I was really expecting someone to pick this up from the podcast and mention it. If you listen at about 15:56 in the podcast, we hear Nick say the following about the .NET Roadmap.
Historically one of our strong .NET stories has been close compatibility with the .NET and Win32 compilers. But as we have evaluated that we have found that doing that is kind of holding both compilers back to a certain degree. And that compatibility story not as compelling as it necessarily was. And so what we are looking at instead is a solution that departs or sort of begins to diverge away from that compatibility story. And starts heading more towards complete support for the .NET framework kind of thing. And so you’ll be seeing more information about that in the coming weeks.
Does this strike anyone else as huge news, or are you all just more patient then I am in waiting for the .NET roadmap?
A few other bloggers have mentioned the install time being much faster, but I wanted to get a good measurement last night. In a fully patched XP SP3 VM with the prerequisites already installed (which does not include the .NET SDK), I started timing after finishing all the configuration.
Results: Just shy of 10 minutes. I glanced away for a second right before it finished, so I don’t know the timing for sure. I recorded a video though so I could verify it. I’ll see about posting it later.
Keep in mind this is a beta, and subject to change, although I can hardly imagine the install getting slower in the release. If anything it might get faster. Well, unless the bundle more goodness with it.
The exclusion of the .NET SDK is great though. Of course you can install it if you want it I guess.
As I mentioned in the podcast, Gurock Software is donating a free copy of their SmartInspect tracing and debugging application for one lucky listener. If you are interested in winning a copy then download the 30-day trial of Smart Inspect version 3.0. Test it out and then send me your short review and comments. I’ll share those comments in a future podcast and announce the winner then. Please post your entries as comments here, or if you would like to submit a short audio clip, you can email it to jim@delphi.org. All entries must be received by Thursday, September 4st, 2008.
Embarcadero Technologies plans to release the next generation of its CodeGear—formerly Borland—rapid application development tools for Windows, Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009, on Aug. 25.
[UPDATE: This is when they will accept orders, shipping will occur later.]
Rather unusual for CodeGear to announce a release date in this manor. Usually they announce the release date when they release it. Is this a case of eWeek misstating some facts? Not the first time a news article has had some critical facts wrong. Or did they slip up and break embargo and release the release date prematurely? [Update: Nick wasn’t aware that Michael Swindell has given them the date for the article. All above board and accurate though.]
In my podcast on Monday I estimated it as next month, so it looks like I may have been too pessimistic. Be sure this is one of the first questions I will be asking Nick for the podcast on next Monday. Be sure to join us for that one.
In the very last paragraph they also give us the low down on pricing:
North American pricing beginning at $399 per license for Professional editions, $1,299 for Enterprise editions and $2,299 for Architect editions.
[UPDATE: This is upgrade pricing.]
The inclusion of pricing and release dates leads me to believe they have accurate data and just jumped the gun in publishing the article. Or the Embacardo merge has resulted in a new way of announcing release dates and prices.
Also in the article Michael Swindell, Embacardo’s VP of products, was sourced as stating:
In 2006 there were 1.75 million Delphi developers and now there are more than 2 million . . .
Great to see growth in the Delphi community. 250,000 developers, or 15% growth in 2 years is pretty good considering.
In answer to one of the proposed interview questions, the article also states that:
VCL for the Web . . . enables developers to build AJAX and Silverlight-enabled rich intranet and line-of-business Web applications . . .
It also states that the Architect Edition is a new edition. But I did some more checking, and there is an Architect edition of RAD Studio 2007:
Architect gets the full ECO package. Granted I think the inclusion of ER/Studio in the 2009 Architect package is a great upgrade. In additions to this nicely appointed Architect edition, I still am a strong believer in them keeping the Turbo or Personal editions going. If we don’t introduce students, occupational programmers and new developers to Delphi then it will be hard to grow the community.
I am collecting some questions to ask Nick in our interview this week. If you have any questions you would like considered for the interview please include them here. I want to interview him early this week, so post your questions right away.
I am experimenting with a new anti-spam system on this blog. It claims no false positives, so no-one should be rejected. If you have any trouble posting, please email me at ThePodCast@Delphi.org and hopefully the spam filter on my email doesn’t filter you too.
The PodCast at Delphi.org is now carried on iTurns so you can get the latest episodes downloaded directly to your iPod.
If you have iTunes installed then you can use the link on that ridiculously large button on the right to go straight to the podcast and subscribe in itunes.
There was a noticeable lack of a podcast covering Delphi programming specific topics. Since I really wanted one to listen to I figured I might as well make one. I’ll interview people in the Delphi community that I think are interesting, and explore news and technology that looks cool to me.
I am going to start out with a weekly audio podcast, but in the future I hope to add video podcasts (or whatever you want to call them) and textual articles as well. It will be a lot of fun. Let me know what you would like me to cover, and if I like the suggestion I might do it.
