I'm disappointed with Embarcadero, because of your market strategy. New releases 2 times in the year. Of course, for EMB and the 3th Party Components Developers, is a great strategy, because the customers must buy updates ofen. But for the developers as me, this strategy is very expensive. The major problem is that embarcadero is focused to create new features to justify the cost of the new product version. But the new features, most time, is uncompleted and with many bugs. On the other hand, the focus to solve old problems, bugs, improve existing frameworks is in low priority. And the new releases are 95% to solve problems from the previous version released features and 5% with new features. And there are 1 or 2 updates only for each release. After this, you must buy a new version of product to continue receiving updates for that uncompleted feature. With this strategy, at the moment, EMB is receiving a good $, but every day, more and more developers, as me, are thinking in change to another platform. In the few years, EMB will survive only from developers that must maintain your old applications developed with Delphi or C++. All new projects will be elaborared based on factors like robust, bug free and respect to the users.
I'm disappointed with Embarcadero, because of your market strategy. New releases 2 times in the year. Of course, for EMB and the 3th Party Components Developers, is a great strategy, because the customers must buy updates ofen. But for the developers as me, this strategy is very expensive. The major problem is that embarcadero is focused to create new features to justify the cost of the new product version. But the new features, most time, is uncompleted and with many bugs. On the other hand, the focus to solve old problems, bugs, improve existing frameworks is in low priority. And the new releases are 95% to solve problems from the previous version released features and 5% with new features. And there are 1 or 2 updates only for each release. After this, you must buy a new version of product to continue receiving updates for that uncompleted feature. With this strategy, at the moment, EMB is receiving a good $, but every day, more and more developers, as me, are thinking in change to another platform. In the few years, EMB will survive only from developers that must maintain your old applications developed with Delphi or C++. All new projects will be elaborared based on factors like robust, bug free and respect to the users.
Regards from a 15 years, Delphi Developer, with a broken heart with the way that EMB is making for my Delphi.
You should consider Update Subscription.
ReplyDeleteIf you make a living writing software with Delphi (or Visual Studio for that matter) - update subscriptions are a necessity.
ReplyDeleteAs others above have said - the smart thing to do is not buy a single license, because of course it will rapidly get out of date. Instead, buy a subscription, and then you always have the latest version - with all bugfixes etc too!
ReplyDeleteGood feedback, for sure. But this was a model that is now from the past. This year (and future) approach is to get customers on subscription, offer fixes for older versions (making it less pressing to move to a new version continuously), and focusing less on keep adding feature to sell the latest upgrade, and more on overall quality of the product to server the users.
ReplyDeleteThere is a drawback, though, which is pushing all customers towards update subscription, expensive at the beginning but rather cheap (30% yearly cost compared to license) in the long run.
Again, we heard this type of complaints and are modifying how the company does business in quite of a significant way to better match what our customers are asking us.
We all hope, that it will be better and we hope also that embc is not only releasing new things + also correcting a lot of frustrating bugs ... That was the reason we're now also on subscription since yesterday!
ReplyDeleteYes, the update subscription is a must have as a professional Delphi developer. But honestly, important bug fixes are simply never done. What did EMB do when the bug tracking system contained too many serious bugs? They closed it an opened a new one. How many bugs are reported before 2010 and have never been solved?
ReplyDeleteThe update subscription is the only way to receive anything regarding QA. But it's far away from being really helpful.
So this will do not make the next version bug free. Strategy now is: Pay more, receive less... Not the best solution I think, but markething is realy not my thing. And we all hope that next version will be better, i.e. list of errors will not be longer. Now the big question is: How all those money that EMB receives from Update Subscription will make next Version stable? Why pay for something that will be fixed someday (also it's not stable if it's needed to be fixed some months later, or may be not)
ReplyDeleteKrasimir Ivanov Isn't it pay less, get more? You pay more once to start (as you always did with maintenance etc) but Marco says it's 30% of the cost every following year. And you get bug fixes, fixes in old releases, all updates, two new versions a year... that sounds like getting a lot for a little to me!
ReplyDeleteUpdate Subscription is a good solution related to costs. But about bug fixes, stability, etc ? I have 3th party components, for more than 10 years. I am paying about $600,00 per year. And this component have a excellent documentation, support, etc. I m satisfied because I know that my money is well spent. Then if product justify the costs, I believe that everyone will pay, but pay and not receive a reward? The phrase "Embarcadero Technologies doesn´t provide help for this..." is constantly viewed in the documentation. This is a fact that demonstrates EMB not finish your features before release. Another example, the Amazon Cloud API have a lot of updated resources on other languages that doesn´t exists on Delphi.
ReplyDeleteDavid Millington Said is "Pay less, get more" really. Let me think twice. So, in bad, bad old times, you had to pay once, and had to receive all updates and fixes for free. Now you must
ReplyDeletepay once again for Subscription, and you get all Updates and fixes free...for one year, so if you have your IDE fixed one day after the end of subscription year, you must pay for one more year and so on. Do I realy pay less? OK, I'm not sure. And if I want to learn some new features from the very new Delphi version, I must... buy it anyway. Compare with VS (bad boys make it free for non comercial needs.) Idon't say, that I don't love Delphi, but honestly: are things with Subscription really better for the users?
For me, the money side of the product, would be justified if the other sides were fine.
ReplyDeleteI dont have a problem with 2 releases a year because the market is moving so fast these days especially the mobile market. I am on subscription which I accept as this is the way the software market is moving. Having said that, I do have a problem with the quality that EMB is putting out into the market place. The quality of XE8 was a great disappointment. I think that EMB should bring out fixes quicker for problems like Castalia, which is virtually unusable in XE8. Fixes should be easy to install not manual installations.
ReplyDeleteIf so, why don't you give Lazarus a chance? (http://www.lazarus-ide.org/)
ReplyDeleteI think (developer since Turbo Pascal age) that appMethod must be the 'firemonkey' thing. Leave RAD Studio for VCL dev. Many of us don't like, and don't use, and never use firemonkey (personally I like node, angular, javascript, ionic, and a lot of free tools/languages). But we are forced to buy (subscribe) to new releases to get updates on firemonkey, ide (a joke compared to ide's of current days) and get a dead vcl (for example... parallel library or castalia.. I don't want to pay for that!). I wan't to pay for a really productive IDE (I use phpStorm, that's a productive code editor), or something like cnPack, or an update to vcl with components like 'devExpress'... but I feel that I buy nothing usefull for me... since years ago (perhaps since D7)
ReplyDeleteDavid Millington , Krasimir Ivanov is mostly right. I'm pleased with Update Subscription as Marco Cantù described it. But I don't see where these money go and how they solve many of my/our problems.
ReplyDeleteFor example I payed for SA covering XE7 and XE8. How these money solved the problems with the new Parallel Programming Library? I posted dozen of QCs about PPL. Why should I find bugs about PPL. Why these bugs passed Q/A? I payed to be allowed to find bugs. Also my last Quality report about PPL isn't even assigned to Q/A or other person. What should I think? What do you think?
There is no clear statement what you receive for your money. Saying "Fixes for older versions" are just general words. Concrete commitments would be better. See - even the roadmap starts with "we don't promise anything".
Also Embarcadero just keeps silence about common problems. For example - almost 3 months there was no official response to the logon problems with the Windows QC client. Only forum threads (BTW what happened to this?). Thankfully Marco Cantù officially did explain about the problem with the IDE and memory consumption, mostly on time. I don't like these things. As I receive marketing materials I want to receive official statements about common problems and what is the progress. Because I'm the customer and fight with bugs I payed for.
For now SAs/Subscriptions is "Pay us, we may 'decide to decide' to do something We think would be good for you. With quality that we decide is good for you".
A time ago I asked if PPL fixes will be back-ported to XE7. Marco Cantù said something like "We may eventually decide to do it". Umm...what's then the purpose of the new Subscription model?
Also the quality of Update X is measured as the count of fixed QCs, but not as the number of fixed highly critical bugs.
Anyway, the quality is a little bit better than before.
Everyone is talking about license problems which is a legitimate argument but the compiler itself is lacking behind others. I hate that Java these days is faster than Delphi.
ReplyDeleteJosé RamÃrez Try using Android Studio. Slow will get a whole new meaning...
ReplyDeleteAgree with Dalija Prasnikar Android Studio is pretty slow to build and prepare testing but it is pretty simple to use.
ReplyDeleteAs it has been stated above, if you prefer not to do the maintenance plan you could be lock out of new features that Android and iOS come across with. It is expensive but I found that I get updates, free software and other items from EMB as part of the plan.
Every time I read subscription, a mental idea of a greedy company milking their customers comes to me. They just keep on promising things they never fullfill, just as politians on election fares. Fortunately not all companies are the same, some honor their customers with state-of-art products.
ReplyDeleteI think a subscription model is just a more honest way of doing business. The truth is a "one-off" purchase cannot feed a developer for too long. A partnership arrangement is much more healthy.
ReplyDeleteCan you honestly tell that EMB keeps promises - this will be enough to get Subscription or not. I'm just waiting the next Version and hope that it will be better. Of course I'll get Subscription (other way there wiil be no fixes, no updates - I'm not sure I receive something for my money. Now really, have we got today any other choice?)
ReplyDeleteVincenzo Campanella Under Windows, even if the Lazarus IDE and the FPC compilers work well, the gdb debugger is slow and unstable.
ReplyDeleteUnder Linux, Lazarus is just great, and a very good alternative to Delphi.
Krasimir Ivanov Sure, QT is one of the options.
ReplyDeleteI programmed in Delphi since version 1 and before in Turbo Pascal. I still have the Delphi 1 box home :).
ReplyDeleteBut two years ago I had enough of broken libraries, hanging IDE, unfinished components, ecc and moved to other languages and IDEs. It was a hard and sad (for me) move as I love Pascal and Delphi.
Enrico Colautti Which language did you move to ?
ReplyDeleteJosé RamÃrez I moved back to C and C++ for desktop programs. I moved on to Python and more recently to JavaScript for web backend apps.
ReplyDeleteI work for a small Shop...3 of us use Delphi...the other 5 use Java...It's hard to get a continuous budget for Development tools when the other team uses Eclipse(free) and they pay for the Frameworks they need.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the same model for Delphi where the tool is free. i.e. Delphi compiler is free and they sell subscriptions to Frameworks. Let the shops pick and choose the Frameworks they need and pay for them.