Similar to Nick Hodges suggestion to open-source unit tests for Delphi, Embarcadero should provide support for the Delphi community to submit code examples.
Nick Hodges that would be great but the main problem is accepting community contributions. As I'm sure you're aware Delphi already makes use of several open source projects: FastMM4, FastCode, DUnit, Indy And maintains a few of their own hosted on Source Forge: Version Insight, RAD Studio Code Examples, RAD Studio Demo Code.
The problem in both cases is user contributions take a very long time (if they happen at all) to make it into the shipping product. The independent projects are maintained by either a sole developer or a small core team. Contributing for those without commit access entails generating patches, participating in mailing lists and using bug trackers for even the tiniest code change. Even after a contribution is accepted by a project in can take a year or more before it shows up downstream in a product release.
The in-house open source projects have an even higher barrier. As far as I can tell there are no outside contributors to any of Emb's open source projects. Uwe Schuster and David Clegg are great guys and always responsive to community input but it seems to me that Embarcadero is missing out because it doesn't take advantage of a large community of experienced Delphi developers.
Nice list, which unfortunately also highlights how few examples that has been added since 2010.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to Nick Hodges suggestion to open-source unit tests for Delphi, Embarcadero should provide support for the Delphi community to submit code examples.
ReplyDeleteColin Johnsun , nice idea. :)
ReplyDeleteColin Johnsun, Matteo Salvi - I agree. A start would be to start making wish lists for examples. What would we love to see exemplified?
ReplyDeleteI think I need to write a blog post arguing for the open source-ing of their unit tests.
ReplyDeleteNick Hodges that would be great but the main problem is accepting community contributions. As I'm sure you're aware Delphi already makes use of several open source projects: FastMM4, FastCode, DUnit, Indy
ReplyDeleteAnd maintains a few of their own hosted on Source Forge: Version Insight, RAD Studio Code Examples, RAD Studio Demo Code.
The problem in both cases is user contributions take a very long time (if they happen at all) to make it into the shipping product. The independent projects are maintained by either a sole developer or a small core team. Contributing for those without commit access entails generating patches, participating in mailing lists and using bug trackers for even the tiniest code change. Even after a contribution is accepted by a project in can take a year or more before it shows up downstream in a product release.
The in-house open source projects have an even higher barrier. As far as I can tell there are no outside contributors to any of Emb's open source projects. Uwe Schuster and David Clegg are great guys and always responsive to community input but it seems to me that Embarcadero is missing out because it doesn't take advantage of a large community of experienced Delphi developers.