Delphi beta testing a "premium" privilege?

[Brandon Staggs 275]

Saw this today:

 

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/premium-update-subscription-customers-invited-to-join-rad-studio-malawi-beta/

 

Can someone explain the rationale for putting beta versions of Delphi behind a "premium" subscription, instead of just opening it up to any subscribers who are willing to beta test Delphi? Seems like Delphi needs to find a way to get more testers, not put testing behind a paywall. But maybe I am missing something.

[Ian Branch 127]

Didn't even realize there was such a thing as a 'Premium Update Subscription'. 😞

[aehimself 396]

[Lajos Juhász 293]

1 hour ago, Brandon Staggs said:

 

Can someone explain the rationale for putting beta versions of Delphi behind a "premium" subscription, instead of just opening it up to any subscribers who are willing to beta test Delphi?

 

Why not? It's a priviledge to get access to some kind of "road map information". Their task is also to help to complete the version. This it's premium service of the customers towards the company!

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

It has been for a long time that selected beta testers (like f.i. all MVPs and Tech Partners) are invited early to a beta cycle, while users with an active (normal) Update Subscription are invited at a later stage (so they actually are already open to any willing subscriber). Now it seems that having a Premium Update Subscription puts you into the first group, too. Does not look like a big change to the previous system to me. May be they want to put more value into the Premium part, which isn't a bad thing. Nothing is taken away from anyone.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

It seems like Premium subscription gives you "advanced" beta access. For Standard it says there is access to beta for each major version release.

 

So reading between the lines and knowing that current beta is just an update, this might mean that only Premium subscribers will have access to this beta.

 

https://www.embarcadero.com/support

[David Champion 48]

It's an optimisation of marketing language to sell the 'value' that is already there.

 

Now, if Embarcadero were to involve the subscribers in the evolution of the product range and invest more money I would get involved in beta testing. 

 

And this is the wrong way round, the beta testers should be given additional time added to their subscriptions for the effort involved.

 

Where is the ongoing public consultation with the developer/customers?

 

Where is the open discussion about the Delphi language?

 

Where is the open discussion about the IDE and tooling?

 

 

  

  

[Brandon Staggs 275]

20 hours ago, Uwe Raabe said:

Nothing is taken away from anyone.

I don't begrudge them trying to find ways to increase their revenue at all. I want them to make more money because I need the tools and want to keep using them for a long time.

 

However, quality is a serious problem with Delphi right now. The latest version is the most frustrating Delphi I have used in the last decade because of intellisense/code completion failing every five minutes, and Ctrl+Click almost never working (I have retrained my muscle memory to use Ctrl+G instead which seems to work more often, but still not 100%). It would seem to me that getting more people to test early would be helpful, but maybe I am wrong.

 

I could even see paying more to have some kind of active interaction with the people deciding what features to implement, etc, but just for beta testing a patch? I don't get it.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

1 minute ago, Brandon Staggs said:

I don't begrudge them trying to find ways to increase their revenue at all. I want them to make more money because I need the tools and want to keep using them for a long time.

 

However, quality is a serious problem with Delphi right now. The latest version is the most frustrating Delphi I have used in the last decade because of intellisense/code completion failing every five minutes, and Ctrl+Click almost never working (I have retrained my muscle memory to use Ctrl+G instead which seems to work more often, but still not 100%). It would seem to me that getting more people to test early would be helpful, but maybe I am wrong.

 

I could even see paying more to have some kind of active interaction with the people deciding what features to implement, etc, but just for beta testing a patch? I don't get it.

Trust me. Number of people testing is the least problem right now.

 

One of the issues with LSP is that it is a huge endeavor. Which on its own would be such an issue if they could have left the old one running beside it like in Sydney. However, old tech interfering with LSP integration and they had to remove it.

[Vandrovnik 214]

2 hours ago, Brandon Staggs said:

However, quality is a serious problem with Delphi right now. The latest version is the most frustrating Delphi I have used in the last decade because of intellisense/code completion failing every five minutes, and Ctrl+Click almost never working (I have retrained my muscle memory to use Ctrl+G instead which seems to work more often, but still not 100%).

 

Hmm, in my environment, all prior versions had more problems than 11.2. (Well, not all - Delphi 6 was fine 🙂 ).

I do not know if it could matter, but I always put DCU directory for my projects to RAM disk, so each day after power on (I do not use hibernation), IDE starts without any old .dcus.

 

I have noticed, that often, when I make change in "interface" section of a unit (for example, add "Test: integer;" to public section of a class) and try to compile project, IDE complains with "[dcc32 Fatal Error] oKos.pas(43): F2084 Internal Error: AV11CD26DE(11C60000)-R000004F8-0" in another unit (that unit depends on unit where I made the change). May be the same internal error occurs in LSP and causes the trouble... Build works fine.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Vandrovnik

[David Schwartz 426]

Back in the 90's I used to love beta-testing stuff. I'd get free licenses for my efforts. Companies gradually stopped doing that. They made beta testing seem like they were doing certain users a favor by giving them an early look at the code. I tried that for a little while and never felt like anybody cared about anything I reported. It seemed like what we got as "beta" code was a copy of what was sent to manufacturing because nothing I found and reported was ever fixed.

 

With Delphi, it got to the point where I not only stopped wasting my time looking at betas, I won't use any of the .0 releases until at least one patch has been issued. The vast majority of projects I've worked on were often at least one release behind, simply because there was usually nothing added from one major release to the next that added any value that exceeded the risk of having stable code get screwed-up.

 

Last place I was at, there was a guy there for 7 years whose main job was rebuilding everything in the latest updates, doing a tiny bit of refactoring, and running tests for months to determine if it was "safe" to upgrade to the latest Delphi Release. Another group worked with C# and they were constantly upgrading, mostly because of improvements in core parts of the language and support environment. It always seemed to get more upgrades in one release as Delphi got in the past dozen. Of course, they had a whole team of guys working on their code, which was only a fraction of the size of our code base, and much buggier.

 

 

I've applied for the Delphi betas only to be able to read the "What's New" docs. It became increasingly hard to get any of that data as they started tying it to the license level (price) you had purchased. But working for companies with a dozen or two licences (mainly just Pro), we'd get a conference call with one of the techs who'd go through the entire set of slides discussing new features, and they'd bust their humps to get us the early docs, beta code, and loved it when we'd send them feedback. We got the same treatment as when I was an MVP, but we were just regular customers with a bunch of licenses. And as an MVP, I put in dozens of hours of my time and didn't even get a complimentary license for my efforts. I had to pay for it out-of-pocket just like everybody else once the one-year license I was given to use while promoting Delphi for Embt expired.

 

Now their licensing is so aligned with their financial needs that they look more like a car company than a software company. The past few major releases add more and more stuff that's targeted at enterprise needs and continue to ignore core things that have been ignored for a decade now. I don't know why I should keep paying a license fee for something that continues to keep adding stuff I'll never use while core things that newer languages and platforms keep refining and expanding upon.

Edited December 18, 2022 by David Schwartz

[Stano 143]

I paid support for one reason only. Hopefully I'll get a patch that fixes the underlying LSP issues At their rate of repairs for two years to be sure

[Brandon Staggs 275]

20 hours ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Trust me. Number of people testing is the least problem right now.

I will take your word for it.

 

20 hours ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

One of the issues with LSP is that it is a huge endeavor.

Indeed, and when it is actually done, working properly, it will be great to have. Right now, I feel like I have walked backwards a decade or more when I use the IDE, which is almost every day... But downgrading is not really an option either, for numerous reasons!

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

58 minutes ago, Brandon Staggs said:

Indeed, and when it is actually done, working properly, it will be great to have. Right now, I feel like I have walked backwards a decade or more when I use the IDE, which is almost every day... But downgrading is not really an option either, for numerous reasons!

Currently one of the greatest is that when it chokes on something it needs to be killed and restarted. This can be done more easily by creating menu item in IDE. See https://stackoverflow.com/q/74164165/4267244

[mvanrijnen 123]

On 12/16/2022 at 8:24 PM, Brandon Staggs said:

Saw this today:

 

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/premium-update-subscription-customers-invited-to-join-rad-studio-malawi-beta/

 

Can someone explain the rationale for putting beta versions of Delphi behind a "premium" subscription, instead of just opening it up to any subscribers who are willing to beta test Delphi? Seems like Delphi needs to find a way to get more testers, not put testing behind a paywall. But maybe I am missing something.

 

It's even worse, you would think as paying subscription customer, one would get an invite per email. Apperently customers have to read the blogs all day to find about things likes this.

Ah, read over the premium thing 🙂

 

Edited December 19, 2022 by mvanrijnen

[Bernard 18]

Is there a roadmap for the next version?

[Lajos Juhász 293]

25 minutes ago, Bernard said:

Is there a roadmap for the next version?

 

No, there is no reason to publish it anymore.

[Darian Miller 361]

6 hours ago, Bernard said:

Is there a roadmap for the next version?

Marco stated in the 11.2 Release Webinar that Embarcadero does not have any current plans to publish a new roadmap.   I assume the new idea is ... if you want any kind of roadmap, pay for it by buying Premium Support.

 

A grouping of roadmap items can be found here: https://github.com/ideasawakened/DelphiKB/wiki/Future-Releases-for-RAD-Studio-and-Delphi

 

[Vandrovnik 214]

5 hours ago, Darian Miller said:

Marco stated in the 11.2 Release Webinar that Embarcadero does not have any current plans to publish a new roadmap.   ...

 

Shall I translate it for myself as "Give us your money for new versions (you can pay for 1, 2 or even 3 years), but we will not tell you what you get for your money."?

[Lars Fosdal 1791]

Something else I find annoying.

EMBT insists on mailing me offers for products that I already subscribe to. 

 

Why? 

 

What are the odds that someone would add another license for Delphi at Black Friday, Week, Month,  Xmas time,  insert price reduction opportunity here?

[Lajos Juhász 293]

1 hour ago, Vandrovnik said:

Shall I translate it for myself as "Give us your money for new versions (you can pay for 1, 2 or even 3 years), but we will not tell you what you get for your money."?

 

Yes of course. Also that they find no interest in publishing when we can expect a point release (including bug fixes). You bought what you bought (without support you get 0 bugfix) if there is a bug you're a developer and should write your code that will overcome the bugs.

This is not acceptable for Windows but it's working as updates/new version from MS doesn't requires changes in the toolchain. On the other side mobile platforms with every new version require an update in the toolchain they cannot support new OS releases.

 

If you're using Delphi for an application you just have to figure out your developing cycle without knowing when you can expect bug fixes or new version with updates that you could use.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

2 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Something else I find annoying.

EMBT insists on mailing me offers for products that I already subscribe to. 

 

Why? 

 

What are the odds that someone would add another license for Delphi at Black Friday, Week, Month,  Xmas time,  insert price reduction opportunity here?

Because their marketing database is not connected to customer database.

[Lars Fosdal 1791]

3 hours ago, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Because their marketing database is not connected to customer database.

Why?  It is stupid and annoying.

 

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

29 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Why?  It is stupid and annoying.

Don't ask me. I don't know why.

[Oberon82 1]

Delphi is dead end. Pay to see roadmap is ridiculous.