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Q: Is there a reason to move my Windows 32-bit application from XE2 to XE10?

I recently received a sales call from Emb, asking me to upgrade to XE10. I wasn't sure how to respond, as I haven't evaluated it since XE7. However, I was under the impression that my source-code didn't have a lot to gain from it. I say this, because the product's market is Windows and I don't want to invest the dollars into it to optimize the code to use Generics or Anonymous Functions for no real reason. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't think other people have a use for it. Perhaps 64-bit would be useful, as a sales-tool, but I don't need large memory support for it to run.

Emb mentioned WinRT mapping to the VCL, which sounds interesting, but I honestly don't know how I'd benefit from it.. is Win32 API targetted VCL applications going to be unsupported in Windows at some point in the future?

So tell me, why do I need XE10 over XE2 for non-mobile development?

{quote}
> The VCL is very far from deprecated, in fact, it's seen more updates than our mobile frameworks. From small UI feature additions such as adding application preview and jump list support for Windows 7, and notification support for Windows 10, right through to mapping the entire WinRT API into the VCL. (Microsoft are no longer developing the Win32 API in favor of replacing it with WinRT). We've even added a skinning system which you could use to re-skin existing VCL UI's.
> It's also quite easy to think that if there is nothing you need in the newest release of VCL then you might not get much from the product, but this is not true either. The Berlin 10.1 IDE is possibly the most stable IDE to have been released since Delphi 7. It now includes all of the features from Castallia (which we purchased and integrated). The Compiler has been migrated to the LLVM framework for greater range of optimizations, stability, and new syntax features such as Generics and Anonymous Methods.
> We have invested heavily into R&D year after year, so there are far too many enhancements since XE2 for me to list here, and you need not take my word for it. Our new light-weight installer means that downloading and trying our trial version is a great option to learn what's new.
> Also, don't forget that we've now wrapped our "Update Subscription" plan which includes support into the price, so you'd get 12-months worth of releases in with your purchase.
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Comments

  1. Thanks for the suggestions. In the end, it sounds like new projects/development can benefit from using the latest version of Delphi. However, I don't believe the costs justify upgrading for legacy projects. My software went Delphi 7 -> 2007 (terrible version) -> 2010 -> XE2 .. I think it'll probably stop there. It's hard to weed through technical sales emails, kind of seems like a lot of stuff in there that is only beneficial for people still investing code in the language. I'm only using it as a stub, to retain legacy functionality, while I move the functionality to modern languages. Shrug.

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  2. Ironic that you want to "move ... to modern languages" while choosing not to move to modern language features of Delphi. IMO Delphi is a modern language. It has all the features a modern language has.
    I wonder what you mean by "modern language": do you mean untyped? Other than that you'll probably find the same features in Delphi.

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  3. Replace "modern languages" with "Web paradigm".

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