Delphi grows up, moves out
Ok so putting all gaming fun on hold,
So were out of the gates now, into the realm of the unknown. For those of you who havn’t heard Borland is trying to spin off the IDE products group, including Delphi, JBuilder, Interbase, and a few others. Whew, I’m nervous. I mean excited nervous, but I mean I’ve been in the industry for 2 years, and only have had my full time position here in RnD for 3 months. So as you can imagine this is a bit of a venture into the unknown for me.
I can see two major possibilities. One, deal goes through and things, well, lets say they don’t go so well. Not a large possiblity, but its there. Two, and more fun, thanks to the amazing determination of Delphi engineers and our devoted user base, we pull through, and with the resources of a new company, we get the ability to make Delphi better than ever. Lets all hope for that second option shall we? I mean, I can see some major advantages to having Delphi split away from Borland, which is why I spent so much time when I was an intern discussing the Coates deal with Danny, and also why I was so disapointed when the deal died.
After hearing about this new deal, I found myself at a bit of a loss. However the more I think on it the more I realize this is even better than Coates deal was. As Allen put it to me, in this deal we have the Borland board behind us, not against us. A good thing in my books anyway. So here we go, this will be an interesting quarter or two to say the least. Hopefully everything comes out ok, and were able to put together even better Delphi releases for you guys in the future!
-David Lock
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Posted by David Lock on February 8th, 2006 under Uncategorized |10 Responses to “Delphi grows up, moves out”
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February 8th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Ya, buddy, every delphi user hope for the second possibility, and even wish that announcement had never been made…
I have been programming with Pascal over 15+ years, and the most sad thing I feel is that, there are not many Object Pascal compilers we can choose! So Pascal productions from Borland were almost the only choice we have. But now… I wish the "last one" will not be lost.
Telling the truth, as Danny said he was considering about to support multi-thread in compiler, in June last year, I had already built a proto-type of a new framework of my own. It’s ideaology was so different from the common framworks we have ever seen, to support multi-thread or multi-core applications, and made methods pipelinized.
As I had thought, you Borland guys would be glad to see it and maybe found it useful, when it grows and no longer a proto-type only, but now… what should I do? I’m really puzzled… will Delphi even disappear totally?
February 8th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Well, I don’t know if Im in a position to judge on whether Delphi will disapear or not. As far as I can tell the team here is still 100% behind Delphi, no matter what parent company owns it.
As long as its in our power I believe well all do whatever it takes to keep good Delphi releases coming out for you guys. After all, your buissness depends on Delphi, making it our responsibility to support you in your ventures.
Best bet is to ride it out a few months. If this does work well then I imagine Delphi may finally get the development resources it deserves, which could put such features as Multi-Threaded Compiler on the map for a release, along with a slough of other things that the current development team just isnt large enough to handle. Just got to hope for the best. I’ll try to make sure everyone I can influence does everything they can to keep the Delphi boxes rolling to customers.
-David Lock
February 8th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Do you think they will sell off just the Delphi compiler or will it be a "take the lot" sale, David?
February 8th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
From what I understand its a package deal kind of thing, team included. Infact as far as I know the entire IDE buissness is whats on the market. That includes JBuilder and Interbase. So from that it sounds like in no means are they breaking out peices of the product for sale.
They’re taking steps to make sure the team stays together as well, so thats another peice of evidence that they don’t plan on splitted the codebase either.
In all honesty if the plan was to sell off peices of the codebase, it would most likely mean that the Delphi teams jobs would be liquidated. In that case I doubt that I, or any other member of the Delphi team, would be excited about it and posting about its merits.
February 9th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Let’s make it simple. I do not need to know what led to it and what surveys and studies were made. What does it mean to me, the average developer, who is already struggling to convince my managers why to use Delphi when other developer tools, far less technologically than Delphi, are somehow appealing to them?
Let’s play the developers dooms day scenario, shall we. At this time and the way the economy is going, this announcement is very damaging. Maybe for the short term it will make some people benefit from it, but the overall outcome will not be good. What happens if Delphi really goes away or gets bought?
February 9th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Honestly I can only give you my speculation, as I know only marginally more than anyone else. First off, I have serious doubts that Delphi won’t sell, so lets assume that a new company aquires Delphi, or that an investment firm buys the delphi team and forms a new private company from it.
The most likely possibility given the right conditions (good newco buying us, good resource pool) is that Delphi, which has always been somthing of a neglected cash cow, finally gets the resources it deserves. Quality and feature sets could both go up, with regular releases in the future supporting .Net 2.0, WinFX, and any other technology that comes out.
There is always the possibility that the new company decides to dump the dev team, or just try to milk the product for money. These cases, while very unlikely, would most likely cause the Delphi product line to end.
Now don’t go quoting me on this or anything :). Just a heads up I am just a fairly new RnD engineer. So this speculation is based on talks I’ve had with fellow engineers, and what Ive gathered from the comunity, and not any privilaged information that I posses, cause I dont have any.
Bottom line, while it is a risky move, the most likely possiblity is that Delphi becomes its own private buisness owned by some investment firm (hopefully). In this case we would be able to provide good solid releases for you guys to build your buisness platforms on for years to come.
February 10th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Hi David. I’m an analyst working for a consultants firm in Montreal, Quebec. I develop mostly in .NET technology with Microsoft tools but I’d rather like to use C# Builder but my employer thinks otherwise.
So, I think Delphi and others development tools of Borland will have better chance to get better outside of Borland organisation depending on which company will buy them. If that company believe in these development tools, we may have a new generation of well designed bug free tools that will make the difference for developer all around the world.
I also have one company’s name in head: Corel. Before I get flammed, remember that the top management at Corel is not the same as it was when Corel tried to buy Borland many years ago. I don’t know if Vertor Capital, owner of Corel, could be interessed by this adventure, but why not? What do you think of that speculation!
February 10th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
You know man, I dont really know much about the whole corel thing. Ive been with Borland for only about 2 years now, and 1.5 of those years were as an intern, while I was still in college. So the Corel thing was well before my time.
That being the case I can’t really judge on whether or not being aquired by Corel would be good. Reguardless, I still think the best scenario is getting an investment firm to buy us, and start a new private company with the current IDE dev team and codebase.
At this point its just a sit and wait situation for anyone who either isn’t on the Borland C-level team or board, or doesnt have 150 million or whatever the price is and wants to buy the IDEs. We’ll see how it goes…
February 12th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
I really, really, really love Delphi.
If things dont work out, lets get the it open sourced and do what the linux guys do.
I absolutely belive in this product. My life depends on it.
Where are all the original guys who created the product (Anders H., Phillipe K., Chuck, etc) - save your baby. Come back home.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Yeah, where are those guys? Somthing that people need to realize, and aren’t seeing (probably why theres so much ‘oh were all doomed’ talk) is that this has the potential to bring alot of good ex-Borland talent back to the Delphi.
There were alot of people who left the Delphi team just in my two or so years of being here who were amazing engineers, and just couldn’t stand how Borland was treating them, or Delphi as a product. Hopefully these people will be swayed to return to whatever newco we become.
High on my list of people I’m barraging with emails is Danny Thorpe. That guy is a certified Delphi genious in my books, and having him back on the team would be a huge plus. Well see how many people we can get back into the fold if things go well.