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News and Highlights from EKON ...67891011121314 in FrankfurtMainz

Title: News and Highlights from EKON ...6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14 in Frankfurt/Mainz Question: How Borland, CodeGear and Delphi will be the freedom of choice and reaching new highs? Answer: Update 16, 4.9.2010 Time is running fast and maXbox3 (anatomic) is coming soon (March 2011) See the Sneak Preview at EKON 14. Update 15, 16.5.2010 Marketing would mean millions of $ plus a large company such as Microsoft or Oracle. Anything marketed by those giants would get through regardless of its intrinsic value. Turbo Pascal or Delphi was and is one of those rare examples to the contrary. It was a perfect hit at the time of the opportunity created by the market void. So was Microsoft itself. The window of opportunity then closed because the market became crowded. Another such example was C. The C++ on the other hand was backed up by a large company and therefore it became successful despite its design. (by Wojtek and me) Update 14, 17.9.2009 "Just as a skyscraper cannot easily be built on sand, a robust software system cannot be built on a foundation of weak tools and platforms. 15 years after the invention of static typing and automatic memory management, the decision with Delphi I never regret. To use an unsafe programming language such as C or C++ (which provide neither) requires serious justification, anyway the so called industry standard has almost won but Delphi will not gone. There's no more Borland anymore but a strong compiler and a brave future with Delphi 2010. I will show at EKON 13 the power of OpenGL and Compiler Tricks at all like compile the system.pas only with the shell and dcc32 possible: "D:\Program Files\Borland\RAD Studio\5.0\bin\dcc32" -m -y -z "D:\Program Files\Borland\RAD Studio\5.0\source\Win32\rtl\sys\system.pas" or how to build a compiler: http://www.softwareschule.ch/maxbox.htm "Serious justification" is extraordinarily easy to produce. It consists of just two words: "industry standard". Mediocrity wins in majority of cases, because in most real cases mediocrity is good enough. Those, who are trying to raise the bar for other people when there is no perceived need to do so, are perceived as trouble makers. Update 13, 27.10.2008 Above all I will present at EKON 12 a speech about openLDAP and the Delphi possibilities and will make some information concerning unicode in Delphi 2007 (IDE, components and compiler): http://www.softwareschule.ch/download/openldap_delphi.zip Update 12, 27.8.2008 Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009 Are Here! I have just finished watching the first live Delphi and C++Builder 2009 launch webinar. Nick Hodges, Delphi Product Manager, demonstrated some of the new and exciting new Delphi 2009 features including new VCL components, new Unicode support, new DataSnap architecture and new Delphi language features. This is just a beginning [...] EKON Spring 2008 is science not fiction, much ado about manything, so theres no way to happiness - happiness is the way! SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CodeGear, a leader in developer tools, today announced the sale of a 1 million seat license deal to the Russian Federal Agency of Education for teaching programming and application development to Russian students. CodeGears products Delphi, Delphi for .NET, and C++ Builder will be available for use in all of Russia's primary and secondary schools to teach its new generation of computer programmers. The decision to include CodeGear came after extensive research into Russias educational system, said Felix Muchnik, general director of Softkey, one of Russias leading software resellers. The power and ease-of-use of Delphi makes it ideal for developers of all levels. Government reports indicate that Delphi and Pascal are among the most widely used programming languages in the country and use of CodeGear tools is so prolific that more than 6000 different titles devoted to CodeGear and Borland products have been published for the Russian market. Russia has a long history of students programming in Delphi and Pascal, said CodeGear CEO, Jim Douglas. Developers around the globe even called Delphi the easiest to use IDE in Evans Data Corporations 2007 Developer Choice IDE user survey. Its exciting to see this trend continue with a new generation of developers as these students go on to develop next generation applications for some of the worlds most progressive industries. Update 11, 28.9.2007 The conference is over and CodeGear has strenghten the future as Nick said: "We dont wanna chasing about technologies" means they have their own with ECO, Interbase, IntraWeb, DBX4 and so on! They will come with a collection of solutions and tools, which demonstrates the features in real-world situations. They also represent at EKON the results of expensive research. Go on with CodeGear, NATIVE is back. Update 10, 6.9.2007 Previously code-named "Highlander," CodeGear RAD Studio delivers Delphi for Win32, C++Builder and new Delphi .NET 2.0 development in a single integrated environment. It is the only integrated development environment (IDE) solution that supports rapid application development of both native Microsoft Windows and .NET applications on and for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. This allows developers to build Web, client/server and desktop Windows applications on all three platforms, and to deploy to any of the three. "CodeGear RAD Studio gives developers the flexibility to use the operating system that best suits their needs while developing for multiple Windows operating systems, including Windows Vista and the Web," said Nick Hodges, Delphi Product Manager at CodeGear. Update 9, 16.7.07 Yet another language.. Yet another, and yet another.. Ada, Zonnon, Oberon 2, Modula 2, Pascal 2, Delphi, FreePascal, TurboPascal, Virtual Pascal, Prospero Pascal, UCSD Pascal, Apple Pascal, ComponentPascal, and many more.. Too many! Fragmented communities... lack of a strong community. we can't stop this but a strong communitiy has at least a strong conference ;) Update 8, 01.03.2007 The subenterprise CodeGear announced to ship Delphi2007 for Win32 (vista, together and ajax support) so the choice to develop with Win32 is a right one cause vista itselfs is build on Win32. Further a Delphi for PHP will shipped and also Highlander (Delphi.net 2.0 or 3.0) is still in the pipeline. There are many enterprises which support the VCL again like IntraWeb the VCL for the Web. Delphi 2007 comes with a free, fully functional license of IntraWeb 9.0. Like many we overlooked this technology many years ago, for traditional web technologies. With such adapters like VCL for PHP, VCL for Web, VCL for AJAX the VCL gets stronger and faces the competition with .net. Update 7, 29.9.06 The days were mixed with Delphi and Java Technologies, Borland itself was presented by the so called Borland Developer Tools Group and they made no announcement concerning the investor. Once again they presented the roadmap for highlander (Delphi 2007) and made further comments to the new available Turbo line. I myself said at the speakers panel a bonmot from Napolean Bonaparte: "Il faut etre son propre systeme" You have to be your system of your own means the the pressure to migrate to the .net framework has gone cause with SOA itself the integration or cooperation of systems is more important than the migration to a new risk like avalon in vista or the replacement of winforms. Update 6, 17.8.06 see my comments (in german): http://max.kleiner.com/sprache.htm Update 5, 22.2.2006 Just back from the dot.net conference with sessions concerning - refactoring with delphi 2006 - dunit with delphi 2006 - planning code reviews there was also the topic that borland is about to spin off the IDE business: "This is not the shutting down of a product line, but the empowering of it". Update 4, 30.9.2005 Delphi Rocks! It was the best EKON ever, cause Delphi 2006 (ECO III, compact framework, compiler v18, modelling and so on) is short before shipping and a next version just for .net (highlander) includes VCL.net2.0 it's around the corner end of 2006. Despite java or c#, Delphi still sticks together with the power and glory of the old days. Update3 Despite what Borland says, Delphi 2005 DOESN'T require .NET. If you are a Delphi 7 developer and don't like that Delphi 2005 comes polluted with .NET stuff, you have come to a solution. We'll tell you how to convert Delphi 2005 into a pure Win32 IDE, completely independent from .NET, making it a real successor to Delphi 7. http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/alvaroymica/ It was my 8 EKON/Borcon and the main topic was Delphi 9 or Diamondback: - Welcome page with news feeds - Multi-personality IDE for Delphi/Win32, Delphi/NET and C# - Project groups with Delphi/Win32, Delphi/NET and C# projects - Error insight - Help Insight - Refactoring - History View - For..in..do - Supported in Delphi/Win32 - Supported in Delphi/.NET "The aim of Diamondback is to make the ultimate Windows development solution for our Delphi customers. It's not about one thing versus another, it's about developers, and building great apps for Microsoft Windows." Also Kylix has a future. Believe it or not, Michael Swindoll has just announced that Borland has initiated the Kylix Community Project. The admin team for this includes Borland and key members of the Borland Community (including Chad Hower) with the goal to update the CLX library 1.10.04 ----------------------- I know this isn't the right place for general information but it's the right time to inform shortly the community ;) This document is intended to support some of the new concepts under research for the Delphi Language based on my visit as a speaker at the EKON 6. Most of you asked themselves the question if Delphi will survive in front of .NET. Absolutely, cause the Delphi language will cover or fit almost all our needs. So why this? - the new Delphi for .NET compiler is in the beta pipeline and will be shipped with D8(none of us wants MS Studio) - IBM signs a contract with Borland to provide Delphi with DB2 support - Native Compiler in Delphi 7 provides with CLX real cross-platform applications for Windows and Linux - Kylix Wins Best of Show at LinuxWorld 2002 ... - Using Delphi as a script language for ASP.NET is now possible Borland named the language ObjectPascal now Delphi language (I prefered OP) and will be the heart of 3 product-lines: - Delphi (Native Compiler) - Delphi for .NET - Kylix (for Linux) Also the recently published German IT-Magazine "Objekt Spektrum" Nr.5 mentions a great Delphi Project concerning E-Government in his editorial! Beside the fact that ObjectPascal (OP) belongs to the three top OO-language (OP, C++, Java), every attempt has been made by Borland and JEDI with providing SOAP and WebServices Support to keep Delphi running. Compiler support for .NET has also provided some exciting opportunities for enhancement to the Delphi language. In order to fully embrace the CLR and make Delphi a first class citizen in the new world of the so called managed code, some language features must be deprecated, and others are the subject of ongoing research. To prepare your code for a migration to .NET keep the following in mind: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Unsafe types arent't allowed like --------------------------------- PChar, PWideChar, and PAnsiChar Untyped pointers Untyped var and out parameters File of type Real48 Variant records (records containing overlapping fields) The old Object Type from Borland Pascal 7 Unsafe code is also a red flag in the "well behaved" code environment --------------------------------------------------------------------- Absolute variables to override the MEM Addr(), Ptr(), Hi(), Lo(), Swap() standard procedures BlockRead(), and BlockWrite() Fail() routines GetMem(), FreeMem(), ReallocMem() inline assembler the @ operator ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It's obvious that RealTime applications for fast engines like scanner, drivers, controller or parser dont't fit with .NET cause no pointers or assembler op-code is allowed anymore. So there is still the Native Compiler available but how long will it last, as long as we pay M$ to keep it open ;( Hopefully, we like what we can do otherwise nobody forces us to migrate to XP or next generation operating systems. Thats the freedom of choice by Borland, also called the switzerland of software. We do hate a new "softwar" like in the 80's between MAC and PC so the bridge between .NET and J2EE will be definitely WebServices with SOAP. Let's go back to Facts: Starting with Delphi 7, the compiler includes three new warnings that can help you locate code that is non-portable (i.e. it uses a deprecated language feature or type), or unsafe in the .NET Framework. In the .NET Framework, "unsafe" simply means that the code can't be verified by the static analysis performed by the CLR when the code is loaded. The compiler can warn about the usage of unsafe types, unsafe code, and unsafe casts. More of the new compiler you find in a document that is intended to introduce some of the new features and concepts under research for the upcoming Delphi for .NET compiler: http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,28972,00.html Update one year later: Octane (Delphi for .NET) will be shipped at the beginning of 2004 and a Release of Delphi 7 will also be shipped so we have three choices: - Octane - Delphi 7 Release - Kylix 3 ****************************************************************************** So enough impressions, a last word to keep the good mood on: 1 The Bitles YELLOW SUBROUTINE 2 John Tra Volt EVERY NIGHT JAVA 3 Elvis Presley IN THE GOTO 4 Talking Heads STOP SENDING SOAP 5 Scrolling Stones GIMME PASSWORD 6 VAX Pistols GOD SAVE THE PIN 7 Think Floyd DARK SIDE OF THE CPU 8 Simon & Forunkel BIT OVER TROUBLED DATA 9 Tina Turner NETWORK CITY LIMIT 10 Low Read WALK ON THE FILE SIDE