Blog post "Take the Delphi Developers Survey 2013" at http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/take_delphi_survey_2013.html

Blog post "Take the Delphi Developers Survey 2013" at http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/take_delphi_survey_2013.html
http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/take_delphi_survey_2013.html

Comments

  1. I'll answer the survey, but I'd like Embarcadero to post the results - every year lots of programmers ask for that but you never publish them...

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  2. I don't answer the survey because it's not helping anyone. Even Embarcingmad have stopped pretending that they will  change anything based one the results.

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  3. I took it, but I don't expect anything good to come of it. Some of the questions were clearly arranged to overlook the issues many of us have with the more recent releases.

    And of course, after spending years on the newsgroups, I know too well the mantra that we "are not representative" of the market. I'd love to see what the demographics are of those who are representative.

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  4. Carlos Leite  -- The results are very valuable corporate information, and not something that would or should be released.

    Moz Le   I can assure you that the survey results are taken very seriously and are used all the time to drive decisions.  It is far and away the best way to make a difference for Delphi.

    Bill Meyer   The folks in the newsgroups are only a small fraction of Delphi users.  The best way to have a voice is to fill out the survey.  I can tell you that the survey result are very important and taken very seriously.

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  5. Thanks Nick Hodges... Survey is thousands of people, newsgroups is a smaller group. I can assure you there are a few decisions we delayed last week pending the survey results, so it will have an immediate and direct impact. I'm pretty sure this was true also in the past.

    Bill Meyer "Some of the questions were clearly arranged to overlook the issues": that's an interesting spin. I reviewed them all, didn't have that impression... although we edited a few that might have given that impression.

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  6. Taken.

    "More fixes and improvements to the IDE/Compiler/RTL/VCL/FM2 - then Android support".

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  7. Lars Fosdal Thanks, we might proceed in the opposite order, but both are high in our todo list.

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  8. My problem with the survey is that I couldn't answer or participate in all questions as I only own Delphi and not RAD Studio. Some questions were only relevant if you owned RAD Studio.

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  9. Colin Johnsun The idea is you can skip questions that don't apply to you, or where there compulsory?

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  10. Started the survey.  Got to page 5 and realized 11 more pages to go.  Too long. Quit.

    Also, some questions were confusing with regard to separation between Delphi customers and Rad Studio customers using Delphi.  i.e. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be answering some of the questions.

    Instead of massive annual surveys, EMBT should do more short (1-5 questions), targeted surveys throughout the year.

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  11. Marco Cantù Not a spin. Longstanding issues about which many have complained, and which present daily difficulties were skirted. But I'll say no more. This is a discussion which never ends well.

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  12. Marco Cantù  The idea of proceeding backwards to what Lars Fosdal  suggested is exactly what's wrong with Delphi!!!!

    Put out a solid, performant release instead of continuing to bloat up the product with half-baked features that never get fully optimized and bug-fixed.

    Take a page from Apple's playbook and realize that people will actually pay for a product that is improved by things other than just shiny new (broken) toys.

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  13. Kevin Powick I disagree, of course. Sorry the survey was too long, it is important to have a complete picture, not just go over a couple of questions. Is "iOS support in Delphi" a half-baked feature for you?

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  14. Marco Cantù Yes, I would say iOS support in Delphi isn't so great, primarily because it's based on FMX.  But hey, it's only the 3rd release right?  I'm sure EMBT will get it all ironed out after they deliver Android.  XE7 anyone?

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  15. Kevin Powick Your take. I disagree with that stance, and many of our customers are also quite happy of our iOS tool, considering that is a first version. But I guess we could go on forever.

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  16. Survey was long, but if there's even a wee bit of chance that it helps steer Delphi where I want and need it to, it's worth it IMO. 

    However considering that my company will not target mobile nor cloud, the survey was essentially cut in half.

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  17. Marco Cantù Of course you disagree with criticism of Delphi and EMBT.  You have no choice.  I' m sorry , but it's just not going to be possible to get unbiased opinions from a vendor's employees.  As you said, we could go on forever, but I'll stop here as well.

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  18. I was vaguely tempted until I realised that I was going to spend half an hour to get to the final line where I could stay "stop using interns to write  the code". For all that Marco, Nick and other paid promoters try to talk it up, the code that's coming out of embarcingmad lately is too often just dismal. Yay, they're keeping up with the bleeding edge in several different ways at the same time. That's not as useful as if they shipped code that we could use in production.

    I've worked with other cutting edge development environments, and they all either had a backer with deep pockets (Sun or Microsoft deep, not just dropping a few hundred million deep), or they died. Forte got bought by Sun and died anyway. Sorry "was folded into Java"... without a trace.

    So unless Embarc is willing to pump a few hundred million into Delphi to have a serious go at making it a genuine run-anywhere development environment, I think the current path is heading for disaster. Most likely through Apple deciding that it shouldn't be allowed to run on their devices.

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  19. Done and it really was not all that painful!

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