Board index » delphi » Re: Quo Vadis Borland

2005-06-12 05:25:53 AM
delphi204
"a" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes
which don't care or of programmers who just like to showcase the newest toy
in their shelves that Borland (and a lot of other software companies) can
rush such buggy products to the market and afford to do so instead of
cleaning up their act.
 

Captain Jake writes:
[...]
I love it! :)
--
Regards,
Bruce McGee
Glooscap Software
 

Ole writes:
satisfaction levels of users who haven't said anything would be an
exercise in idiocy.
statements condemning a version of Delphi in general, based on
anecdotal experiences. No one has claimed that D2005 is a perfect
product. However, a good number of the posters in this group consider
it an excellent product nonetheless.
 

With respect, that claim strikes me as arrant nonsense.
To take an example or two, I have never heard anyone complain about Help &
Manual on the Delphi 3rd party newsgroups. I don't recall anyone complaining
about WPTools or TRichView.
The list could go on.
There are, indeed, products that the majority if not the entire customer
base are simply happy with.
You could list a few reasons for these successes: a good initial product
concept, good beta testing, responsive support fixing bugs quickly and
implementing new feature requests promptly, etc.
Delphi 2005 is a complex product; perhaps it is understandable that there
are more issues. Personally I'd have expected their beta testing to
catch more of the issues than it apparently did. That said, I haven't had
issues with it myself.
Lauchlan M
 

Lauchlan M writes:
with little effort. I will mention only a few: the copy/paste bug when
a window is undocked, the problem when trying to select a dataset and a
datasource at the same time, the floating custom forms (I really hate
this bug).
I wonder if there was actually any beta testing.
I can only say that Borland QA sucks.
 

"Lauchlan M" <LMackinnonAT_NoSpam_ozemailDOTcomDOTau>writes
surprised you even attempted it.
H&M bug mentioned (I consider bug reports/mentions to be complaints):
groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.clarion/browse_thread/thread/1c7b0df933f6d892/afd082dd24536d88
WPTools rejected because of inadequate support and features:
groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc/browse_thread/thread/6debc407917c91e6/f98390d665376aca
I can not find anything on TRichView right now, because I am out of time right
now. But that is not important, what is important is that there is always
some luminary somewhere whining about any particular thing you could pick.
The existence of complaints is not a signal that differentiates itself from
the noise sufficently.
 

Well, let's see. The thread you point to begins:
"I have just purchased help and manual and it is a great product."
Now, that is hardly starting out like a complaint, is it?
In any case, the guy had a question how to do something. Someone chipped in
with a reply:
<<On 9/25 I received a msg from EC Software. Here is part of what they had
to
say. "We have detected a critical bug in the help context tool in Help &
Manual
version 3.31 and recommend to download the following fix (see link below).
was having.
Obviously you and I have a different idea of "complaint". I don't regard a
happy customer commenting on how great the product is as a "complaint".
Again, this thread starts off:
<<
I am in need of a VCL Edit/Memo component for Delphi3 that supports
RTF.After hunting about a bit I found plusmemo and WPTools. Both seem very
good.
writing:
<<
Just a quick note to say that a company I am consulting for gave up on
WPTools. It didn't have a preview function that previewed like what
would actually come out on the printer, and when we requested it, we got
back a message saying that the author was busy on some school for at
least half a year and it 'might' happen after that... we didn't have the
time to wait. YMMV.
circa Delphi 3 to find a complaint regarding WPTools, perhaps that is in
itself significant.
person complaining about any product you can name. It seems rather
pointless - after all, you can simply complain about it yourself and 'win
the argument'. that is one person complaining about it.
I think if you are going to argue sensibly about this, the real debate is
whether there is any _significant_ volume of complaints about the
product(s), and what are the factors that differentiate vendors who produce
products that are widely acclaimed, and those that produce products that are
complained about.
Lauchlan M
 

"Lauchlan M" <LMackinnonAT_NoSpam_ozemailDOTcomDOTau>wrote
major bugs users all over the world discovered in the first couple of days.
It's almost impossible not to, during the course of development, even if
they do absolutely no dedicated testing whatsoever, to realize that, for
instance, it leaks memory like a sieve. My feeling is they couldn't be
bothered to fix them and thought it would be more profitable to just release
the mess as it is and try to clean up with SPs and the next versions.
 

We even have to pay for the next version (Update).
There are however a few disciples here in the Borland newsgroups who accept
everything done by the company, they will of cource continue to pay whatever
is going on.
Ole
 

"Lauchlan M" <LMackinnonAT_NoSpam_ozemailDOTcomDOTau>writes
good solid statistical study. Your prior argument made a claim that as
written was easily scuttled, because it quite recklessly assumed an absence
of something that was very easy to find on the internet with a few seconds
of searching. Your (different) argument above is sensible but untestable
with the resources you and I have available.
category but not the second. I have never seen one. You might find products
here and there that are "widely acclaimed" but if their vendor has produced
more than one or two versions of a product, or more than one product, or
even just sold enough copies of any one product, then there are people
somewhere that claim it is {*word*99}. Take computers as an example. What is a
good brand to buy? I have known people that swear by the same brand that
someone would never buy. For instance, I have known people that highly
recommend and buy Dell's, and others that tell me they would not even accept
one free. Ditto for Gateway, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard.
There is not one single brand name on this planet that does not have it's
detractors, except those that nobody buys.
The reason for all this is obvious enough to anyone willing to think about
this. Different people have different needs and wants, so of course they are
going to form different evaluations of the worth of different products. The
discontented ones are going to try to inflate the value of their dissent by
repeating it vociferously, while the contented ones are going to be
relatively silent. The discontented ones are in fact usually going to repeat
their dissents even after the basis of their discontent has been removed.
Why? Because they very often do not even try the fixes because they have
just simply given up on the product altogether.
And then there are the useless sheep, those luminaries who haven't even
tried the product but are merely repeating what they hear others saying. "I
heard that product X is {*word*99}, so I am not even going to try it.", or "I read
that product X was a complete fiasco, so I would like to know what company Y is
going to do about it." Do these sheeple really think they are contributing
anything whatsoever to the discussion? I bet they think they are. Humanity
is really that messed up.
All of this conspires to make newsgroups a rather unreliable way to gather
information on the degree of anything. I happen to think D2005 prior to
patch #2 was too buggy to be very useful, and judging from Dale Fuller's
comments in a chat, I am quite willing to entertain the theory that enough
people held that same opinion for it to filter through all the thick walls
of bureaucracy of the typical corporation and make it to the head guy. But I
certainly don't entertain that theory on the basis of anything I have seen
or heard here on the newsgroups, and I don't think anybody else ought to
either.
strip away the sheeple that haven't even actually tried the patched version
of D2005, and adjust for the repetition from the ones that are complaining
based on actual experience even after applying the third patch, and there
really is not a large volume of serious complaints registered about D2005
here.
 

Truth is that many delphi users are very cautious to buy the latest release,
so am i
i would like to play around and do real work with d2005
cause i like borland and delphi
but I am not willing to pay for something that makes me buy a new portable
cause it needs more memory then a typical server and crashes
and no i don't have any expirience with it, but i tend to believe what is
said here
borland did promise to do a better job somewhere after Delphi 8 and i think they
didn't succeed
it would be much better admitting this and adressing the needs instead of
denial
that would make me buy d2005 instead of looking into buying VS
i'll see what D2006 SP3 brings
just my 2c
cu
marc
"Rudy Velthuis [TeamB]" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>schreef in bericht

At 09:46:01, 12.06.2005, Marc Antheunis writes:
computers have, including laptops.
--
Rudy Velthuis [TeamB] velthuis.homepage.t-online.de
"Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife."
-- Groucho Marx
 

At 02:59:59, 12.06.2005, Lauchlan M writes:
also mean that hardly anyone uses them (has no need for them).
--
Rudy Velthuis [TeamB] velthuis.homepage.t-online.de
"A blind bloke walks into a shop with a guide dog. He picks the Dog up
and starts swinging it around his head. Alarmed, a shop assistant
calls out: 'Can I help, sir?' 'No thanks,' says the blind bloke.
'Just looking.'" -- Tommy Cooper
 

"Alvaro GP" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>wrote
much, and receive much more understanding, if they *explained* why they are
having problems with Q&A and how they are planning to improve upon it,
instead of ridiculing and censoring the criticasters and keeping on
repeating that "you are not representative" and "_I_ don't have any problems
so it must be _you_".
Most pathetically, people were derided for being critical about D7, but now
D7 is not for sale any more you can say that it sucks and that D2005 is
better.
Borland created their own credibility problem, being arrogant and agressive
to the customers is *not* going to solve it.
 

thumbs-up. Installed Tms components and a few others and it sloooowed down
and I now have a lot of screenflickering.
My computer (512/1.7) is far above the requirements stated by Borland, I
don't want to replace the computer.
Ole