[Lazarus-other] [Lazarus] Some information please

Marco van de Voort marcov at stack.nl
Mon Jul 5 15:21:40 CEST 2010


On Mon, Jul 05, 2010 at 10:04:37AM +0000, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> > Yes, but not always, e.g. billing apps, testing setups etc.
> >
> > E.g. I last week did a little CRM app based on zeos
>
> Reading what people are using Lazarus for, I'm struck by the fact that
> it doesn't appear to be the database and commercial stuff that Borland
> assumed was a large enough market to keep Delphi alive.

Well, the larger apps often are. Still. A lot of Kylix conversions also.

It seems that I'm atypical, since even on the job I don't  use Delphi for db
related purposes. (this small CRM thingy excluded)

> And that, quite simply, could answer the OP's question about why Delphi
> is no longer a market leader: it's not that it's based on Pascal so much
> as it's promoted as competing with business-oriented tools such as
> Clarion.

> And it's worth remembering that Clarion swallowed JPI/TopSpeed for the
> sake of its tools, in much the same way as Embarcadero appears to have
> swallowed Codegear/Borland.

For me this analogy goes a step too far. Yes, there is a superficial
likeliness (tool vendor bought by db oriented company), but there are
differences too.

Like clarion sold 4th generation DB languages, not DB admin and analysis
tools.  The difference is that clarion products would have competed with
Topspeed products (if used for db access apps, and there were dbf toolboxes
for it) while this conflict doesn't exist for Embarcadero<->Codegear.

The objective of Embarcadero seems two fold. Earning money, and some synergy
due to the bundling of retail channels.

But most importantly is not what things are named or classified, but what
really happens:

Clarion stripped the devel team from the compiler teams for own purposes,
while Embarcadero actually raised the devel count of Delphi/BCB to a higher
number than in Borland times.

And this shows, D2009 and D2010 are better and wider improved than the
versions before it (or anything till D6, D7 being more a maitenance
release). Except for the help.

The Delphi decline is IMHO threefold: (in this order)
- Microsoft and Sun's multibillion development tools effots (with Codegear
 being more a tens of miilions magnitude company)
- Has gradually losts its foothold in education over the years. Partially
  due to natural causes, partially because of neglect.
- the longtime neglect by Borland, due to financial mismanagement (siphoning
  profits to the ALM stuff) and failed .NET adventures.





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