A bit off topic, but I was looking to get some feedback from the more
modern Delphi users - especially VCL only developers.

And it seems like the smart users use elevate products, so I thought I'd
ask here. <vbg>

I come from a background where I went through every version of Delphi
from 1 to 7. (Paradox for DOS prior - I'm beginning to feel old

Pretty much every version upgrade had something to offer me and was
exciting to upgrade to, and Delphi 7 was the pinnacle IMO. It worked -
was solid and fast. (Coupled with coderush it was a dream).

After then, I didn't see a huge need to upgrade at first. Since then I
have only purchased 2 Delphi versions, 2007, and XE2, and I've been
disappointed each time.

The IDE seemed to have changed significantly between them. Not just in
look, but seems to be much slower - has times where it just locks up /
pauses, and I get a lot more crashes and errors than I ever used to
(IDE, not my applications , and then there's the help which seemed
incomplete compared to D7's.

Added to this are other subtle changes, such as in XE2 they've disabled
features such as 'auto-increment build number' which I have to pay for
another update just to get back.

I can't see myself going to firemonkey anytime soon. (I'm very cautious
about platform changes especially after the .NET hype - and VCL is just
so solid for my requirements).

My intentions aren't to have a whinge session, but the last 2 updates
have got me a little anxious about spending more money on upgrades and
what surprises lurk. In many ways I wish I was still using Delphi 7.

Most of the advances I've had since them have been through 3rd party
component providers - not what's in the native IDE - but I don't want to
fall too far behind incase it's too painful to 'catch up' if I ever need to.

But now it seems as though there's close to 2 new versions released each
year - which has me even more concerned about the solidness / reliability.

Are the more recent versions of Delphi more solid than what I've
experienced? Is there much advantage for the non-unicode VCL-only
developer in updating at the moment?

Cheers

Adam.

Adam


I'll be very interested in this as well. I made the decision, partly on financial and partly on "who needs it" grounds, to stick on D2006. I prefer the tool pallet over the older versions, but I've had to disable stuff to make the IDE workable. There have been loads of moans on the embarcadero groups, some appear justified, others are of the "I don't like change" variety. Executable sizes, speed and the IDE stability seem amongst the justified ones.

At some point I'm going to seriously start looking at Lazarus. I'm not to certain I'll be able to make the transition because there are some key components (eg WPTools type) components missing.

It will partly help that I've spent a lot of time subclassing a lot of components and I should be able to port those over rather than having to find and buy new ones.

Roy Lambert

Adam H. wrote:

>  such as in XE2 they've disabled features such as 'auto-increment
> build number'

Well, not sure I can add a lot really. XE2 is where I've settled, it's
a good version for me. The build number is better handled by an
automated build tool like Finalbuilder.

Delphi is currently my server solution, and EWB my front end.

--

Matthew Jones

Adam,

I'm also with Delphi since V1 and before, since TP4 (yep, I am a dinosaur .
The most productive for me were D5, D7, D2006 and now XE2 mainly because I had a bad experience with D2009.
At the moment my main dev environment is still XE2, with a couple of old projects still in D2006 - I didn't have the need to upgrade so far but now I'm considering it, for 3 main reasons: 1. A few issues with VCL Styles in XE2; 2. Win 8 ; 3. Android development ;
However, I still have one main app that uses DBISAM and I need to recompile the server, so ... I'm stuck in D2006 for that (officially it should be D7).

--
Fernando Dias
[Team Elevate]

Adam


I saw a pointer to this blog page

http://blogs.riversoftavg.com/index.php/2014/06/16/of-paranoia-and-enumerated-types/

I make no comment

Roy Lambert

Adam


If you follow the links on the blog to the performance tests XE6 does rather well.

Roy Lambert

Hi Matthew,

> Well, not sure I can add a lot really. XE2 is where I've settled, it's
> a good version for me. The build number is better handled by an
> automated build tool like Finalbuilder.

I'm trying to cut down on 3rd party tools I use now days to a selected
necessary few. Upgrades are getting too expensive.  Plus I'm not
really keen to fork out hundreds extra for something that worked perfect
(for my needs) in previous versions of Delphi, but thanks for the tip!

Cheers

Adam

Hi Fernando,

> I'm also with Delphi since V1 and before, since TP4 (yep, I am a
> dinosaur .

Excellent - I don't feel like the old one anymore.  Only got to play
briefly with TP4.

Thanks for the feedback.

Adam.

Hi Roy,

Thanks for those. Seems to look like sticking with VCL and not going FMX
was a wise move - at least for now. What a mess with all that enumerated
types - I had no idea!

Since you get older versions with Delphi - it's beginning to make sense
to me to wait until versions have been proven. If that means waiting
until XE7 before I go to XE6 - I can live with that. I don't need the
latest - just the most stablest with the least surprises.

Realistically most more attractive 'new features' (or components) these
days tend to come from 3rd party providers anyway.

I was wondering if anything between XE3 and XE6 was being used by anyone
here and was better than what I have, but looks like most of the changes
mostly have to do with FMX - so unless they've managed to fix stability
I'm probably better off sticking with what I've got for the time being.

Cheers

Adam.

I would happily have stayed on XE2 VCL.

Unfortunately I came under pressure to produce a couple of Android apps
so I tried XE5 for them.
But I ran into trouble with 3rd party components which had bugs under
Android (mostly due to ARC) so I had to upgrade again to XE6.
Even XE6 has a bug affecting me, but this time there is a work around
so my 2 apps are now released (privately, not in Google Play).

For convenience I have just completed the move of my VCL apps to XE6
which was a painful exercise in persuading certain ancient 3rd party
components that they could be compiled and installed after a bit of
massaging.

When XE7 come out I will have to think long and hard about whether to
hope it fixes the final bug I face and whether I have the strength for
the 3rd party installation battle.

Malcolm