Tuesday, September 5, 2006

It's T-Day!

In case you haven't heard yet..., it's T-Day!  The Turbo Explorer and Turbo Professional products are now available for download.  Along with the availability of these exciting new products, there's a wealth of information emerging out there to assist new and long-time programmers in getting up to speed with the products.  Especially for Turbo Delphi.  For instance, you can visit Nick Hodges blog for his series of "30 Camtasias in 30 days."  Just posted moments ago, Huw Collingbourne of Bitwise Magazine has also gotten into the act with these articles, Introduction to Delphi, Learn to Program Delphi Part One, and Delphi Study Guide.  Finally, Neil J. Rubenking has written this review of Turbo Delphi.  4.5 out of 5.

15 comments:

  1. A. Delphi EnthusiastSeptember 5, 2006 at 7:02 AM

    Two articles about this have been posted to Digg. Let's digg them both to the front page!


    http://www.digg.com/programming/Turbo_Delphi_Turbo_C_Turbo_C_available_today_for_FREE


    http://www.digg.com/programming/Turbo_Explorer_free_software_development_IDE

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  2. Impatient Delphi LoyalistSeptember 5, 2006 at 9:20 AM

    Is it just me or is there something wrong with the Turbo Explorer launch? Today is suppose to be the D-Day. Yet, the turboexplorer website hardly has any content on it. The analogy is like an open house but only the garage is available for viewing. Where are all the documentations, screenshots, intros and all the stuff to get new user's excited about Turbo Explorer. All there is is a website that looks like it was created during 1990 with outdated Borland videos. Nick's demos are not even available on the site. Who is running the marketing at DevCo..Borland?? Common guys, you can do better than that!! Look, no one is even interested in posting comments on the 2 Digg articles. That should tell you something.


    Hey..is anybody listening or does anybody care...


    IDL

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  3. IDL, I tend to agree with you but it's early days yet. There are tons of programmers out there but it will take some time for the interest to come through. After the announcement of the divestiture, even loyal fans lost faith & hopefully this will bring some of those back as well as pick up a few of the new ones that are just getting into programming.


    The webpage design, well I hope that gets looked at soon too,


    What really annoys me though is that plain Delphi for win32 requires so many prereqs to be installed. This turns me off and will turn many others off. If Delphi for Win32 was just a plain install & Go scenario it would be much better.


    It'll be interesting to see what happens and I hope DevCo really benefits from this move.

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  4. Download was fast, didn't have to fight for a slot. Havn't install it yet, but looking forward to playing with it on my laptop. Thanks Borland and "Developers Tool Group".

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  5. it is great news that there is a new turbo Delphi. is there are free upgrade path to the pro version from BDS2006? with multiple crashes per day, and often requiring task manager to escape from it, BDS is so demoralising to use. i don't know how much longer i can last like this.

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  6. Installed. I was really hoping to see the Classic Car Installer (Dressed Up), maybe the next version? No crashes for me. The IDE and compiling seem to be faster. Maybe due to not having all the other stuff loaded into the IDE?

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  7. About upgrade to Turbo Delphi from previous Delphi version, I read somewhere that since this is "new" product, no update is available.


    About crashing, I doubt it will be much better on stability because it is probably exactly the same product (IDE) as if you install BDS 2006 with only Delphi WIn32 module.


    Of course I may be wrong. ;)

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  8. Hello All,


    Although I was a very big fan of the Turbo times (my first development language was Turbo Pascal 4.0 back in 94 if I'm not mistaken), this time I think Borland is making a big mistake with the pricing schema.


    I now have Delphi 3, 7 and 2005 (I bought the 2005 before it was launched and made the worst mistake of my life because it is still in the box. I reported a big problem for me (http://qc.borland.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=10272) and it was fixed... in version 2006??? I didn't even got the problem that stopped me from using the product I've bought fixed in my version!).


    I was NOT planning to upgrade to 2006 after that problem. I lost all my faith in borland! Now, after I heard about the Turbo products, I was hopping to buy only the Delphi Win32 since that is almost all I use, however, since it is a new product, how can I do that, if the upgrade for my professional Delphi upgrade is $460 and the pro version of the turbo is $400? Why should I buy a very small percentage of a product when the price is only 15% cheaper?


    Hope you rethink your strategy for current Delphi customers, otherwise, you have just lost one customer! (I believe there are many like me out there, or even worse... the ones that have BDS 2006)


    Best wishes,


    Joao Santos

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  9. If one is programming in win32 Delphi, what features are there in bds2006 professional that aren't in turbo professional?

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  10. <http://bdn.borland.com/article/33659>

    Found the faq. fwiw not a lot

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  11. I see you guys very excited with the Turbo stuff. I am a Delphi fan since I discovered 5 years ago, but I'm sorry I can see the point with the Turbo Explorer version of Delphi. A Delphi whose VCL can not be expanded? You must be joking; the amount of components you can find out there is the very essence of Delphi. Why don't you DevCo take ECO off instead? I don't know... you could have removed anything else but the possibility to expand the VLC. I think this Turbo Explorer editions will neither hit the Freeware/Shareware Developers nor any student. Or, at least, not for more than 30 minutes. There are more things in this life rather than making money with a camouflaged demo version of Delphi. You should get a name in the sector, you should get recognition and you should grow the base of developers that supports you. University students and hobbyist must be your main target, and those have two things in common: they don’t have money and they develop for free. Seems there is no business there but that is far from truth. Those people will be hired one day, and that day they will realize that they are Delphi experts and that everything their company does would be done easier with Delphi (since don’t get me wrong, you have an excellent product) and there my friends is the business. So, please don’t try to milk hobbyist and students and start thinking in big. Don’t make Borland’s mistake again.


    Thank you very much.

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  12. Dear Kent,


    I have no iPod and no 1500$ pc. Anyway, there is something called license agreement. So a free version of Delphi can have a stricter license and forbid things like the ones you mention. Let’s say you can have the Turbo Explorer version same it is now and also another one which let’s you add components but in the license you ask that anything produced with that must be freeware and make the compiler put a flag in the exec, just like Kylix does. I don’t know… it’s just what I think. I see your point but see mine too. The situation is a hobbyist or student has to choose between DevCo’s Delphi ($500) and Sun’s Java with Eclipse or Netbeans ($0) and the 90% of the hobbyist or students have no idea of neither Delphi nor Java. I would probably choose the no cost option to learn. I’m a really fan of Delphi but here I see Microsoft has a big advantage with its MSDN Academic Alliance over the Turbo Explorer idea. Sorry but that’s how I see it. However, I still have some hope and I wish DevCo to succeed.

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  13. Sergio: there is something called "priorities". Every student and every hobbyist should decide what he likes most: a $1500 PC, a $500 digital camera, a $200 iPod - you may have not one but I see (too) many around - or the like. Borland has already tried the "license agreement" way. It looks it did not work. How could Borland go after every illicit use?

    Students and hobbyist *have not* to choose between a $500 Delphi and $0 Eclipse.

    They can choose between a *$0 Delphi* and a $0 Eclipse. Don't tell me that someone who has no idea of programming needs tons of 3rd party components as soon as he begins! Only the experienced Delphi developers want them -well - Delphi *is not* a free tool. And one could build a lot of useful software without fancy components at design time.

    Want something free? Feel free to use Eclipse - but remember, professional WebSphere and Rational tools based upon Eclipse *are not* free too.

    Borland had academic licenses, and I guess they have still.

    Really, I am tired of all people wanting Delphi for free. It can't be. DevCo. will go bankrupt in less than a quarter - and then there will be no Delphi *anymore*. Is it so difficult to understand? Look beyond the tip of your nose, please. How do you believe Allen, Nick, David and the others get paid? Should I pay for your free Delphi?

    I asked Ferrari to give me a free car, can't see why hobbyist drivers can't have one for free, I promise I won't drive for money...

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  14. Impatient Delphi LoyalistSeptember 8, 2006 at 2:51 AM

    I totally agree with Kent. It's great that DevCo realized that it needs to go back to its roots..(1) provide free versions of dev tools so that hobbyists and students can learn and experiment, (2) provide software in an affordable price for what developers really need, not bloated over priced software, (3) produce quality software that can go head to head with MS and lastly (4) make money in the process to grow the company and come up with innovative software.


    Today, I purchased the Turbo Delphi Pro, not because I am planning to upgrade any time soon, but to show my support for a programming language I love, that my business depends on and to reinvest in DevCo's future..all I ask in return is for DevCo to "seize the day" and go out with a bang...don't settle for mediocrity!!


    IDL

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