Allen blogs about the Visual Studio versus Delphi debate. Quite an interesting piece of Borland propaganda, if you ask me. As I see it: Delphi is not Delphi anymore, it’s just Visual Studio with a Delphi (read: able to compile Object Pascal) core. What is left out of the equation is (and I have ranted about this before) the price. If you’re a one-man band (like I am) you will choose VS.NET because it’s cheaper, has more support for it’s price and it’s easier to get new (preview, early access, beta) material. If you’re a big company and you need a license for say 20 developers, it sure is a difference to shell out 20 times 3500 for Delphi (total 70,000 plus quite some more for support), or 5 times MSDN Universal (no need for every developer to have everything) and 15 times VS.NET Enterprise Architect (total of 5×2800 + 15×2500 = $51,500 ~ 40,000).
What I miss in VS.NET? Live data at design time. That’s it. And Borland only has live data with their own dataproviders, and we all know that Borlands drivers are not known for their speed. Remember BDE?
Mind you, I have Borland Delphi 6 Enterprise, but I still don’t see why I need to shell out so much money for the upgrade to Delphi2005, when more and more (potential) clients are asking for C# programmers and I can have basically the same IDE (VS.NET) as FULL product for less than the Borland upgrade. How’s that for keeping your customers?