they spun off the tools group into CodeGear, and CodeGear is different.

For the past month I’ve been beta testing the next release of Delphi — Delphi 2007 for Win32. Though I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to participate in the beta testing, CodeGear has given me permission to talk about it now.

Delphi 2007 for Win32 is great — it’s exactly what I was hoping for in the next Delphi. I don’t have a lot to add that hasn’t already been blogged about by others, but I do want to give my kudos to Nick Hodges and the rest of the CodeGear team. They listened! Lots of us were screaming at Borland that their focus needed to be changed to get a Windows Vista development tool out sooner rather than later — rather than focusing on .Net first. And so they are. Delphi 2007 for Win32 is just what I need, as a Windows application developer who is not yet interested in .Net. This is Delphi’s strength, and I am glad to see CodeGear getting this taken cared of first.