As you guys (any galls around?) know by now, I’m evaluating what to upgrade to. Currently I’m a Delphi 6 Enterprise user, and have the choice of upgrading to Delphi2005 or Visual Studio .NET 2003 (or 2005 if I wait any longer…) You’ve read my ramblings and I’m stabilizing in my choice (which is in slight favour of VS.NET on features).
When evaluating, one has access to Borland’s Delphi2005 Architect edition (available as download), and to Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional (available in seperate ways, I got mine from the free Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Resource Kit DVD).
Both Delphi and VS.NET come in several flavours, Delphi’s trial is their biggest, VS.NET’s is Microsoft second biggest (they also got an Architect version above Professional). When I’m trying either product, there is no way in the world that’s gonna tell me: you still can cope with the cheapest version, still the cheapest version, oh oops, now you need the professional version, still professional, compile->run, professional version is what I need for this kind of project.
Is there an analysis tool for either Delphi2005 or for VS.NET projects to tell you which version one needs? This tool (if it exists) would serve another goal: if you’re going to release your source (for whatever reason), you can tell the users: you need at least this-and-that version of the IDE.
Hi, the goodies that come with D2005 are by far the best option. ECO, now that im starting to use it, is simply amazing, the StarTeam integration (a server license for free), its a great choice and the option to port win32 to .net and viceversa is priceless.
About what version to go with? I don’t think there is a tool for that :P.
But, i think that you just need to consider what of those additional gadgets you will actually use, and even if you are not currently using them, what will happen if you start playing with them, will your development process be improve? i’m not even thinking about management operations, i’m a hard core developer, but, having Caliber, together, and ECO so close and integrated with my dev tool, it makes me want to learn more about the topic and even to start thinking on how to use them on my everyday development.
Aight, thats it. Happy hunting, and good luck with your decision!!
Hi Esteban,
At the moment, I don’t have the money for Delphi2005. Professional does not suite my needs (no remote database support, only local), and Enterprise is still $1500 as an upgrade from D6 Enterprise. Gotta go cheap at the moment, and as you can see in a later post, I’m looking at Visual C# Standard. No Studio, just C#. Only US$109.
Yup, can’t compete to that last number.
But, i just checked your latest post and it seems like prices changed. Let me know how it turned out for you.
Good luck! and thanks for posting the pricing, it started a nice fight here at work, because we are wasting precious cash on a subscription we are not taking advantage of. We better put more money on tools we are using, like adding Caliber to our environment.
Indeed. US$109 is outrageously cheap. And the things that are missing, well, most of them I won’t use anyway. If (when) I later decide to upgrade to VS.NET or change to Delphi2006, then I didn’t throw much money away.
If price was the final argument when deciding between VS.NET or Delphi2005, I know which is going to win now. What a scam.