dummzeuch 1724 Posted September 16 5 hours ago, Joseph MItzen said: Well, that right there is some low-hanging fruit FOR AUTOMATIC CODE FORMATTING. Not sure about the automatic part: Assume you have some legacy code to work on from an era that used a different formatting style. Do you really want it to be automatically reformatted? How do you track the changes you make? The only option is to do the reformatting and commit that change, before you make any manual changes, but that breaks the blame functionality (or whatever your SCM calls it) for older changes. So I usually only format the parts of the code I actually work on and leave the rest as is. 2 Share this post Link to post
Lars Fosdal 1939 Posted September 16 1 hour ago, Dalija Prasnikar said: Right now RAD Studio is extremely overpriced. I don't disagree, but for my use case, VS still is more expensive. That said - Right now, I'd not be happy if I was on RAD Studio Architect sub. I also think that the division between Pro and Enterprise is artificial, and not having Linux in the lower tiers is idiotic. That is where you find the tinkerers that actually would use it the most, creating most traction, and contributing most to open source. The problem is the enterprise trap - where you get more money from fewer users that typically are demanding less support. If you merge the tiers and lower the price and triple or quadruple the user mass - you will need more support people. It is not easy to set up a formula for what is more beneficial for the EMBT/Idera vs what is beneficial for us users. 6 Share this post Link to post
Dalija Prasnikar 1560 Posted September 16 4 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said: you will need more support people. Support for what? There is no free support. Only for installation problems and I don't think there are to many of those. Embarcadero needs to lower low end prices to bring in new users. I doubt there are many prospective new users willing to shell out over 1600$ on new PRO license. Not to mention that there is no upgrade path for existing users with old versions. They need to pay full price. 9 Share this post Link to post
Sherlock 687 Posted September 16 20 minutes ago, Dalija Prasnikar said: Not to mention that there is no upgrade path for existing users with old versions. They need to pay full price. That is a marketing vehicle they choose to ride every other year "Limited offer for a limited time only! Upgrade from any Delphi Version" Share this post Link to post
Brandon Staggs 396 Posted September 16 On 9/13/2025 at 8:50 AM, dummzeuch said: Some even from past me. I think "past me" is my least favorite developer to work with. 1 4 Share this post Link to post
Brandon Staggs 396 Posted September 16 7 hours ago, Vincent Parrett said: The only place where Delphi wins out (ignoring the price) is for Desktop Windows applications. For everything else, there are better options. I wish it were not the case, but it's too far behind now to ever be able to compete in many spaces (like web, mobile etc). Once again, it seems that Delphi's strength is the fact that there are legacy applications locked into it. The cost of abandoning millions of lines of code is far greater than continuing with an IDE that appears to be on life support with failing equipment. No refactoring. No code formatting. Yeah, I get that refactoring didn't work well and that lots of people (myself included) did not trust CTRL+D. But this is not a modern IDE. It just isn't. You can't remove basic functionality like refactoring and pretend to be a professional IDE. A couple of weekends ago I set up VS Code to write and debug 6502 assembly on an attached emulator. It was astonishingly smooth. It was fun to use. Everything just works. If it wasn't for the difficulty of dealing with hundreds of visual forms I would be looking into getting a Delphi build environment working in VS Code. 3 Share this post Link to post
JohnLM 27 Posted September 16 (edited) Although there is no mention, it appears that the new "RAD AI Compansion" website: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/ is not available. Unless I'm mistaken or the link in the webinar video is incorrect. It may only be for current subscription holders. Forbidden: You don't have permission to access /RADStudio/Florence/ on this server. Edited September 16 by JohnLM added image and edits Share this post Link to post
PeterPanettone 182 Posted September 16 4 minutes ago, JohnLM said: Although there is no mention, it appears that the new "RAD AI Compansion" website: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/ is not available. Unless I'm mistaken or the link in the webinar video is incorrect, it is only for current subscription holders. Forbidden: You don't have permission to access /RADStudio/Florence/ on this server. It is available from this URL: https://www.embarcadero.com/RADAICompanion Share this post Link to post
Brandon Staggs 396 Posted September 16 1 hour ago, PeterPanettone said: It is available from this URL: https://www.embarcadero.com/RADAICompanion My initial testing shows that Grok knows more about Delphi x-plat development than Embarcadero's LLM does. 1 Share this post Link to post
GabrielMoraru 51 Posted Sunday at 06:50 PM (edited) On 9/16/2025 at 3:19 AM, Joseph MItzen said: The IDE should enforce the style guide. I don't think I agree with that as enforcing stuff is usually a bad idea. But the IDE should provide a formatter so whatever code gets into your hands, you could format to your liking. 🙂 PS: I personally don't care much about the removal of the formatter because it never worked the way I wanted. But as others said, it is not nice to have features removed from the IDE. From what I see some people were still using it. Edited Monday at 08:49 AM by GabrielMoraru 2 Share this post Link to post
GabrielMoraru 51 Posted Sunday at 07:12 PM (edited) On 9/16/2025 at 2:54 PM, Dalija Prasnikar said: Embarcadero needs to lower low end prices to bring in new users. I doubt there are many prospective new users willing to shell out over 1600$ on new PRO license. Not to mention that there is no upgrade path for existing users with old versions. They need to pay full price. 🙂 That's what I also said some posts earlier: Quote That's one of the top items on my "Delphi wish list": * Bring fresh blood * Expand the ecosystem (including libraries) * Bring the IDE up to date (this includes fixing the bugs also) Embarcadero should not rely that much on 3rd parties (like MVPs) to attract new developers. They are not proactive enough. They rely too much on the existing customer base that is stuck with very large legacy projects that are truly difficult to migrate. In the last years I worked on several large projects, all started in 1994. However, two of them switched to C#; one is having a "parallel" version (mobile) written not-in-delphi. This pool of customers is getting thinner, and we, the 1995-generation are getting gray beards. _ My wife (which programs but not in Delphi) tells me that I should stop teaching my son Delphi..... as she does not see a future there. ______________________________________________________________________ We keep complaining about this, but in the end I don't think we can change it. I wrote some books about Delphi, I open-sourced my libraries, I teach a Delphi course to kids. That's all I can personally do. I am (we are) not part of Embarcadero's management. So, any concrete ideas? Edited Sunday at 07:12 PM by GabrielMoraru 4 Share this post Link to post
dummzeuch 1724 Posted Monday at 06:16 AM 10 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said: So, any concrete ideas? I was at the Pascal Conference last week (and not at the Delphi event, because I found that too expensive for a marketing event, but I degrees). Sorpetaler, who organised it and also sponsored the community days on the weekend, had also managed to in invite a group of students (from some school in Dortmund I think). Among other things, they got an introduction into Pascal and the cool things you can do with it, and each got a USB stick with a portable Lazarus installation. I'm not saying that each of them will now become a Pascal programmer, but at least they have now seen that there are people and at least one company is using it. And the tour through the production facility definitely was impressive. We'd need similar events for Delphi, including a free license, of course. But I have little hope that the latter will be forthcoming. (Of course there is CE). 4 Share this post Link to post
GabrielMoraru 51 Posted 21 hours ago On 9/22/2025 at 8:16 AM, dummzeuch said: Among other things, they got an introduction into Pascal and the cool things you can do with it, and each got a USB stick with a portable Lazarus installation. That's great! But I feel I/we need to touch a larger audience. Share this post Link to post
Lars Fosdal 1939 Posted 7 hours ago 14 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said: we need to touch a larger audience Possible ways to do that, include Have a step-in/step-out monthly subscription model - with a price comparable to streaming services such as Apple, HBO Max, Prime, Disney+, SkyShowtime, Netflix... Improve the capabilities of the lowest tier of Delphi by having full Linux and database support - or even simply have one single tier Keep writing good software, readworthy articles and contribute to open source where you can 1 Share this post Link to post
mvanrijnen 135 Posted 5 hours ago 2 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said: Possible ways to do that, include Have a step-in/step-out monthly subscription model - with a price comparable to streaming services such as Apple, HBO Max, Prime, Disney+, SkyShowtime, Netflix... Improve the capabilities of the lowest tier of Delphi by having full Linux and database support - or even simply have one single tier Keep writing good software, readworthy articles and contribute to open source where you can And make the EMB blog less commercial but more Developer attracting. Looks and reads more like a blog about fashion for light headed people.... 3 1 Share this post Link to post
Sherlock 687 Posted 4 hours ago 17 minutes ago, mvanrijnen said: And make the EMB blog less commercial but more Developer attracting. Looks and reads more like a blog about fashion for light headed people.... THIS! Share this post Link to post
Patrick PREMARTIN 162 Posted 4 hours ago 30 minutes ago, mvanrijnen said: And make the EMB blog less commercial but more Developer attracting. Looks and reads more like a blog about fashion for light headed people.... The main purpose of this blogs is to inform about new products, features, conferences and events. If you want more technical contents you can find it on MVPs and other developers blogs, in books, on YouTube with thousands of videos, ... What contents fo you expect or need ? On what topics do you want or need more textual contents ? Asking for content is easy. Finding on what to write and time to write it is more complicated. Share this post Link to post
Dalija Prasnikar 1560 Posted 2 hours ago 4 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said: Have a step-in/step-out monthly subscription model - with a price comparable to streaming services such as Apple, HBO Max, Prime, Disney+, SkyShowtime, Netflix... I am not sure I want to go in such subscription model direction. At the end value such subscription provides would be to small for the paid price, or it would have to be extremely cheap (10-20$ a month) with ability to use same Delphi version without forced upgrade. But even then I don't think that would solve the problem. Persistent licenses are the only good model for development tools, nobody will start developing anything (not even as a hobby) in a tool they might not be able to pay at some point and can lose access (even with stepping in and out, as vendor can always change the pricing model). The main problem is the base price for the lowest SKU (PRO) itself which is too steep comparing to other paid and free options available. 3 Share this post Link to post
Lars Fosdal 1939 Posted 2 hours ago @Dalija Prasnikar - I am not thinking about every license type being pay-as-you-go. The persistent licenses would co-exist. If you do contracting work, and your primary tool is C#, but you have a few Delphi projects - it could be better to pay as you go, instead of having to keep your Delphi licenses perpetually. As for price level for the hobbyist- it needs to come down to a level where it would be a sustainable price for a hobbyist. The price you are willing to pay for your primary hobby, with the features you expect to be available for you (I am still baffled why Linux is not available in the lower tiers - it just doesn't make sense). Exactly where that pricepoint lies - is hard to say. Share this post Link to post
HeartWare 9 Posted 2 hours ago On 9/16/2025 at 9:45 PM, PeterPanettone said: It is available from this URL: https://www.embarcadero.com/RADAICompanion My very first question pushed it up into a corner: The headline on the web page says: RAD AI Companion An AI assistant trained to answer your questions and generate code for Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio. So I naturally asked it: How do you generate code for RAD Studio that isn't Delphi or C++ ? To which it answered: Unfortunately, I have no knowledge on this subject. RAD Studio primarily supports Delphi and C++ for code generation. Share this post Link to post
dummzeuch 1724 Posted 1 hour ago 11 minutes ago, HeartWare said: My very first question pushed it up into a corner: The headline on the web page says: RAD AI Companion An AI assistant trained to answer your questions and generate code for Delphi, C++Builder and RAD Studio. So I naturally asked it: How do you generate code for RAD Studio that isn't Delphi or C++ ? The products are called "Delphi", "C++ Builder" and "RAD Studio", the latter combining the other two. So the headline is correct. Share this post Link to post
Renate Schaaf 79 Posted 1 hour ago 22 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said: The price you are willing to pay for your primary hobby, with the features you expect to be available for you (I am still baffled why Linux is not available in the lower tiers - it just doesn't make sense). Exactly where that pricepoint lies - is hard to say. I'd be ready to pay around 800-1000€ for a perpetual pro-license for my hobby, just to make sure I can still use Delphi when they decide to ditch the CE. But not double of that. 1 Share this post Link to post
Dalija Prasnikar 1560 Posted 1 hour ago 31 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said: The persistent licenses would co-exist. This is a slippery slope. Some of use still remember Adobe. Share this post Link to post
HeartWare 9 Posted 48 minutes ago 1 hour ago, dummzeuch said: The products are called "Delphi", "C++ Builder" and "RAD Studio", the latter combining the other two. So the headline is correct. No - grammatically it's three different products "Delphi", "C++ Builder" and "RAD Studio". I asked it how to make code for "RAD Studio" and it didn't know, even though the headline said that it (should) know... To be what you have, it would have to be " An AI assistant trained to answer your questions and generate code for Delphi and C++Builder (RAD Studio). Share this post Link to post