Delphi -> VS.NET??

[Erva]

Hi,

Is there someone who has moved from Delphi to VS.NET?

I'am using Delphi currently but seriously considering to moving VS.NET. I
would like to hear if someone has already done that, is it worth of it or
should i continue to ude Delphi for new projects. I'am developing mostly
desktop apps but in th future also ASP.NET apps.

-erva

[Craig van Nieuwkerk]

Hi,

Is there someone who has moved from Delphi to VS.NET?

I'am using Delphi currently but seriously considering to moving VS.NET. I
would like to hear if someone has already done that, is it worth of it or
should i continue to ude Delphi for new projects. I'am developing mostly
desktop apps but in th future also ASP.NET apps.

I have used both. For desktop apps I would highly recommend staying with
Delphi. Delphi/Win32 app development is much easier and the result is a much
faster/smaller app than they equivalent WinForms one. For ASP.NET, it
doesn't make much difference. I am currently writing a pretty significant
app in Delphi targeting ASP.NET, but if I had chosen to develop in C#/VS the
result would be the same. If you really like the Delphi syntax or some of
the features of the new Delphi IDE (refactoring, code history, highly
integrated model driven development, Win32 development, unit testing etc) go
with it, otherwise go with C#/VS which is more popular.
Craig.

[PHil Coveney]

Erva,

I have a lot of history with Delphi, but am currently transitioning to
..NET. I would like to echo a lot of what Craig said in his reply, but add a
few more considerations.

The demand for Delphi skills continues to decrease year by year. It
seems to be driven, not by the quality of the tool, but by the marketplace
standardizing on a single tool vendor (and it ain't Borland.) This suggests
that there is no technological improvement to the tool that Borland can make
that will reverse this trend. As an investment in your own skills, it would
pay to look at finding a salable replacement for your Delphi skills, because
eventually you will find it difficult or impossible to sell them.
VS .NET is a great tool, easily the most complete that Microsoft has ever
put together. Although I have encountered dozens of little things that I
prefer the way Delphi did them, I have found zero big things lacking in
VS.NET. It's a great tool, as good as Delphi in most ways, and superior in a
few.

I can think of circumstances under which I would not leave Delphi. If
you work at a Borland-only house, with lots of application code in Object
Pascal, it's probably not a good idea to introduce a second tool/language
unless it's part of an overall strategy to phase in VS.Net; you'll just be
increasing the maintenance overhead there. And there is a learning curve,
not so much with the languages, but with the wealth of helper classes that
ship with VS.NET; if your project is on a tight timeline, you might not want
to risk it.

Other than that, I agree with Craig's advice.

Good luck,

PC

[Marc Scheuner [MVP ADSI]]

>Is there someone who has moved from Delphi to VS.NET?

Yup.

I'am using Delphi currently but seriously considering to moving VS.NET. I
would like to hear if someone has already done that, is it worth of it or
should i continue to ude Delphi for new projects. I'am developing mostly
desktop apps but in th future also ASP.NET apps.

AS the other posters said, if you stay in desktop apps, Delphi is
certainly a very good choice (as long as you don't NEED .NET
features). VS.NET and the .NET languages are all nice and all - but
we've had a great many of those nice features (like a great language,
excellent class library etc.) in Delphi for years.

..NET is interesting, but mostly for VB6 and VC++ programmers - it's a
big step forward for them. Again - a Delphite such as myself isn't too
impressed with the .NET framework, quite honestly - looks like a MS
clone of the VCL, more or less ;-)

As far as development IDE's go - I still much prefer the fast and
slick Delphi 7 IDE over the current VS.NET stuff (with one exception -
the code folding in VS.NET is really quite nice, and too bad Borland
never added that to D7).

C# as a language is okay - heck, it's Anders Hejlsberg behind it
again! No huge surprises - just a few things that you need to get used
to, some things are just brain-dead compared to Delphi, and some are
quite nice (you can get used to those quickly, and miss them in D7
afterwards).

Overall - it's a toss-up. Sure, it's certainly a good idea to stay
current and get your feet wet in VS.NET, especially if you want to go
to ASP.NET, but overall, I am not overly impressed - there's not a
whole lot of real, meaningful advantages in the .NET framework and
VS.NET IDE to make me go "WOW!" - Delphi 7 is just a very powerful and
great tool already!

Marc
================================================== ==============
Marc Scheuner May The Source Be With You!
Berne, Switzerland m.scheuner -at- inova.ch

[Emil Damian]

For enterprise scale applications you should definitely go with .Net.
For desktop applications you can still wait.
Anyway, VS 2005 is a big step forward, and I don't think Borland will keep
up (unfortunately) ...

Emil

[Erva]

Thanks for your answers. I think we are going to leave Delphi and start new
projects with VS.NET. As Emil says, we been also thinking that Delphi won't
keep up in the future and in long term it's best way to with tool what keeps
going, even if it's not now better than another tool...

"Emil Damian" <em*********@softwaresolutions.ro> kirjoitti viestissä
news:OL**************@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...

For enterprise scale applications you should definitely go with .Net.
For desktop applications you can still wait.
Anyway, VS 2005 is a big step forward, and I don't think Borland will keep
up (unfortunately) ...

Emil

[Jon Shemitz]

Erva wrote:

Is there someone who has moved from Delphi to VS.NET?

I'am using Delphi currently but seriously considering to moving VS.NET. I
would like to hear if someone has already done that, is it worth of it or
should i continue to ude Delphi for new projects. I'am developing mostly
desktop apps but in th future also ASP.NET apps.

The Delphi -> VS jump can be annoying, because there are a number of
things that are different between the two. Not better or worse, just
different. Depending on how old you are and how long you've been using
Delphi, you may find yourself still occasionally using Delphi keyboard
commands in VS after a couple of years of VS - I know that I do. But,
once you take the time to get past "different", you'll find that
VS.NET is full of useful little features that make Delphi seem as
backward as we always used to think VS was. There are just more bright
people working on it.

Language-wise, C# definitely shows that Anders touch. It's as clean
and well-designed as TP1 was, and much more powerful. Even in VS.2003,
it has useful features that Delphi doesn't (from using and lock down
to block-local variables and the ternary operator). C# 2 will add
generics, iterators, and anonymous classes ... and, judging from
recent history, it will take Delphi two or three versions to catch up.

For .NET code, C# is just better than Delphi. You don't have to cast
to System.String to access static methods; you don't have to quote
Array to use static methods; all your code is smaller and cleaner.

The FCL is really nice. Overall, I think my productivity jump going
from Delphi to C# is almost as great as my productivity jump going
from TPW to Delphi was.

My bottom line is that I started using C# to learn .NET while DfN was
still in preview. At first I was itching for D8 to come out, so I
could go back to the Delphi I loved. But, between getting up to speed
on VS and C# and the low quality of D8, I stayed with C#. I haven't
seen anything in D2005 to convince that it's anything more than maybe
85% of VS.2003 ... and VS.2005 makes VS.2003 look really backward.

--

programmer, author http://www.midnightbeach.com
and father http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs