Everybody loves a Roadmap Jan 07, 2007 03:45
Chad Hower recently posted his alternative Delphi roadmap on his blog. I email fairly frequently on a list where Chad, myself and others discuss all sorts of technical issues. Chad acknowledges me as a collaborator to his roadmap so I just wanted to clear up where we disagree. :)
Also, with the updated Delphi roadmap in the works I figure I should blog about my own vision of a Delphi Roadmap. Everyone has their needs and ideas about Delphi's strategic direction so I encourage everyone to express themselves. If nothing else it will demonstrate to the development community, and perhaps more importantly, to the investment community that Delphi still has a cadre of passionate developers that care deeply about the product.
I agree with Chad and Simon when they say that Borland has simply lost their way and that CodeGear needs to focus on their existing customer base in the immediate future.
Definition of terms:
- "Delphi" = the language in general; "Delphi Win32" and "Delphi for .NET" makes the distinction between the languages
- "BDS" = the IDE
- "VCL" = the VCL in general; "VCL Win32" and "VCL.NET" are specific flavors of the VCL
- "the natives" = the bulk of Delphi developers; these developers are primarily interested in using Delphi for native code development. They are getting restless and have been fasting for quite some time. :)
I'm only going to focus on the big technical issues. I'm not going to talk about the other sorely needed improvements (e.g. help system) or things that need to continue to get better (e.g. stability/responsiveness/quality of BDS) or business issues that I believe should change (e.g. shorter release cycles, sell the product via subscription only) or less obvious/unsung features that would be really nice (I'll discuss this in another blog entry).
Highlander/Delphi 2007
- enhance Delphi for .NET to support .NET 2.0 framework
- Generics for Delphi Win32 and Delphi for .NET
- Unicode foundation for Delphi and VCL Win32
Inc(Highlander, 1):
- ECO-lite for Delphi Win32 or at least build a modern DAL for Delphi Win32
- full Unicode support for Delphi and VCL Win32
- enhance Delphi Win32 .NET interop; incorporate ideas from managed-vcl and Hydra in the box
- Delphi Win32 should be able to host and leverage WinForms/WPF
- Delphi Win32 should have classes to help ADO.NET and TDataSet integration
- .NET languages should be able to leverage Delphi Win32 packages
- rudimentary Win64 support: compiler, RTL, non-visual support
- In the box Kylix cross-compiler support; server-side deployment kit (not a separate product)
- make Apache DSO support a priority
- Mono support
- integrate Mono's C# compiler and runtime assemblies with BDS
- officially support Delphi for .NET assemblies on Mono
- add help/code insight/compiler warnings to indicate where Mono and .NET differ either in scope or usage
Inc(Highlander, 2):
- full Win64 support
- full Delphi mixed-mode compiler
- compact framework support
I suspect the work for the Highlander release is well underway and that includes supporting .NET 2.0. It's also work that I believe they will align/leverage to support Generics in Win32. IOW, I think for Highlander, CodeGear is focused on reasonable things: .NET 2.0, Generics and Unicode.
Make no mistake though, there are only two things that will drive revenue for Highlander: Generics and Unicode for Win32. I don't believe that .NET 2.0 support will increase Delphi for .NET adoption in any significant way. The main reasons why I think it should be included is because: 1) it's long overdue and already in progress; 2) .NET 2.0 is much better than 1.1; 3) Mono is moving towards 2.0 support; and 4) it will be yet another data point to reveal Delphi's .NET strategy is fundamentally flawed.
For the release after Highlander, I've cut out all the "Vista" support for Delphi for .NET and added it in the form of interop for Delphi Win32. I've also not included VCL.NET for any work whatsoever as I agree with Chad: there is no benefit. I admit there are a lot of things on my list, but CodeGear's got a lot of work to do to make Delphi attractive in the modern day development landscape.
The main thing I believe Delphi should focus in on post Highlander is platform diversification. This is essentially executing on the "Delphi Everywhere" strategy that was floated in non-tech a while ago. This also includes diversification on .NET itself. It's critical to offer something different than MS is offering with VS.NET, and supporting Mono with BDS is one way to do it. Also by supporting Mono, CodeGear can better justify their .NET framework version lag time as Mono moves at about the same cadence as BDS has done over the past few years.
I think by rolling in a Kylix-based server-side cross-compiler kit, CodeGear can make BDS more appealing to those developers who are primarily on Windows, but may wish to deploy to Linux for things like Apache web modules (e.g. IntraWeb apps). It's important not to release this as a separate product; it's about selling to the existing market of Corporate IT developers that may want the option of using Linux as a deployment platform, even if they never do so. CodeGear should think of Kylix and the whole platform diversification strategy as selling an insurance policy to Windows developers. I believe many will buy it and some will use it. More importantly, more will use it than Delphi for .NET is currently used.
I've added an ECO-lite or a generic "modern DAL" for Win32 to the release as well. It's getting to be quite ridiculous that Delphi's Win32 database access has languished for as long as it has. It's showing its age and I believe this makes Delphi less appealing for database development. I believe that work/improvements in this area, in conjuction with full unicode support and progress on the Win64 front will help keep "the natives" happy and drive upgrade revenue.
Finally, the progression of Delphi in my perfect world ends up with a full blown mixed-mode compiler, Win64 support and if there's still a market for it, support for .NET Compact Framework. So there you have it, I hope to blog about Delphi and CodeGear's fundamentally flawed .NET strategy soon; but I might wait until the revised roadmap comes out.
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