It's been quite quiet on this bulletin board for about a month or more.

Several people have commented on this to me in Email, asking if I know why this is so.  But I do not.

All I know is that my web site, which is currently only displaying information about EWB, has seen constant traffic, averaging 200 to 300 unique people per month.  And I hear Tim continues to answer Email promptly.  

Summer (now in northern hemisphere) is also usually a slow time as people are on vacation for much of the current and next month.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

Tim has said he has had to take on other work because the Delphi third-party market is not healthy. The products, as they stand, are very usable. I can't remember the last time I needed support for Elevate DB or EWB.

I'm 62 and I anticipate working five more years writing and supporting the software I've written for my college. (I'm formally retired, but working as a contractor.) I hope to go out with these products. I placed my first order from Elevate on Friday, April 14, 2000. Tim has always provided excellent value and I hope he can continue to make a go of it.

erickengelke wrote:

It's been quite quiet on this bulletin board for about a month or more.

Several people have commented on this to me in Email, asking if I know why this is so.  But I do not.

All I know is that my web site, which is currently only displaying information about EWB, has seen constant traffic, averaging 200 to 300 unique people per month.  And I hear Tim continues to answer Email promptly.  

Summer (now in northern hemisphere) is also usually a slow time as people are on vacation for much of the current and next month.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

Alan Questell wrote:

> Tim has said he has had to take on other work because the Delphi third-party market is not healthy.

Truth be told, there are probably few "healthy" software markets today.  Point to a vendor who charges for development and isn't struggling long term?  And point to one who isn't charging and is actually making money on that decision?

I believe there is far too much flux in our industry, new products or revised products come out far too often for stability we programmers need, and decade-long product lifecycles our.customers would prefer.   

Some people are always jumping on the latest toolchains but most seem to peter out before your product needs to be phased out of natural causes, forcing people to re-invent.

Even the current gem the AI market is bizarre.  ChatGPT and its vaporware or alphaware imitators are fighting for their lives but trying to build a good solid product out of them is more of a long term commitment and most will go by the wayside despite people spending a lot of money and getting disappointing delays and outages in the resulting production systems.




> The products, as they stand, are very usable. I can't remember the last time I needed support for
> Elevate DB or EWB.

I remember my most recent support call.  Tim paitently explained what I was doing wrong, it wasn't EWB's fault at all.  Prior to that, I think I may have a few issues, but release 8 has been great.

> I'm 62 and I anticipate working five more years writing and supporting the software I've written for my college.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

I’ve received numerous Emails from fellow EWB users following my post last month, I summarized my thoughts below.

Several people are now or have earlier considered renewal options – whether to buy a renewal or not - given the slowdown in the frequency of updates.  

In part, the slowdowns are because earlier bugs have been worked out which needed higher frequency updates.  However, I know we would all like continued new features.

Those who lapse their renewals find they can no longer post on the bulletin boards, get support, or be eligible for new releases when they occur.  So that's something to keep in mind.

I could go on about how the whole developer market is in a state of flux.  Many software tooling companies are hurting, particularly with the buzz of GPT-releated programming looming.

I also note that, while I have several more features I would love to see Tim implement, ones that only he can do, you can technically do almost anything with the product as it now stands.  And I hope my humble little Nice libraries help to fill in some gaps to take the pressure off him.

And I appreciate that Covid and global conditions in the past few years have hit people hard.

There are very few tools well suited for the tasks where EWB excels, particularly for the Pascal developer.  There is DWScript and TMS Webcore, and a third project whose name escapes me.

TMS web core starts costing $3000 when you add the packs you need, it offers a fuller feature list, but the results and code needed are not as pleasing to me.

DWScript and the other tool are still in their early stages I think, and I don;’t know if they will ever be replacements for EWB.

EWB not only gives you compatibility with your existing projects (you’d have to start over with these other tools), but its price is, IMHO, reasonable for a professionally designed toolkit with continued support (Tim has been answering people’s email questions and providing support).    

Tim invested lot of time into making EWB 3.x, and his effort shows, it’s a significant improvement over the previous version.   As a fellow developer, you know that people don’t always appreciate the investments we make before the production version ships.

Fads come and go on the Internet faster than most people expect.  Whole toolchains disappear and communities disband and their projects orphaned.   We were spoiled with Delphi where 1.0 code is still compilable today thirty odd years later.  Most go to the wastebin of history.

MFC, Silverlight, Flash, these were all huge at one time, now all gone.  They had huge names and lots of money behind them but are still casualties.

If you continue to rely on EWB for existing or maintained earlier projects, I hope you will continue to buy renewals to help keep this product alive.

It takes a lot of talent to pull together a project like this, but it takes a community to keep it sponsored and alive.

Erick

EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

I've just renewed my EWB subscription, so I'll wait and see what happens.

= Steve

Is the third one uniGUI? Because if I had to abandon EWB, that would probably be what I would look at first.

But I have no plans to leave EWB (or EDB) and my subscription is current until next year. I'm going to renew then and the only question about the future is how much longer I'm going to work. I'm semi-retired now, but plan to work for another five years. But that may change.


erickengelke wrote:


There are very few tools well suited for the tasks where EWB excels, particularly for the Pascal developer.  There is DWScript and TMS Webcore, and a third project whose name escapes me.

Erick

EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

Your cost estimate is high because TMS All Access is only a little over $2000 to purchase and $628 for annual subscription, at current exchange rates. Of course, that is going to fluctuate because they price in euros.

erickengelke wrote:
TMS web core starts costing $3000 when you add the packs you need, it offers a fuller feature list, but the results and code needed are not as pleasing to me.


EWB Programming Books and Nice Component Library
See my EWB BLOG posts, at:
http://www.erickengelke.com

I'm going to assume you're both right - Eric was likely using CAD and Alan USD

Raul


<<

Alan Questell wrote:

Your cost estimate is high because TMS All Access is only a little over $2000 to purchase and $628 for annual subscription, at current exchange rates. Of course, that is going to fluctuate because they price in euros.

>>

Good point.

Raul wrote:

I'm going to assume you're both right - Eric was likely using CAD and Alan USD

Raul

I don't know what to do if EWB would not exist. Just the layout features makes nice web apps so easy. I also use the server part to build REST APIs for production systems (but I confess that I migrate them some times later to more "binary", standalone-ish stuff, like kbmMW or RAD Server, eg. because I need more flexibility with authentication).

EWB is so friggin' easy to use, the database interface is secure by design, and you only have to write the code that counts. Of course, there is room for improvement, from a standalone admin tool to some more components, but that's true for every piece of software.

Last time, I wrote a web app to guide truck drivers for loading and unloading in facilities, tightly integrated in an existing system. It took me some days for the prototype (which was, thanks to EWB, almost production ready), and we got the contract, worth 20k+ (including meetings, installation and some more). No way you can do that stunt with "classic" DB/HTML/JavaScript development.

I just buy another license from time to time to help getting things moving.