Brandon Staggs

Of course they do.

I did. First half of it or so was focused on C++, showing off Visual Assist integration. Not relevant to me, but the Find Related feature is enviable and it would be nice to see the same for Delphi. The section on what's new for VCL and FMX seemed short by comparison and there was a lot of "I can't go into details about this in the time we have." Personally I think it would have made sense to break out the C++ stuff into another webinar. My honest impression for the Delphi side of things is that you can read the release notes and get the same benefit in a lot less time than watching the webinar, but it's still nice to see some of it demonstrated. I'm sure they will eventually post it to YouTube.

I suppose what confused me about this is the fact that it is deprecated but there is no alternative. Typically when something is deprecated I expect to be able to learn what the "right" "new" way to do it is, but there is no other solution in the IDE for code formatting other than the modeling plugin. But it is still included by default so ... whatever.

ROTFL

Okaybut, they are saying this is deprecated and that it's no longer part of the core installation. I am trying to wrap my head around the idea that code formatting in a professional IDE can be deprecated. Surely I am not understanding this correctly.

The publicly listed "What's New" page for Delphi 12 says this: Am I misunderstanding this, or are they saying that there will be no Delphi code formatting in the default configuration for the IDE?

Comparing Microsoft and Embarcadero is pointless. Microsoft is supporting an ecosystem with their development tools that makes then tens of billions of dollars. Embarcadero is a tiny company selling an IDE that has to pay for itself and profit on its own. Well, 11.3 is in fact the third binary-compatible update to 11. At some point they are going to move on. If the new updates do not provide a net benefit to your development, don't renew your subscription, and tell the sales person why. What else can you do?

I am not aware of any software that I use that refrains from releasing new versions until the current release version is bug free. Perhaps there are exceptions, but that is just not how software development generally works. To be clear, I don't think it's unreasonable to want Embarcadero to fix bugs, I do too. But complaining about Delphi 12 coming just because Delphi 11.3 isn't bug-free is not reasonable or useful, IMO. For what it's worth, I use Delphi 11.3 all day long. It is the most stable Delphi has been for me in years. I do not regularly experience the kinds of problems you describe, and pretty much every time I have, I could track it down to a component package. I do often have to restart Delphi when I am rebuilding packages or changing packages. It's an area that could use some work but I also understand what is happening -- I have a lot of components installed and any bugs in those components can affect the whole IDE. My biggest complaints have to do with invalid syntax highlighting between ifdefs that the IDE isn't interpreting correctly although compiler works properly. And, CTRL+Clicking doesn't always locate a symbol definition when CTRL+G does, and vice-versa (so I can't just use one or the other, I am often forced to try both methods). But, right now, I am able to use the IDE all day long with relatively minimal frustrations. I'm not trying to disregard the issues you are having, but being realistic means understanding that if Delphi is going to get bug fixes, they have to be able to get revenue, which means sustaining subscriptions, which means shipping new features. As I said before, it is what it is.

It's been this way since Delphi 1. May as well not wish for a perfect "bug free" release before a new release comes. They'd be out of business. By now we should all understand that in order to benefit from bug fixes, we need to be on subscription, and we will have to upgrade to new versions with new bugs to watch out for. It is what it is. And I agree there are frustrating problems with the IDE, but frankly, most of what you described sounds a lot like a misbehaving package you have installed in the IDE. Especially since you say you get freezing while editing a form. If I were in your position I would be looking into figuring out what packages I may be using causing the IDE to be unstable. Remember, this is Delphi, all those design-time packages are DLLs loaded into the process of the IDE...

For actionable information you really should contact your sales rep at Embarcadero for this information. I will say that the cost of renewing the subscription goes up every single year. The last year I renewed I opted for the five-year term so I could lock in the price, calculating that they will never actually lower it and I am probably going to need the updates. I think the annual renewal worked out to US $530/yr with the offered discounts when I paid for 5 years up front, back in 2021. My emails indicate that they were advertising this as a way to avoid the "4% uplift" every year. I doubt it's only 4% (given US inflation since then) now but I have no idea really.

This comment on an older issue in the system requesting the same thing may give you some insight: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-33115?focusedCommentId=101628&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-101628 Marco says they consider it along with other features. I think it's obvious there are limited R&D resources there, and they will only do a 64-bit IDE when they think it will lead to more sustained subscriptions compared to working on other bugs and features. But that is just my guess. Note that the issue for that comment is many years older than the one you added and has around 40 votes.

Indeed. I think asking Embarcadero to give us a 64-bit one is counterproductive to that right now. It seems unlikely that the majority of problems in the IDE have anything to do with a lack of virtual address space. A new 64-bit IDE is going to come with a lot of new bugs. I can understand if someone is working on a project that routinely hits the memory limit they would want this done now.

Indeed. Though it seems like we should have a 64-bit IDE only at this point in history, it is not clear what value it will bring, and we can know with near-certainty it is going to come with a lot of new bugs. The Delphi IDE has been large-address aware for a long time now. Are there really still memory issues? Or are people just experiencing a symptom of other runaway problems? Not saying I don't want 64-bit. I am just not optimistic I would even be able to use the first iteration of it....

I immediately understood the new syntax at first glance. The syntax you proposed looked like broken code. Honestly I doubt there is any possible solution to this that would not cause someone to complain, but I am glad they didn't decide to override the function call syntax for this. Personally I am glad we are finally able to move beyond the 255 character limit and have a viable option for pasting in multiline content to be used as a string literal.

Indeed. I spent not an insignificant amount of time developing an application for Windows Phone which ended up being a complete waste. That said, Windows on ARM is not just Microsoft's latest tone-deaf attempt to replace Win32. It is a legitimate compilation target for native code and Win32 API applications. As Intel continues to hemorrhage money and ARM continues to gain ground on the desktop (Mac) it seems unlikely that it will just fade away. Since Delphi is already shipping compilers for ARM it would seem to be a reasonable ask to let us build our Windows applications on ARM. My experience dealing with how exception handling works on ARM tells me this is not a one-click solution, though. As nice as it would be to just point the build to ARM instead of x86-x64 I don't think it is going to be that easy. Giving us LLVM for Windows applications is the likely path but will cause some things to break. Not that I am a compiler guy. I'm not. Who knows.