Fan Mail: Your money or your job

Your reviewer got some email asking about costs:

Your reviewer was amused the past few weeks over the new Delphi 2010 and supposedly new "copy-protection" features found in Delphi 2010. No, really.

Your reviewer was amused over the people who downloaded Delphi 2010 (illegally) and then used an "illegal" version of Delphi 2010. Wait a minute, illegal copies? Most Delphi programmers keep very "high standards" and claim they buy all original versions of Delphi, and all their 3rd party libraries are all licensed (yeah, right). Or that most of the people you see on the newsgroups are a legitimate bunch...

Let's see now... nearly every year, you have to pay money to Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/Embarcadero for fixes and update whether you like it or not, and then to the 3rd-party-component vendors for more updates, and then your developers, the rent, salary, and other things before you even earn a single penny.

Let's say, to license Delphi Enterprise 2010 costs US$2500, just getting a decent grid, report writer, and all those stuff costs another US$3000 (+/-), and your own overheads costs US$3000, you would probably end up - with this bad economy - with no money or your housed is going to get forclosed, or you lost your job, or under lots of pressure to deliver.

Now let's say you hire another person to do your work, gee, that would costs thousands (in overheads) just to hire that person. If you hire a team of Delphi developers, either your company must be damn rich to afford all those licenses, or going to go bankrupt over all those costs.

The past few years, many of the 3rd-party library vendors have been increasing prices, or switching over to an annual software ass-u-rance (SA) license.

Examples are DevExpress (yearly fees), RemObjects (software subscription), IPWorks (RedCarpet Subscription), ElevateSoft to name a few. The end result? You end up paying over-and-over again. Gone are the days you pay once every 2 or 3 (or maybe 4 or 5) years.

Your reviewer was very amused with the software call-home feature, where the software calls home. This started with TeeMarch's TeeCharts Pro version, where the serial numbers are validated on-line, or RemObject's software validating on-line, and then DevExpress and so on...

The big boys want their share too...
Now in comes CodeGear and they want to be paid too., what will happen? There would be plenty of requests for "illegal" copies of Delphi, and then, when suddently, when the software is "secured enough", there are no more illegal versions.


Your reviewer thinks these things will happen:

1) Newer copies of Delphi will call home, and then start recording all the information necessary for the lawyer to launch a lawsuit against those people using "illegal" Delphi versions.

2) The number of people using Delphi will probably reduce, notably, the people being Technology Vendors / Tool Vendors will probably decrease. Since few people can earn enough to pay for all of those licenses, the number of jobs will decrease.

[It will be good to notice a reduction of Delphi developers. That means those blow-hard Joes and "Delphi-Forever" people will have a new reason to get a proper job, and stop wasting time on the newsgroups :) ]

Since new developers who know C++, C# and VB.NET, PHP and Java earn soooo much money from their job, switching from those languages to Delphi will mean loss of income...

3) Those who want to find work with Delphi will have to lower their expectations. Instead of high US$100,000-$60,000 jobs, they could expect their co-workers to be Sanjay* the overworked and underpaid Indian Delphi developer, or Mohammmed* the underpaid Pakistani Delphi Assistant.

* not their real names, but hey, it could be real!

4) Those who can't pay for their Delphi licenses will have to be consider a new language, such as PHP, C#, Java (or maybe VB6, VB.NET)

:)

Delphi Economics, Part 1

(This refers to the Computer software called Delphi)

(This does not relate to Delphi Corp, a part of GM (General Motors) nor with Delphi Bankruptcy News, Delphi Bankruptcy Hearings)

In Search of Profits
It was the year 1995, when Borland Delphi v2 came out. Borland was losing market share on it's DBase for Windows Compiler, Borland Pardox...

DelphiHater remember buying a copy of Turbo Pascal 5 many years ago. Those were the days of BBS (Bulletin Board Services), Doors, CompuServe (anyone remembers GO BORL or GO TURBO?) and AOL.

The days before Windows...
In those days, it was GUI, database and networking. Then there was Clipper, DBase, Fox. If anyone still remembers, Zortech C++, AZTech C++, Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Professional Basic, Small Talk and those PC Magazine Batch file utilities and, ... the Turbo Family of products, TurboBasic, TurboPascal, TurboLisp, TurboC, TurboC++

Zortech C++ was a competitor, but still decent. Zortech got brought over by Norton/Symantech and then the author brought back the rights and renamed it Digital Mars C++. In those days, Zortech had TSR libraries, basic NetBui (now called Microsoft Sharing), basic Netware support and simple DBF support. It was still good and still good now.

AZTech C++ is now obsolete. Back then, it allowed simple GUI, and no database-facilities.

Microsoft Professional Basic had EGA support, some VGA support, simple database (MSBTREE) and networking (file-sharing). At least, it had DBF support, simple graphics.

Borland's Product Offering for DOS...
For Borland's product, you are left scratching your head... Borland had DBase, but no compiler, then there was Borland Paradox, but new language, then there was Borland C++ with TurboVision, but no database-back-end, and then, TurboPascal with TurboVision (for Pascal) and no database-back-end.

At least, with Borland C++, there were many companies involved with selling DBF-compatible libraries, many dos-based 80x40 console GUI entry applications, and network based file management libraries. With TurboVision vs. ObjectVision, or Borland Object Framework 4.0 (anyone used Borland C++ 4.0 or 4.5?).

With DBase, there was really succky DBase III or DBase IV "interpreter". DBase had syntax that was totally different from C++ or Pascal (or even FoxPro).

With Paradox, there was totally different query language with totally different DOS/Win16 languages. For example, there was DOS/Paradox (and add-on Borland C++/Borland Pascal using DPMI). it was really hard to use it, you needed Borland C++ with DPMI support, but the debugger was not working so well, then Borland Pascal with DPMI support.

The wierdest thing was lack of DBase support in TurboPascal. There was record, and file-IO, but little or no DBF support. You can check Garbo's FTP (or SimTel old Pascal ZIP files).

Borland "promised" DBase support in TurboPascal 8.0 (or Delphi 1.0).

The road to data is long and wondering...
In short:
DBase = no compiler, decent DBase access, your customer gets sources and you get shafted.

TurboPascal 7 = great language, good GUI, no database or file-sharing in DOS.

Borland Pascal 7 with DPMI + Paradox DPMI + TurboVision = when will you get paid?

Borland C++ 4 + Dos Power Pack + TurboVision + (Paradox DPMI|DBF DPMI) = costs alot of money and lots of code to write for Novell Netware support.

Out-Foxed and Clipped
I've always wondering how FoxPro did it, and Clipper did it. They were really great products. For FoxPro, there was FoxBase, a popular language which allows FoxPro/DOS users to code PRG (program) files. Then Clipper allowed all-in-one GUI + Edit screen + Database + Network support. Really great.

To make the equivalents for Clipper in TurboC++/ or TurboPascal would take "ages" to do. It would probably take so long that Windows came out, the TurboPascal guys were still making DOS applications.

DOS/DPMI, OVL, EMS/XMS
The advent of DPMI brought some interesting things. The first, was breaking the 640kb limit with truely "sane" programming methods. Formerly, it was calling Interrupt 2F/XML or Int 2F/EMS services and doing low-level memory swapping. There was also Overlays, where disk-based swapping would occur.

In Dbase, FoxPro, Clipper, much of it was handled automatically (depending on which memory you used). Interestingly enough, Microsoft C++ had swapping overlays and Microsoft Basic had Basic Overlays. DelphiHater remembers using the funny Microsoft BMM (Basic Memory Manager), MSBTree along with decent file-sharing support.

In Borland C++, you had to purchase the DPMI "power-pack" or DPMI/32 goodies. TurboVision half worked in DPMI mode, and the memory pointer issues were hard to debug. In TPX/DPMI, or BPX.exe, you could create a TurboPascal EXE file which used Borland's DPMI implementation.

The most interesting thing is you could create 16-bit DOS-mode DLLs which could be used in DOS/Windows/OS2 16-bits environment, and also interesting DMPI-enabled environment, such as FoxPro 2.61 run-time, that is, you use FoxPro 2.61/DMPI with your TurboPascal EXE. It was an interesting combination, a Fox-Pro back-end with front-end TurboPascal/DMPI front-end.

Not to be out-done, Borland published Borland Paradox integration toolkit, with Paradox DLLs to be linked to your TurboPascal/DPMI or TurboC++/DPMI EXE file.

Pandara's Box
With the advent of Paradox and Dbase, this opened such a rift that brought Borland's fall. Your reviewer many years ago used to get "scare-mail" from other DBase consultants that Borland was not going to maintain Aston-Tate DBase III and convert DBase to Paradox instead.

It was the waiting for DBase IV compiler, Windows-version, (anyone heard of the ill-fated Paradox-compiler?) or the dizzy mix of announcements that followed.

Between DBF/3, DBF/4, Paradox, Fox21, Fox25, Fox26, DBF/4+Clipper, FlatFile, ObjectVision, TurboVision, BTrieve
The biggest problem with DBF/3, DBF/4 was lost or data corruption. If you are not careful in DBase III/IV, you could get corrupted files. Ditto with Paradox.

From your reviewer's personal experience, almost every day, be it, in DOS environments, there would be some corrupted files, or lost clusters, or FAT issues. Almost daily backups, copying to diskette-upon-diskettes were the norm.

The funny thing was DBF/4+Clipper, Fox21/Fox25/Fox26 never had, or at least, those problems. Clipper would auto-detect environment and then lock file accordingly, and would write-shared or have file read/write-locks.

anyone still remembers:
[CONFIG.SYS]
FILES=255
SHARE=100

Borland was touting TurboVision/ObjectVision/ObjectWindows persistent "objects" along with serialization, semaphores. The funny thing is, where's the object-locking and object-unlocking? DelphiHater does not remember any TFileLock or TObjLock or TSemaphore classes during those days. On the SimTel/ COMPUSERVE forums or BBS during those days, a bunch of people wrote the NETBUI, IPX/SPX, MSSHARE compatible code for this. It was dizzing mix, You had to detect NetBios, or IPX/SPX (call into IPX/ODI) or MSSHARE.

Then there was BTrieve (now called Pervasive/SQL) which was very decent database-system from Novell Netware. Your reviewer could not exactly understand how to use it in TurboPascal, since the SDK was read-mode with TSR calls, and the DPMI version worked with Windows-only DLLs (which defeated the purpose of DPMI/DLLs because it required floating-point DPMI).

Back in those old days, you could buy a "dumb terminal" and communicate via ansi.sys, "telnet" to the Unix-server. And obviously, not to be out-done, there was those legacy BBS/DOOR type applications. There was FoxBase UNIX-datbase server, Clipper/Unix (or now called Computer Associates CAVO-Unix).

The most strangest winner as FoxBase, as it could scale from single-user to network to nearly limitless number of users via Unix/dumb-terminal. Clipper came second, then DBase came second, but with bad support from Ashton-Tate/Borland...

Then came Windows...
With Windows, almost everything started to unravel for Borland...

With Borland Paradox for Windows 1.0, it was at times, really slow, DBase was still DOS-based until Access 2.0 came out (or got sold as an independing company), then Borland Paradox became Corel Paradox.

Borland tried to "unify" DBase, Paradox and Fox (badly done) database support into the Borland Database Engine (BDE). This was an about-face for Borland. There were numerous unfixed errors, including bad DBase errors, slow Paradox support, Foxpro file support.

From Borland C++ 4.0/4.5 for Windows, at least, there were faster third-party libraries which allowed faster access to DBF files, such as Sequiter CodeBase.

For Borland Pascal, it came from CodeBase/DLL support (really wierd, IMHO) or Borland Paradox Integration toolkit (another wierd thing). End result = constant re-writing, re-writing, and constant re-writing.

Borland Delphi 2.0 (32-bits), Delphi 3.0, Delphi 4,5,6,7...
The good old days...

With Borland Delphi 3.0, at least, things were starting to look promising. There was decent DBF support, decent Fox21 support, and ODBC support when you needed it (via BDE).

With Borland Delphi 3.0, it was much better than Visual Basic 4 (VB3 was 16-bits) by many respects, but then, some... For example, while VB4 suffered from not able to create OCX's, it could create simple classes, good access to ODBC and other Visual Basic class libraries.

The problems were the same - In order to get good GUI, the DBGrid (and still same to Delphi 2009) looks the same since nearly 10 years ago. In order to get good edit controls, you needed to buy tons and tons of libraries to get moving.

Then came the price increases, from US$149 to thousands. Borland suddenly had name-change to Inprise and then Inprise C++, Inprise Delphi 4,5,6,7 but they never fixed any bugs. Literally.

Each new version of Delphi was small bug fixes, and more new features. From Delphi 3 to Delphi 4, there were plenty of new features (most useless, IMHO) and few bug fixes, then most features were moved to the Enterprise version, then "Architect", then "Enterprise-Architect" version (Delphi 7).

Much ADO about nothing
In Delphi 6, ODBC came in Delphi Enterprise, or as an add-on pack in Delphi 6 Professional. How stupid is that? During that time, there were "interesting" third-party libraries such as ODBC98, Adonis, Islamov Ado, WinSoft ADO, KA-ADO, GM ADO, to name a few. All of them have this in common: All the companies mentioned have poor or bad implementations or not-frequently updated libraries. With Delphi 7 onwards, ADO became default, but the older library (DAO, ODBC) was via TLB export. Even the low-level ODBC was not very clearly implemented in Delphi.

(Surprisingly, the BetterAdoDataSet library is now almost abandonware. You can find a free update to Delphi 2009, but don't count on it for production quality.)

Fired-up over Firebird
In Delphi 5 Enterprise, Interbase 5.0 came out. Your reviewer could not understand how "difficult" it was to access Interbase 5.0/6.0 with Delphi. It was either:

Interbase <--> BDE <--> EXE
Interbase <--> EasySoft ODBC <--> BDE <--> EXE
Interbase <--> IBX + EXE

Interbase 5.0 came with no ODBC driver, or a driver from PVCS Intersolv ODBC solutions. It was later replaced with a US$99 per seat EasySoft ODBC driver ... then Interbase became open-source Firebox 0.9, then Firebird 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, then 2.1...

DelphiHater could never understand why the BDE/IBX that came with Delphi was soooo lame, or Jeff Overcash (there's a person called Jeff "Undercash" who lampoons him on the Borland newsgroups) could not update the IBX to use Firebird 2.xx. Since FireBird is free, why do I have to pay for a "working" and correct DBExpress driver for? ditto for database manager, ODBC driver, log manager, search add-on, backup utility? with all those "added development costs", it seems MSSQL or even MySQL is cheaper... There is IBObjects, but that's an annual subscription...

Outfoxed over FoxPro
Your reviewer could never understand how Borland's implementation of Foxpro, DBF/Clipper could be so screwed up. If a team of software developer had 10 years to fix bugs, and ample amount of cash, they would have fixed every damn bug with the BDE and make it good. Borland recommends to use a third-party library to access FoxPro, such as VistaSoftware's Apollo, or Advantage Database (now owned by Sybase).

If you have ever used Apollo from Vista Software (formerly Luxent, formerly Apollo software) you could hear cries about how they still do not support FoxPro 2.6 (amazing).

The real Paradox
If you don't learn about history, your life will be one big mystery. With Paradox, other than access via BDE, is there any other library (other than ODBC) to access Paradox? You could find one, but does not support SQL, or password-protected Paradox files.

Your reviewer wonders what's the worth of Paradox? With Paradox, you had *.px, *.do, *.qbe, and whole host of files. Now remember the old days, when file-handles were precious and if you ran out of file-handles, your database ended up in trouble.

With each Paradox file using up 4 extensions (PX, IDX, DO, QBE and possibly more) 255/4 = 63. You could build upto 60 unique tables for Paradox before running out of file-shares, but wait, since because DOS/Windows uses say, 30 or 40, then, you end up with an average of 30 unique files you can open at one time. Give and take, 50 files. If you programed your application right, this would not be an issue, but over the network, the troubles start happening.

Did anyone see any good working Paradox-based applications? I've seen plenty of DBF/Clipper/Access/Fox applications.

Going Boldly where no programmer has gone before
Bold for Delphi, which was brought over by Borland was in the ridiculously expensive version of Delphi 7, and came partial sources. The people were literally dying to upgrade their Bold for Delphi applications for Delphi 2009, or at least, provide updates for it. Bold for Delphi, on one hand, provided object-persistence support and model-mapping, but was side-lined in favour of "Together" modelling. Together was in the most expensive version of Delphi... Those people who brought Delphi-Pro never could use it, ever. nor could they buy it, since it came with Delphi/arch.

Another curious competitor - InstantObjects came out long time ago has been languishing ever since. There are few developments for it.

IntraNot
IntraWeb, the curious "VCL for Web" which it seems, nobody uses, or at least, in practice. IntraWeb was really good, but I have yet to see any free IntraWeb "blogs" component, or good intraweb component. The Delphi/Pro version came with 5-user version and the Enterprise version came with what seems like the older version of IntraWeb. Each new version of Delphi results in a new version of IntraWeb and never-ending subscriptions to get the latest updates from AtoZed. There are so few third-party add-ons for IntraWeb, and nearly all of them costs money, each sold separately. If IntraWeb was popular, there would be thousands of free scripts (see HotScripts and other sites for free PHP Scripts) and add-ons, but sadly, there are very few...

DelphiHater challenges anyone to integrate, say, any blog, content manager (Drupal, WordPress, Mambo, PHP Nuke) HTML templates and try to try to make their IntraWeb sites look beautiful (The sad reality is you really cannot control the HTML emitted) or use Frames or cross-integrate with PHP/Java/Ruby/ASP. Did anyone try to beautify the grids or edit controls? Try making a "free-form" website with IntraWeb :)

Not yet, Baby!
With Delphi.NET, and C# Builder, DelphiHater remembers the curiously slow C# and Delphi.NET application while the C# version feels faster. Since Delphi.NET does not support Visual Studio's integration, those cool NET components could not be used in Delphi. With Delphi.NET 1.0, 1.1, Borland "dumped" their NET compiler in favour of RemObject's compiler.

Your reviewer would be hard-pressed to use Delphi.NET, because C# incurs no additional cost to use. You can give C# code and using a text-editor, and a big MSBuild Script, make an EXE or Website.

With Delphi for NET, the language is completely different from Delphi, and funny, it is easier to convert from Delphi to C# (due to plenty of automated programs) than to convert from Delphi/Win32 to Delphi/NET.

With all those "price increases", how much does it cost to add another person to the Development team? DelphiHater would shudder to employ a team of people, the computer cost, Compiler cost, the 3rd-party cost, the VCS cost, and so on...

[End of Part 1]

Fan Mail: Tar and NET feathers

Some people emailed DelphiHater about NET piracy and asked DelphiHater's thoughts about it.

The first thing is the "required usage" of assemblies and "reflections" along with certain files to be installed. That makes it harder to pirate NET components.

Calling Home?
DelphiHater looked around and found most ASP.NET files "call-home" or have undocumented watermarks for the vendor to "check" around.

An example, someone deploys a pirated copy of [Product].NET along with his application, don't be surprised few months later, [vendor's] lawyers demand payment for the license... or expose that person as a software pirate. At the risk of being exposed a software pirate, the person will just pay-up.

A funny example, is when [vendor] watermarked "[product] beta" files with customer name, and someone got fired for leaking it out. it was funny because the person leaking it out didn't know about it, and make a ruckus on the vendor's forum. Unfortunately, most of the message on that vendor's forum were deleted.

How did the vendor know? the vendor implemented call home feature which used IE behind the scenes. With IE, unless you have good firewall, you don't know when it will "call home". Unfortunately for that person, most of the people who used that NET library didn't care.

On server environment, ASP.NET assemblies are given access to internet, and from-time-to-time, some of these call home with IP address, domain-name, and details such as usage and so on.

Watermarking, Part 2
Another funny example, specific to Delphi, is Help & Manual, if you have access to H&M private forums, you can read about the how Mr. Alexander Hasler from time to time googles around for "This help file is made with unregistered version of Help & Manual" (or something like that) and ask them to pay-up for the license. Since the help file is on web-site and the company's "contact-us" is known, it becomes simple to ask the website-owner to pay for his product.


Funny.


[Corrections]
The part referring to Help & Manual, there is only 1 post out of thousands of posts in Help & Manual private forums. The original post which referring to this article is deleted/ or not "topic not found".

Delphi 2009 Ribbon Interface - flick, flick, flick?

Downloaded the Delphi 2009 trial.

Compiled the Ribbon Demo. Wow. I thought I could get to use new Office 2007 interface...

NOT !

The first problem is it's based on TActions, and not directly applied. Does anyone remember those annoying TAction problems that were never fixed? erm...

The next problem was the impressive amount of flickering this Ribbon demo has. Goodness!

Also, the look and feel doesn't feel like Office 2007 style.
Just another Ribbon-wanna-be.

an update -
in Delphi 2010, they fixed this, but not without paying upgrade fees...

It took CodeGear 1 year to fix it. phew.


Update 2013 March.
Article contains outdated information as this bug is fixed.

QA Dept: CodeBot / SysRpl's Components

site: www.codebot.com

Your reviewer had quite some difficulty since CodeBot's owner temporarily disabled their site. Your reviewer will be reviewing some sources upgraded to Delphi 2009.

CodeBot Component Package
The first component is TAutoCompletion, it is broken, as in, it sometimes works and sometimes does not work. Let me explain. The auto-complete places a TStringList into an EDIT, but remember that TEdit and EDIT (case-matching problem?) are two different things. For such glaring bug to be found in the first 5 minutes, that is very glaring error. Another is Unicode issue where it does not work with Delphi2009/Unicode. (I'll leave that to Sysrpl to fix).

Another is lack of documentation, or rather, what documentation? just some short snipplets on CodeBot's website.

The second component is of questionable quality - TBackground. why would I need a TBackground for? The color property does not work.



The next is TBrushButton, What product would you use TBrushButton for? Maybe for a simple paint program. It lacks depth of TMS's graphic components (or DevEx or LMD's)

The next is TButtonEdit, which has some flaws. If you assign, say, ButtonVisible = false, the refresh does not render it correctly. and obviously, no clear way to set button size (height, width), and edit-button hint or glyph. (It also don't work with theming)

The next is TCaptionBox which does not have Pin (i.e., drag & drop), Minimize glyph and maximize glyph. What kind of captionbox is that?

The next is ColorGrid button. DelphiHater would prefer to use Delphi Gem's Color Button instead. CodeBot's version is too simple.

The next is drop-down button with Calendar, called TDatePopupEdit. DelphiHater could not understand what kind of Calendar TDatePopupEdit does?



The image above shows half a calendar and no way to select the 2nd half (width wrong?).

The next group are TDbDrawList, TDbReportview, TDrawList, a TWinControl with data-aware helpers. Those components lack documentation and difficult to use. It would make a grid alternative, if not for the lack of development on them.

The next is TExpandableBox, a group-box with drop-down. DelphiHater wonders what kind of use this box would be used for, a component which causes the form to tear-down or scroll-down would be better idea instead.

Another unfortunate issue that plagues CodeBot's library is debug messages which pop-up every now and then. Such as in BtnCtrls.pas:

procedure TCustomImageButton.CMLostFocus(var Message: TCMLostFocus);
begin
ShowMessage('CMLostFocus');
end;

or

procedure CheckControl(Control: TWinControl; Valid: Boolean; const Msg: string);
begin
if Control.Enabled and Control.Visible and (not Valid) then
begin
MessageDlg(Msg, mtError, [mbOK], 0);
Control.SetFocus;
Abort;
end;
end;

(Suggestion to CodeBot: either get Raize CodeSite to debug these kind of errors and MadExpert or EurekaLog to debug those annonying / or access violations)

The next components TFolderView and TInspector suffers from random access violations,

Example 1:
1) Drag and drop TFolderView to your form
2) Delete it.
3) Delphi crashes.

Example 2:
1) Drag and drop TInspector to your form
2) Delete it.
3) Delphi crashes.

The rest of CodeBot's controls were somewhat unusable or unworkable in Windows Vista. Just trying to use them caused Delphi to crash or hang.

CodeBot Naming Usage
Mr CodeBot's usage of generic names and legal threats to CodeGear makes no sense.

For example, if you call your component TButtonEdit and CodeGear adds a component called TButtonedEdit to the VCL, you shouldn't blame CodeGear for this.

In fact, DelphiHater much prefers TButtonedEdit rather than Codebot's TButtonEdit because CodeBot's TButtonEdit does not work in Windows XP Theme'd mode, has no flat feature, no way to control button properties, and not least, CodeGear's implementation seems more complete than CodeBot's.

Also, as reference, The author of RMControls at http://www.mills-enterprise.ca added a prefix to his components, TRm(Components)

The original idea of Prefix for components came when Mr. Steven Healey setup a mini-site called http://delphiprefix.href.com/

After some funny comments from TeamB and other people on newsgroups, Mr CodeBot disabled his site and disallowed downloading.

CodeBot Lamentations
If you're hanging around the #Delphi chat, which some of Mr CodeBot's newsgroup posting point to, you can hear him lament...

The usual kind of lamentations - few or no jobs, all the jobs going to "unprofessional" or script kiddies who use JavaScript and PHP.


Conclusions
DelphiHater wonders what future there is for CodeBot components, given Mr CodeBot disabled his website and with little documentation or product guides.

Delphi Hater's Blog Summary

Delphi Hater's Blog gives clear, objective reporting.

What you will find:
- Check each fact, each claim, what do you find?
Each statement is backed by facts and unbiased reporting, such as:
- Why do you think each vendor failed?
- Why did the vendor act in such manner?
- Why are products made with Delphi so horrible?
- Why don't vendors clean up their act and fix errors?

- Technical breath and depth of articles
You won't find any other magazine that report in-depth into errors and mistakes.

- This blog is testimony to what Delphi has become:
- the programming language that reaches 1% market share
- poor quality libraries made with Delphi "touted" as "best", "excellent"
- bad bugs in Delphi leads to poor quality products
- poor quality products leads to poor sales
- poor sales leads to few Delphi jobs...

with few Delphi jobs, expensive "subscription" prices, what's the point?
...and where this blog starts.

DelphiHater gives clear reasons WHY Delphi failed, WHAT went WRONG and...

Why don't Borland, CodeGear, DevCo, Imprise Embarcadero and their Technical partners CLEAN UP THEIR ACT?

Maybe they won't clean up their act and continue making as much money as possible...

QA Dept: Asta support

This post describes Astatech support :)

-----------------------------------------------------
From: "Some guy that is pissed"
Subject: Take note
Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 03:57:42 -0600
Lines: 20
Message-ID:
Newsgroups: astatech.general
Path: astaweb01.astatech.ad
Xref: astaweb01.astatech.ad astatech.general:9629
NNTP-Posting-Host: 71-36-74-134.slkc.qwest.net 71.36.74.134

Recently I was forced to make a decision. Stay with ASTA and receive no updates, and no real support (in fact when we did receive support it was of a sarcastic nature from Steve as if we were bothering him). Which is unfortunate after the many dollars we have spent.

Only so many times can one bare to receive a response - "refer to the demo".. in which didn't resolve what we were looking for. As well, MY TEAM fixed the many existing issues we found as often times we didn't receive ANY response from Steve regarding them.

Not supporting and updating a product though you claimed you will do so (of course you DID when accepting our money).. after 2 years there was only a single update which was for a port up for Delphi 2006.

At this time I unfortunatley at this time I have to treat this as a lesson learned and a couple thousand dollars lost investment.

BUYER BEWARE!!!! As this potatoe farmer will take you.

-----------------------------------------------------
From: "Marcos Lommez"
Subject: See how Steve cares about us!!!! Its amazing!
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:01:56 -0300
Lines: 51
Message-ID:
Newsgroups: astatech.general
Path: astaweb01.astatech.ad
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Im posting here my email that i have sent to Steve...and what he have replied to me

And im a registred user of Asta!!!

I have spent so much money and time in my project using Asta and now i receive that answer.

People that are thinking about start using Asta, dont use it! Or even people that are still using Asta here is my ADVICE:

RemObjects DataAbstract -> http://www.remobjects.com because Asta have no future

RemObjects is always in production, have a good support and polite support (one thing that Steve doesnt have)

Here is my E-mail to Steve:
==================
Hi Steve...

There are some questions that you dont answer in the newsgroup, so im asking here.
Many users believe that you have abandon Asta because you dont release new versions or just fix some bugs. The last release of Asta was a long time ago.

Im very worry about the future of Asta because i have spent so many time and money in my project. And now the development of Asta have stopped.

So, my question is Asta will have future with new versions, or just new releases with fixed bugs?

Bests Regards,
Marcos Lommez

Here is what he replied to me:
====================
marcos

you know what I think of you so as a cheap bastard so I don't see where you can expect us to help you at all for free.

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Article updates 2013 March
See: Wanted alive: Asta
See: QA Dept Asta Support
See: Exception error gem
See: Article corrections