From the Trenches
Directions / Commentary
Delphi Will Survive
With the advent of Delphi 4, this month seems like a good time to share my thoughts with you regarding why, in the words of Gloria Gaynor, “[Delphi] will survive.” Feel free to share these arguments with your Microsoft friends and zealots who use the Delphi-won’t-be-around-for-another-year excuse to try and justify why they won’t even look at, much less use, the best development tool around. That particular line of reasoning — which I’ve heard since Delphi 1 — makes increasingly less sense as each new version comes out.
INPRISE is profitable. INPRISE has now been profitable for three consecutive quarters. This is important because the return to profitability under Del Yocam and the new management team reinforces the industry’s assertion that there is room for more than one software company in this world.
INPRISE isn’t a small company. By arguing that INPRISE won’t be around because it is a “small company,” you must first define a “small company.” Is INPRISE a small company? If you consider a company that had revenues of US$43,000,000 last quarter to be small, then it is. Somehow, we must come up with a magic number that shows which companies are small. The only thing we do know is that Microsoft is the largest, so they are not small. Anyone else, however, can suffer from this label.
History. Even mentioning the name Phillipe Kahn evokes strong reaction within the industry. Nevertheless, his aggressive, entrepreneurial attitude is what really put Borland on the map. Today, INPRISE has clearly established itself as the innovator of software development tools, especially as it pertains to the enterprise market. And with the acquisition of Visigenic, it doesn’t look like INPRISE will relinquish that title easily. This acquisition positions INPRISE to spur the growth of distributed objects today much as it did with OOP nine years ago.
Compare Pascal to C++. I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind about which language is “best.” However, there’s nothing you can do in C++ that you cannot do in Pascal. The only differences are syntax and convention. If there is a specific feature you find useful in C++ that isn’t in Pascal, you can at least find another way to represent it.
Compare Pascal to BASIC. BASIC isn’t a true OOP language. No matter how you try, you can’t redefine OOP to exclude inheritance. Inheritance is every bit as important to OOP as polymorphism and encapsulation. You also might recall the transition from BASIC to procedural, structured languages like Pascal and C some 15 years ago, as it became clear that C and Pascal could better support a robust development effort. BASIC has grown up considerably since then, but it still has its roots as a Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
Community support. Try to get the same level of support on any Microsoft product that you can for Delphi. The sense of community that many Delphi users exhibit is phenomenal. The Borland newsgroups are a perfect example of this. People participating in these newsgroups are eager to help and share information with others.
Delphi per se. Delphi is a viable product all by itself. A development environment that sells over 1,000,000 copies validates this claim, i.e. even if INPRISE did go under, someone would definitely recover Delphi from the flotsam. After all, a tool that makes so many developers so productive must survive. I know of one company in the northwest that could give Delphi a good home. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? I’d love to see the Delphi-bashers stop, turn on a dime, and say they loved Delphi all along. Who knows?
The best tool. Finally, let me address the general process of selecting a development tool. There are no certainties in this world. If the Department of Justice decided that Microsoft had an unfair competitive advantage, they could effectively close Microsoft down, or at least break them up as they did with AT&T. I certainly don’t agree with this, but it is a fact. And if people are going to use a logical approach to selecting their software development tool, they should factor this into the equation. After all, wouldn’t that mean that “Microsoft-might-not-be-there-next-year,” or that “Microsoft-is-a-small-company?”
If someone selects a development tool other than Delphi based on technical merit, fine, but to ignore Delphi for other reasons is illogical. And after all, isn’t logic the basis of software development?
Dan Miser is a Design Architect for Stratagem, a consulting company in Milwaukee. He has been a Borland Certified Client/Server Developer since 1996, and is a frequent contributor to Delphi Informant. You can contact him at http://www.execpc.com/~dmiser.
Naming profitability, history, company size, and others, Mr Miser outlines the reasons why Delphi will survive, despite the predictions of non-Delphi users since Delphi 1.
Mr Miser argues Delphi’s longevity.