I've seen several postings on several forums, websites and discussions.
DelphiHaters is a blog about Delphi's dark side. Delphi is a "great language" that, as of writing this article, has fallen from grace.
DelphiHaters exploits the fact that anyone who criticized Delphi gets called a troll, and many personal insults (sometimes cancelled and sometimes not) and shunned for the rest of your life. Once that happens, you lose your Delphi job, you lose your Delphi contacts, you eventually lose all your Delphi revenues. (if you don't believe this, see what happened to Simon Kissel, Frank De Groot and others) Thus, the people who write this blog (along with guests, friends and opinions) are intentionally anonymous.
If there is nobody to insult, the author (or "your reviewer") goes and focuses on issues at hand without personal, racial, ethnic and religious insults and slurs getting into the way of discussion.
Topics of discussion are:
- Why are there so few Delphi Jobs? The real reasons are cheating, deceitful and lying Delphi developers who do nothing every day, and other issues that explores the fact that "Delphi does not make any business sense".
- When is Delphi x64 coming? Since this blog posted more than two years ago, it is just a promise while the current company (Embarcadero) and third-party vendors continues to collect money by subscription. This blog explores the morality and ethics behind this (along with the usual 30-50% discount before the next great version).
- The dark side of Delphi. Of course, it makes perfect sense to download Delphi and Delphi-related products from RapidShare, BitTorrent - until you get caught. This blog explores the facts and community behind it.
- The inconvenient truths about Delphi. If Delphi is truly a great language, almost every website would use it (instead of PHP), we would be learning DelphiScript instead of JavaScript, the pascal-like syntax would be everywhere. Delphi would be cross-platform, today, Embarcadero would be as great as Adobe, Mozilla Foundation or ... If there are millions of Delphi developers, where are the books, and revenue to support them?
- Delphi's third-party community and the concepts of trolling. Why not call your boss a troll, or the HR (Human Resource) person a troll? They care more about your work (or lack of it) than anyone else.
- Quality Assurance. QA department who acts like a bastard towards Delphi developers. This blog explores reasons why products built with Dephi are so poor or maybe Delphi developers refuse to do hard work, like component development, GUI and Windows low-levels. You can always leech it so why bother learn? The infamous unofficial pirate community is killing these skilled people who do the hard work and these people move on to other languages.
- The Money. You can get very rich learning about Delphi and the Pascal language... or perhaps not. There is lot of unpaid work looking for some (foolish) person to do it (for no reward). Or you can use another language, such as Objective-C, PHP or Ruby and realize that most of it is free or at much lower-cost and quality is higher... This translates into jobs, revenues and business continuity. That's why you see so many jobs for Visual C++, C# and so on.
- Life after Delphi. Many Delphi developers have left the Delphi community, sometimes, never to return again. A time was a time and the party is over. The time of exit is and manner is up-to that person - either honorably or dishonorably. Just don't feed the trolls or you will forever be banished from the Delphi community.
- Misery. Misery loves party. Your reviewer blogs about hardships and costs issues faced by employers and employees. Can't find that dream Delphi job anymore? Your reviewer wonder why? Why not take a big business loan to buy Delphi and make a profit - or try doing it?
- Fair feathered friends. This blog explores the concept of friends who will eventually betray you, cheat you, lie to you, and do all manner of things against you (in the future). This blog explores the darker side of this fact. Just don't tell Mr. Chad's wife about it[1] or many people who lost lot of money because partnerships went sour[2] ... all in the name of Delphi.
- The File-Sharing Madness... This blog explores the file-sharing gone viral... Just make sure you don't share your source codes or they will be forever on the Internet. The same goes with XXX Delphi developer pictures. Your reviewer couldn't believe the other-jobs some Delphi developers have.
- The other side of success. If Delphi is success, why is it not Dr. Bob Corporation or LMD AG hiring hundreds of Delphi developers? If using Delphi is highly successful, there should be more rags to riches companies that built solid products, superior by design... or maybe not. Why are the people who do Delphi evangelism in one's and two's? Did you see the last Java conference[3] attended by more than 2,500 developers? Guess how many attended the future of Delphi in Paris? Only 100 developers.[4]
We welcome your comments and criticisms. We hope you enjoyed your stay, and hope this educating blog educates you about the "other Delphi" you never learned in College or University. If you can make an honest living out of it and pay the bills - good for you. but if you run into continual hardships and misery... it is time to move on.
[1] http://www.kudzuworld.com/Help/index.en.aspx
[2] https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=47747
[3] http://jz10.java.no/
[4] http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/blog.asp?post=179
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Perhaps an end soon.
This blog will perhaps, come to an end soon...
The reason is simple...
I don't think writing anymore about Delphi's problems will solve basic problems, like cost of Delphi, whether or not there is a 64-bit version of Delphi, or whether the active Delphi-warez community take notice of this.
In fact, it's quite opposite
I thank the readers for reading my articles. Unless there's a need to write something, I'll stay low and ignore it.
Have a nice Christmas and nice holiday. I wish everyone well, even to my adversaries and Delphi lovers. If there was a last word, it would probably in the way how this blog started.
The reason is simple...
I don't think writing anymore about Delphi's problems will solve basic problems, like cost of Delphi, whether or not there is a 64-bit version of Delphi, or whether the active Delphi-warez community take notice of this.
In fact, it's quite opposite
- I think with Delphi 64-bits, the price will be so high, that nobody can afford it, or that the price of licensing Delphi VCL stuff -- like -- DevExpress.VCL will keep increasing... Both of them are currently subscriptions, so it gets expensive to buy the same over and over again to keep the license.
- Moved all my source code base to C++. Who cares about fast Delphi compile times when Visual C++ with Core i7 compiles in approximately the same speed? Who cares about DevEx.VCL when you can get CodeJock renewals at much less price...
- The Delphi-warez community will probably be happy that they can continue their shameful acts without someone spying on them from time-to-time.
I thank the readers for reading my articles. Unless there's a need to write something, I'll stay low and ignore it.
Have a nice Christmas and nice holiday. I wish everyone well, even to my adversaries and Delphi lovers. If there was a last word, it would probably in the way how this blog started.
Critic's Guide to Delphi Exorcist - Part 4 - Volunteerism & Delphi
Volunteering for DelphiThe Delphi Spirit
Phillip Morris Peter Morris, a Delphi developer wrote on his former website -
They give, you take.
When you ask, they give nothing in return.
Which is what the Delphi community is about:
You give - you make the free VCLs, commercial software (then pirated and downloaded many times)
You give - you give your time to post thousands and thousands of posts on the newsgroup in unpaid work
You become a field tester and gradually graduate to field tester SysOp (or TeamB'er)
They take...
You ask for something in return:
You'll probably get no money from the newsgroup dustbins (e.g., href) who sell Google Ads
You'll probably get no financial help if you get into trouble,
You'll probably get no money at all.
Which is what the Delphi spirit is about.
They give, you take.
When you ask, they give nothing in return.
Which is what the Delphi community is about:
You give - you make the free VCLs, commercial software (then pirated and downloaded many times)
You give - you give your time to post thousands and thousands of posts on the newsgroup in unpaid work
You become a field tester and gradually graduate to field tester SysOp (or TeamB'er)
They take...
You ask for something in return:
You'll probably get no money from the newsgroup dustbins (e.g., href) who sell Google Ads
You'll probably get no financial help if you get into trouble,
You'll probably get no money at all.
Which is what the Delphi spirit is about.
Critic's Guide to Delphi Exorcist - Part 3 - Delphi Jobs & Jobless Recovery
Implications of Joblessness, Subscriptions and Skills
Does Delphi justify it's high costs?
Your reviewer looked at Dice.com, Monster, JobBankUSA and was interesting to see some nice trends:
The usual favorite was to put "Delphi, Paradox, Interbase", and then get a free copy of Delphi (the employers won't blink buying it for you) and then Interbase (ditto) and almost every 3rd party component to get the job done... Then spend the whole day chatting away on your ICQ List, MSN List, browse the web and do very little works.
The reality catches up very quickly with these people. Your reviewer remembers hiring plenty of these kind of people.
Language
Most Delphi developers bitch and moan about the last version of Delphi being Delphi 7 (some say Delphi 6 before on-line activation was used, or Delphi 5 when the last good compiler was there). Some say Delphi 2007 (the last good version before the Unicode update), some say Delphi 2009 (because that was the last good version before the nefarious copy-protection caused lot of problem with Delphi).
With the job market being so bad, few or very few employers can catch-up and use the latest version of Delphi. The problem with Delphi (in relation to jobs) are:
1) Cost of Delphi + Third-party.
This is what kills Delphi dead in the water. The people who advocate Delphi are the vendor themselves on the newsgroups. You can usually Google them up, and they charge a pretty penny for their product.
1a) Of what Quality?The quality of the products built with Delphi so poor that the vendors just decided to move on. That means, even with small costs - domain and cheap web-hosting (US$9.95, US$4.95...), some vendors just decided their domains should expire and no-longer pay for the web-hosting.
The former two Delphi Magazines, DelphiMagazine (UK) redirects to a Thumb-Drive buy-now site, DelphiMagazine (USA) redirects to a cyber-squatter site.
The remaining people who are there, developed in during the Delphi 3-7 time when CompuServe, AOL and BBS's ruled the day. When the Internet came, a new and ugly force came out - nasty customer feedback.
CompuServe had this whack-a-mole policy where you can delete nasty feedback and ban that person from the whole CompuServe network. There were a couple of vocal "Delphi Haters" who voiced their opinions and eventually got removed from the former GO:BORL forums. Then came the USENET, where (as of today), Borland still puts hosts a newsgroup server linked to web-based NNTP. They stopped anonymous-posting when Simon Kissel (of Cross-Kylix fame) spammed the former Borland newsgroups and permanently ejected from the CodeGear, Embarcadero newsgroups.
1b) Plagiarism and Fraud.
Why bother work so hard to write your own codes when you can steal it and re-brand it as your own?
With people using Delphi doing this, you can imagine why:
It's faster to make money from the sweat of other people, lie about everything and get away with it. Many Delphi developers get away with it because many of them are overseas. Their customers would be from Japan, Germany or Brazil and then they have no legal recourse to get their money back, short of disputing it with MasterCard or Visa.
That's why you see some vendors offering direct money transfer to pay money to them. Good luck if you can get your money back. Then, there is PHP with mostly free, C# with mostly free, Python, Ruby with almost free everything you can take and use. Ditto with Java. For example, Mr. Jolyon Smith uses NetBeans instead. Go figure...
A fool and his money is one big (third) party...
2) Desktop app only, but no Linux, Mac, Web or Andriod or iPad or iPhone apps.The biggest market now is portable apps. The other reason for this is because it is easy to develop and fast to make money because either the Telco (your telephone company such as AT-and-T or Verizon) or iTunes or Google collects money on the developer's behalf.
For example, to activate the product, you would send an SMS (US$5.00) to a certain number and then receive a confirmation code to enter into the small mobile app. Some vendors, like Kaspersky Anti-virus sends the confirmation code to enter to your PC's Kaspersky Security application.
Mac and Linux apps are good money, it seems. Certain vendors make Mac-only applications and earn lots of money. For instance, OmniGroup makes excellent products for Mac OSX.
iTunes, iPhone and iOS is the latest hottest territory for developers. Where's Embarcadero? not here...
3) Software Piracy. This is already affecting many Delphi 3rd party developers.
Ask Mr. Ray N. whether DevExpress would support "Diamond Docking", better looking Ribbon compatibility (as in better looking Ribbon aesthetics and Ribbon UI) or when a Report Writer for VCL would be ready, the answer is that they don't have the money to do it. (or rather - they cannot afford to hire more Delphi developers)
This leads to higher prices or building SAAS products (e.g., TestRails) because there is no piracy or leaks when the customer does not pay-up. Have you seen any SAAS product built with Delphi? Me neither.
Good times are over. DelphiHater's predictions in a jobless recovery and jobless economy
Your reviewer sees many friends who are dying to find a job. Maybe it's time to say this to them:
1) Move on. Delphi won't pay your bills anymore. The reasons are simple. For employers, the costs don't make any sense. The development costs are so expensive, all the profits get eaten-up by the vendors and there's no money left.
If there was money left, it's all gone. Take a look at how many jobs PHP, VB.NET, C# are available. Maybe you'll learn something like learning a new skill towards financial freedom.
But wait - there's more. There's this need to buy, buy and buy third-party components and then realize that most of it is of better quality or requires no payment in C#, PHP, Perl, Java and even in OSX / iOS (iPhone/iPad).
2) Consider flipping burgers in Mc Donalds or working as a store assistant in Wallmart. For some people, that's considered a deep insult, but to be honest, in this kind of economy, maybe these people can see beyond fooling around during office-hours monitoring the newsgroups (like an unpaid employee) or doing work for free for others, or doing work for nothing.
Basic lessons -- like coming early to work, leaving on-time, taking responsibility for a job, doing a good job well done comes with flipping burgers. The saying goes -- the higher the wages before being laid-off and pride, the deeper the fall...
3) Consider going to work as a junior C# or C++ developer. Face the honest facts and realize that all the time you were lied, cheated and there is nothing honest with Delphi. The whole thing is a big house of credit-card debts, one bill after another not paid, nothing worth it. Amazingly, many Delphi developers shun re-learning everything all over again, telling the same nonsense over and over again -- like too hard to learn a new language, too difficult. But what the fact is that these Delphi developers don't want to learn anything except want a big paycheck (that no longer exists).
4) Some female Delphi developers on the newsgroups have become domestic servants or au-pair or cleaner or janitor. It's a damn shame that someone leaves the country (e.g., Philippines, Indonesia) and work as a domestic servant in a richer country (e.g., UK or Ireland or Italy). Your reviewer was surprised to know there was so many Delphi developers who gave up their job and went overseas. Don't be surprised the nanny who takes care of your kids was once a Delphi developer :)
There are always die-hard Delphi software developers. You can read the current article "Lost a Delphi Envagelist" if you feel confident.
Does Delphi justify it's high costs?
Your reviewer looked at Dice.com, Monster, JobBankUSA and was interesting to see some nice trends:
- Some Delphi jobs refer to using Delphi Hotel Management System (Hospitality and working at hotels)
- Some Delphi jobs refer to going to the Delphi, the GM subsidiary.
- Some Delphi jobs refer to porting Delphi application to C# (hint: Visual Studio)
- Some Delphi jobs are there from suspiciously looking Indian Outsourcing companies (hint: ABC "Infotech" LLC, some name with "InfoTech", some name whose website states "Outsourcing to India?", some name whose Website states "Chinese Developers wanted")
- Some Delphi jobs requires you speak Hindi or Chinese as a second language.
- Some Delphi jobs, the person who you are asked to call, sounds like a thick burly voice or thick accent you cannot make out if it is actually English or a mix of Hindi-English.
The usual favorite was to put "Delphi, Paradox, Interbase", and then get a free copy of Delphi (the employers won't blink buying it for you) and then Interbase (ditto) and almost every 3rd party component to get the job done... Then spend the whole day chatting away on your ICQ List, MSN List, browse the web and do very little works.
The reality catches up very quickly with these people. Your reviewer remembers hiring plenty of these kind of people.
Language
Most Delphi developers bitch and moan about the last version of Delphi being Delphi 7 (some say Delphi 6 before on-line activation was used, or Delphi 5 when the last good compiler was there). Some say Delphi 2007 (the last good version before the Unicode update), some say Delphi 2009 (because that was the last good version before the nefarious copy-protection caused lot of problem with Delphi).
With the job market being so bad, few or very few employers can catch-up and use the latest version of Delphi. The problem with Delphi (in relation to jobs) are:
1) Cost of Delphi + Third-party.
This is what kills Delphi dead in the water. The people who advocate Delphi are the vendor themselves on the newsgroups. You can usually Google them up, and they charge a pretty penny for their product.
1a) Of what Quality?The quality of the products built with Delphi so poor that the vendors just decided to move on. That means, even with small costs - domain and cheap web-hosting (US$9.95, US$4.95...), some vendors just decided their domains should expire and no-longer pay for the web-hosting.
The former two Delphi Magazines, DelphiMagazine (UK) redirects to a Thumb-Drive buy-now site, DelphiMagazine (USA) redirects to a cyber-squatter site.
The remaining people who are there, developed in during the Delphi 3-7 time when CompuServe, AOL and BBS's ruled the day. When the Internet came, a new and ugly force came out - nasty customer feedback.
CompuServe had this whack-a-mole policy where you can delete nasty feedback and ban that person from the whole CompuServe network. There were a couple of vocal "Delphi Haters" who voiced their opinions and eventually got removed from the former GO:BORL forums. Then came the USENET, where (as of today), Borland still puts hosts a newsgroup server linked to web-based NNTP. They stopped anonymous-posting when Simon Kissel (of Cross-Kylix fame) spammed the former Borland newsgroups and permanently ejected from the CodeGear, Embarcadero newsgroups.
1b) Plagiarism and Fraud.
Why bother work so hard to write your own codes when you can steal it and re-brand it as your own?
- The library EZPDF Library is a rip-off from QuickPDF Library,
- The former UDC corporation sold rip-off versions of Julian's WpTools,
- The CNPack "borrowed" some code from Andy J's famous IDE extensions (and then Andy Closed-sourced them to prevent updates from his own extensions going to CNPack),
- SoftLab Dephi Decompiler for Delphi and C++ Builder is a rip-off of EMS Source Rescuer,
- DA Generator includes a copy of Delphi 7 DCC Compiler (check the delphi directory in the program)
- Grid Plus Plus runs into an interesting licensing problem: It is illegal to use DevExpress, WpTools, TMS, TeeChart (et al) in design-mode in binary form. Their (meaning: WpTools, TMS, DevExpress, TeeChart) EULA prohibits it. The vendor must also be legally-blind since they used to call it "Delphi++" and then got a nice letter from Embarcadero's lawyers.
- I reviewed DxSock many months ago and gave it a negative review. Other people say the same:
The complete opposite of what is written on their website.
With people using Delphi doing this, you can imagine why:
It's faster to make money from the sweat of other people, lie about everything and get away with it. Many Delphi developers get away with it because many of them are overseas. Their customers would be from Japan, Germany or Brazil and then they have no legal recourse to get their money back, short of disputing it with MasterCard or Visa.
That's why you see some vendors offering direct money transfer to pay money to them. Good luck if you can get your money back. Then, there is PHP with mostly free, C# with mostly free, Python, Ruby with almost free everything you can take and use. Ditto with Java. For example, Mr. Jolyon Smith uses NetBeans instead. Go figure...
A fool and his money is one big (third) party...
2) Desktop app only, but no Linux, Mac, Web or Andriod or iPad or iPhone apps.The biggest market now is portable apps. The other reason for this is because it is easy to develop and fast to make money because either the Telco (your telephone company such as AT-and-T or Verizon) or iTunes or Google collects money on the developer's behalf.
For example, to activate the product, you would send an SMS (US$5.00) to a certain number and then receive a confirmation code to enter into the small mobile app. Some vendors, like Kaspersky Anti-virus sends the confirmation code to enter to your PC's Kaspersky Security application.
Mac and Linux apps are good money, it seems. Certain vendors make Mac-only applications and earn lots of money. For instance, OmniGroup makes excellent products for Mac OSX.
iTunes, iPhone and iOS is the latest hottest territory for developers. Where's Embarcadero? not here...
3) Software Piracy. This is already affecting many Delphi 3rd party developers.
Ask Mr. Ray N. whether DevExpress would support "Diamond Docking", better looking Ribbon compatibility (as in better looking Ribbon aesthetics and Ribbon UI) or when a Report Writer for VCL would be ready, the answer is that they don't have the money to do it. (or rather - they cannot afford to hire more Delphi developers)
This leads to higher prices or building SAAS products (e.g., TestRails) because there is no piracy or leaks when the customer does not pay-up. Have you seen any SAAS product built with Delphi? Me neither.
Good times are over. DelphiHater's predictions in a jobless recovery and jobless economy
Your reviewer sees many friends who are dying to find a job. Maybe it's time to say this to them:
1) Move on. Delphi won't pay your bills anymore. The reasons are simple. For employers, the costs don't make any sense. The development costs are so expensive, all the profits get eaten-up by the vendors and there's no money left.
If there was money left, it's all gone. Take a look at how many jobs PHP, VB.NET, C# are available. Maybe you'll learn something like learning a new skill towards financial freedom.
But wait - there's more. There's this need to buy, buy and buy third-party components and then realize that most of it is of better quality or requires no payment in C#, PHP, Perl, Java and even in OSX / iOS (iPhone/iPad).
2) Consider flipping burgers in Mc Donalds or working as a store assistant in Wallmart. For some people, that's considered a deep insult, but to be honest, in this kind of economy, maybe these people can see beyond fooling around during office-hours monitoring the newsgroups (like an unpaid employee) or doing work for free for others, or doing work for nothing.
Basic lessons -- like coming early to work, leaving on-time, taking responsibility for a job, doing a good job well done comes with flipping burgers. The saying goes -- the higher the wages before being laid-off and pride, the deeper the fall...
3) Consider going to work as a junior C# or C++ developer. Face the honest facts and realize that all the time you were lied, cheated and there is nothing honest with Delphi. The whole thing is a big house of credit-card debts, one bill after another not paid, nothing worth it. Amazingly, many Delphi developers shun re-learning everything all over again, telling the same nonsense over and over again -- like too hard to learn a new language, too difficult. But what the fact is that these Delphi developers don't want to learn anything except want a big paycheck (that no longer exists).
4) Some female Delphi developers on the newsgroups have become domestic servants or au-pair or cleaner or janitor. It's a damn shame that someone leaves the country (e.g., Philippines, Indonesia) and work as a domestic servant in a richer country (e.g., UK or Ireland or Italy). Your reviewer was surprised to know there was so many Delphi developers who gave up their job and went overseas. Don't be surprised the nanny who takes care of your kids was once a Delphi developer :)
There are always die-hard Delphi software developers. You can read the current article "Lost a Delphi Envagelist" if you feel confident.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Critic's Guide to Delphi, Exorcist Edition Part 2
No young blood
The lack of young Delphi meant older developers are not teaching their skill to younger Delphi developers (because of poor job prospects and massive software piracy).
Few more years later, Delphi developers will grow so old they could retire or maybe RIP... Some of the third-party software developers are retired (e.g., David Baldwin from http://www.pbear.com/) or passed away...
Every year, Mr. David I. would do his annual round the world tour. What's wrong with the world tour?
Reference: http://blogs.embarcadero.com/davidi/2010/08/30/40114/
Embarcadero's NewsgroupsWhen you connect to the Embarcadero's web-based newsgroup forum from FireFox, you always get the below error message. Maybe they use DataSnap or cannot seem to bother about security.
The Delphi Media Kit
If you paid Euros 4,000 you would expect to get a media kit. Atlas, it is sold separately...
If you paid Euros 4,000 you would expect to get a media kit. Atlas, it is sold separately...
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Critic's guide to Delphi, Exorcist Edition, part 1
Your reviewer promised to review Delphi 2009, but so much time have passed and ended-up reviewing Delphi XE edition.
Delphi XE stands for "Delphi Extreme Edition" or "XE" but it sounds more like "Delphi Exorcist Edition".
This version of Delphi is for the Delphi faithful. There is no other reason to buy it (unless you happen to be aTroll Tool vendor). This version of Delphi is simply an attempt for Embarcadero to satisfy people who brought an over-priced yearly SA subscription and expect a new upgrade during the 12-months of their subscription. The people who brought last year's Delphi edition without SA (waiting years for bug-fixes) get screwed and all the complaints start to look like insult-sword-fighting Monkey Island style.
Since Embarcadero choose to call it "XE", your reviewer found the closest matching word to be "Exorcist" so hence, "Exorcist Edition" would be in appropriate humor.
17-page Embarcadero Review
The biggest problem with the people at Embarcadero is they seem to have this bad habit of not writing down anything meaningful. Reading Ander Olsson's blog (Hacker's Corner), you would expect it to be filled with technical articles, tips, advice, excellent how-to-do things in Delphi... Instead, it is filled with job-postings, chatter and non-existent page 2.
The same goes with David Intersimone's website. It was only until a year ago your reviewer recommended putting a Wiki that the documentation wiki was written.
The only decent documentation you'd ever get about Delphi are from outsiders, like Mr. Marco Cantu, Dr. Bob, the former Delphi Magazine (UK), InfoCann Delphi Magazine (USA), blog postings and the huge Google Newsgroup archive.
There is so much misleading information on Embacardero's website that SD times managed to write a totally misleading article on next year's (or maybe 2012) version of Delphi.
There are no books written for Delphi 2011 (I could only count on Mr. Marco Cantu's Delphi 2010 handbook), just blog postings, bits and pieces of information here and there.
64-bit Delphi. When?
The development of the Delphi 64-bit edition must be very slow. Those waiting would have moved over to Visual C++/64-bits, GCC or FreePascal/64...
1) There is only just twitter feeds, and some chatter about it. The people at Embarcadero must have been so lazy or just didn't care about getting the news about Delphi/64 - there have been essentially no blog postings, no documentation primers, almost nothing about Delphi/64.
2) The people who are waiting for Delphi/64 would have conveniently moved their source-code base over to QT or WxWidget or NET or XCode.
Even the person who wrote the Delphi Distiller (a pirate application to circumvent Delphi's weak copy protection), Dr Alvin started to use QT and stopped using Delphi.
Delphi Pricing
Satirical picture showing a bearded person (guess who?), two other people in Embarcadero-black attire milking the Delphi cash-cow.
If there was anything to say about pricing, it is Embarcadero releasing a new version of Delphi every year to appease those who brought the Software Assurance. If they didn’t release a new version every year, Embarcadero would be SA-dammed by their customers.
Since this Software Assurance idea came out, it seems to be an annual affair to milk the Delphi faithful of their hard-earned money by assuring them upgrades every year. The better term for this is temple-tax or tithe since older versions of Delphi is often depicted as a temple. In order to get updates to the Delphi VCL, updates to the compiler, you had no choice but to either buy a new license or upgrade.
The price for a new version of Delphi has increased to either Euros 800 or US$800 (more like US$950 after including taxes) depending on where you live (excluding S&H and local taxes). Pricing for the most expensive edition of Delphi is around Euros 4,000. One fact has become certain – between Taxes and Death, you have to pay for Delphi and Delphi-related upgrades.
For hobbyists, the cost of Delphi and annual upgrade deters the hobbyists.
The ability to buy Delphi Professional at 10% from list price with heavy restrictions makes no sense.
The current pricing structure of annual upgrades, SA and the like, destroys the Delphi developer base.
Return on Investment: Mostly underwater.
The irony of an obese man diving underwater is not lost considering the inability to sell a copy of Delphi to dispose of assets and continual depreciation results in every copy having US$0.00 resale value. The people who buy used copies of Delphi (other than from official sources) do not get their orders honored or have future problems with Embarcadero.
For the uninformed, the way how business owners buy Delphi is by taking a cash/credit or loan. For example, some business owners take huge loans (e.g., US$50,000 loan) to start a business. Since the resale price of Delphi is US$0.00, and if the owners (and employees) within the loan-period cannot generate enough revenue to repay the initial business loan, the loan goes “underwater”.
The price of Delphi (and salary/wages to software developers) itself discourages jobs and new hiring. I would really urge Mr. David Intersimone to take the real Underwater challenge – take a big loan (preferably request for US$500,000), hire all the exert Delphi developers and develop a new product… then find yourself gnashing, swearing at every Delphi bug there is out there, missing features, bad or non-existent IntraWeb features, missing 64-bit, missing OSX support, bad documentation (and so on). Make sure all of them are properly licensed and use all-Delphi applications. Avoid Java or Visual C++ written products (like Atlissian Confluence, Eclipse, etc.) and do it for a couple of years… It would be really fun to insult and mock the customers (like the current making fun of people on newsgroups) when products doesn’t perform as expected, the inability to make a fully “built-using-Dephi” website. There are also the joys of having the bank take away everything when the business fails and falling behind payments.
Maybe Embarcadero people wearing black means sobering-up to the reality that Embarcadero need to stop selecting “good” reviews and start listening to their customers.
DelphiHater’s Roadmap is more accurate
Mr. Michael Rezlog and the hidden project manager (whose identity is hidden or not posted on the newsgroup) must be reading my blog.
Few months ago, I posted about Delphi Ultimatum (http://delphihaters.blogspot.com/2009/11/delphi-ultimatum.html) and how those suggestions were taken seriously.
Delphi XE has:
a) working memory leak checker and profiler. (Automated QA is now included)
b) build manager. (Final Builder, crippled is now included)
c) parts of GExperts and probably CNPack is now part of Delphi.
d) IPWorks (after looking at so many complaints with Indy)
e) Database driver source-code is available.
Reusing Last Year’s Promotion Materials
Your reviewer had amusing time looking at Delphi promotion material. It looks like they have been re-used from last year. You can notice all the items marked "Delphi 2010", "Delphi 2009", as it that needs to be considered.
Blackfish – More love needed
The bitter taste of former Borland, DevCo and CodeGear follies must have come one full cycle now. The latest database offering BlackFish (why not call it Jellyfish instead?) must have felt the brunt of the typical build-deploy-dump cycle that almost every Delphi developer encountered.
The first casualty is the venerable DBF and Paradox format. Borland could have fixed all the bugs in the Borland Database Engine, but decided to depreciate it instead. That left people who used DBF and Paradox that bad taste in their mouth and jump to Sybase Advantage Server. Then the same went for ADO, renamed DBGO, then left there almost untouched for almost 14 years (1997-2011) with no new features added while the original ADO layer (using 2.1) was upgraded to 2.9.
If Embarcadero wants forgiveness, it would have continued to maintain it, and make BlackFish more attractive to both developers and end-users.
Personally, your reviewer won’t use Blackfish. If I was to use something, I would want to use something that’s easy to use like Apache CouchDB, MongoDB or if the customer is a Microsoft-shop, MSSQL.
End of part 1. Part 2 will come with more technical details.
Delphi XE stands for "Delphi Extreme Edition" or "XE" but it sounds more like "Delphi Exorcist Edition".
This version of Delphi is for the Delphi faithful. There is no other reason to buy it (unless you happen to be a
Since Embarcadero choose to call it "XE", your reviewer found the closest matching word to be "Exorcist" so hence, "Exorcist Edition" would be in appropriate humor.
17-page Embarcadero Review
The biggest problem with the people at Embarcadero is they seem to have this bad habit of not writing down anything meaningful. Reading Ander Olsson's blog (Hacker's Corner), you would expect it to be filled with technical articles, tips, advice, excellent how-to-do things in Delphi... Instead, it is filled with job-postings, chatter and non-existent page 2.
The same goes with David Intersimone's website. It was only until a year ago your reviewer recommended putting a Wiki that the documentation wiki was written.
The only decent documentation you'd ever get about Delphi are from outsiders, like Mr. Marco Cantu, Dr. Bob, the former Delphi Magazine (UK), InfoCann Delphi Magazine (USA), blog postings and the huge Google Newsgroup archive.
There is so much misleading information on Embacardero's website that SD times managed to write a totally misleading article on next year's (or maybe 2012) version of Delphi.
There are no books written for Delphi 2011 (I could only count on Mr. Marco Cantu's Delphi 2010 handbook), just blog postings, bits and pieces of information here and there.
64-bit Delphi. When?
The development of the Delphi 64-bit edition must be very slow. Those waiting would have moved over to Visual C++/64-bits, GCC or FreePascal/64...
1) There is only just twitter feeds, and some chatter about it. The people at Embarcadero must have been so lazy or just didn't care about getting the news about Delphi/64 - there have been essentially no blog postings, no documentation primers, almost nothing about Delphi/64.
2) The people who are waiting for Delphi/64 would have conveniently moved their source-code base over to QT or WxWidget or NET or XCode.
Even the person who wrote the Delphi Distiller (a pirate application to circumvent Delphi's weak copy protection), Dr Alvin started to use QT and stopped using Delphi.
Delphi Pricing
If there was anything to say about pricing, it is Embarcadero releasing a new version of Delphi every year to appease those who brought the Software Assurance. If they didn’t release a new version every year, Embarcadero would be SA-dammed by their customers.
Since this Software Assurance idea came out, it seems to be an annual affair to milk the Delphi faithful of their hard-earned money by assuring them upgrades every year. The better term for this is temple-tax or tithe since older versions of Delphi is often depicted as a temple. In order to get updates to the Delphi VCL, updates to the compiler, you had no choice but to either buy a new license or upgrade.
The price for a new version of Delphi has increased to either Euros 800 or US$800 (more like US$950 after including taxes) depending on where you live (excluding S&H and local taxes). Pricing for the most expensive edition of Delphi is around Euros 4,000. One fact has become certain – between Taxes and Death, you have to pay for Delphi and Delphi-related upgrades.
For hobbyists, the cost of Delphi and annual upgrade deters the hobbyists.
The ability to buy Delphi Professional at 10% from list price with heavy restrictions makes no sense.
The current pricing structure of annual upgrades, SA and the like, destroys the Delphi developer base.
Return on Investment: Mostly underwater.
The irony of an obese man diving underwater is not lost considering the inability to sell a copy of Delphi to dispose of assets and continual depreciation results in every copy having US$0.00 resale value. The people who buy used copies of Delphi (other than from official sources) do not get their orders honored or have future problems with Embarcadero.
For the uninformed, the way how business owners buy Delphi is by taking a cash/credit or loan. For example, some business owners take huge loans (e.g., US$50,000 loan) to start a business. Since the resale price of Delphi is US$0.00, and if the owners (and employees) within the loan-period cannot generate enough revenue to repay the initial business loan, the loan goes “underwater”.
The price of Delphi (and salary/wages to software developers) itself discourages jobs and new hiring. I would really urge Mr. David Intersimone to take the real Underwater challenge – take a big loan (preferably request for US$500,000), hire all the exert Delphi developers and develop a new product… then find yourself gnashing, swearing at every Delphi bug there is out there, missing features, bad or non-existent IntraWeb features, missing 64-bit, missing OSX support, bad documentation (and so on). Make sure all of them are properly licensed and use all-Delphi applications. Avoid Java or Visual C++ written products (like Atlissian Confluence, Eclipse, etc.) and do it for a couple of years… It would be really fun to insult and mock the customers (like the current making fun of people on newsgroups) when products doesn’t perform as expected, the inability to make a fully “built-using-Dephi” website. There are also the joys of having the bank take away everything when the business fails and falling behind payments.
Maybe Embarcadero people wearing black means sobering-up to the reality that Embarcadero need to stop selecting “good” reviews and start listening to their customers.
DelphiHater’s Roadmap is more accurate
Mr. Michael Rezlog and the hidden project manager (whose identity is hidden or not posted on the newsgroup) must be reading my blog.
Few months ago, I posted about Delphi Ultimatum (http://delphihaters.blogspot.com/2009/11/delphi-ultimatum.html) and how those suggestions were taken seriously.
Delphi XE has:
a) working memory leak checker and profiler. (Automated QA is now included)
b) build manager. (Final Builder, crippled is now included)
c) parts of GExperts and probably CNPack is now part of Delphi.
d) IPWorks (after looking at so many complaints with Indy)
e) Database driver source-code is available.
Reusing Last Year’s Promotion Materials
Your reviewer had amusing time looking at Delphi promotion material. It looks like they have been re-used from last year. You can notice all the items marked "Delphi 2010", "Delphi 2009", as it that needs to be considered.
Blackfish – More love needed
The bitter taste of former Borland, DevCo and CodeGear follies must have come one full cycle now. The latest database offering BlackFish (why not call it Jellyfish instead?) must have felt the brunt of the typical build-deploy-dump cycle that almost every Delphi developer encountered.
The first casualty is the venerable DBF and Paradox format. Borland could have fixed all the bugs in the Borland Database Engine, but decided to depreciate it instead. That left people who used DBF and Paradox that bad taste in their mouth and jump to Sybase Advantage Server. Then the same went for ADO, renamed DBGO, then left there almost untouched for almost 14 years (1997-2011) with no new features added while the original ADO layer (using 2.1) was upgraded to 2.9.
If Embarcadero wants forgiveness, it would have continued to maintain it, and make BlackFish more attractive to both developers and end-users.
Personally, your reviewer won’t use Blackfish. If I was to use something, I would want to use something that’s easy to use like Apache CouchDB, MongoDB or if the customer is a Microsoft-shop, MSSQL.
End of part 1. Part 2 will come with more technical details.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Pirates of the Delhi-burn
Pawnage #1 - updated
One useless FastReport owner, responsible for the massive software piracy of FastReport version 4, is Mr. Vicente B. Leonel who uploaded his version of FastReports to a warez site.
The proof, because there needs to be proof -
The way how the FastReports installer watermark the files is the header and footer of the file contains a ______ watermark. This is always removed by the users.
However, one careless individual posted his *.log file of the install. It contains this entry:
C:\Documents and Settings\Vincente B. Leonel\My Documents\Fast Reports\ ____
All you need to do is google Mr. Vincente and realize he is a FastReports user.
Special thanks to the moderators of a certain forum for removing this information :)
Just hint for the vendor to remove his access to the Fast Report private customer access area.
:)
Humor - Free Delphi Employment
Your reviewer was very amused at some incidents recently.
This happened behind the scene on one of those forums...
1) Get one of those software pirates and...
2) Promise him a job, get him to work for 3 weeks, and get source-code from that person
3) On the 4th week (approx 1 month) just walk away and don't contact him again.
4) The software pirate, being pissed-off, bitches and moans about he never got paid.
5) Think about karma, that he uses all stolen goods and then complains about not being paid.
This happened behind the scene on one of those forums...
1) Get one of those software pirates and...
2) Promise him a job, get him to work for 3 weeks, and get source-code from that person
3) On the 4th week (approx 1 month) just walk away and don't contact him again.
4) The software pirate, being pissed-off, bitches and moans about he never got paid.
5) Think about karma, that he uses all stolen goods and then complains about not being paid.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Secret of Delphi Island
(Satire)
Your reviewer was doing some looking up some of the biographies (or bio for short) of people on those not-so-legal forums.
Your reviewer found three Delphi sites where their owners went to work dressed as a pirate, took photos of themselves in the office as a pirate, and believe-it-or-not, posted it on their flickr or linked to their blog.
Then, they went and do their business of uploading file upon file on those not-so legal forums.
What does that remind you of?
Either it's talk like a pirate day (website), dress like a pirate day, or this whole Delphi thing is starting to feel like you're in "Secret ofMonkey Delphi Island"
There's person called Largo which sounds uncannily similar to Embarcadero whose objective seems to milk Delphi developers of their hard earned money
There's even TeamB circus where, with answering many newsgroup questions, you can become one of them, too.
The game even sells GamePlayer's magazine, which sounds eerily similar to the Delphi Magazine.
There's even a troll who operates a troll-booth. Feels like the third-party vendors who need payment before providing the products.
There are plenty of "Men of Low Moral Fiber" in the Delphi community.
There is also chance to form a development team.
Like real-life Delphi developers, they expect you to pay lots and lots of money to do almost nothing and relax and enjoy while you do all the work...
Monkey Island has a fighting system called "Insult sword-fighting". This sounds eerily similar to the long-winded insult postings in the Embarcadero newsgroups.
Maybe someone was playing real-world "Monkey Island" and testing their insult sword-fighting skills on the Embarcardero forums?
There is also opportunity to buy used Boats. That sounds like buying copies of Delphi. The price sounds right - around 4,000 pieces of Gold or approx 4,000 Euros.
I wonder how much are the commissions Mr. Stan. made for selling one boat... err... one copy of Delphi?
Mr. Herman Toothrot would find it very comforting there is a dentist in the Embarcadero newsgroups...
Where about the Help Files for the game Monkey Island? There are none - You have to figure it all out yourself. Does that sound similar to real-life Delphi development?
The game-play in the "Secret of Monkey Island" feels like real-life Delphi software development. This blog posting is a humorous and satirical look on Delphi software development.
Your reviewer was doing some looking up some of the biographies (or bio for short) of people on those not-so-legal forums.
What does that remind you of?
Either it's talk like a pirate day (website), dress like a pirate day, or this whole Delphi thing is starting to feel like you're in "Secret of
There's person called Largo which sounds uncannily similar to Embarcadero whose objective seems to milk Delphi developers of their hard earned moneyThere's even TeamB circus where, with answering many newsgroup questions, you can become one of them, too.
The game reflects real-life Delphi development. The game has people who sell documentation (a much needed asset in the Delphi community)
The game even sells GamePlayer's magazine, which sounds eerily similar to the Delphi Magazine.
There's even a troll who operates a troll-booth. Feels like the third-party vendors who need payment before providing the products.
There are plenty of "Men of Low Moral Fiber" in the Delphi community.
There is also chance to form a development team.
Like real-life Delphi developers, they expect you to pay lots and lots of money to do almost nothing and relax and enjoy while you do all the work...
Monkey Island has a fighting system called "Insult sword-fighting". This sounds eerily similar to the long-winded insult postings in the Embarcadero newsgroups.
Maybe someone was playing real-world "Monkey Island" and testing their insult sword-fighting skills on the Embarcardero forums?
There is also opportunity to buy used Boats. That sounds like buying copies of Delphi. The price sounds right - around 4,000 pieces of Gold or approx 4,000 Euros.
I wonder how much are the commissions Mr. Stan. made for selling one boat... err... one copy of Delphi?
Mr. Herman Toothrot would find it very comforting there is a dentist in the Embarcadero newsgroups...
Where about the Help Files for the game Monkey Island? There are none - You have to figure it all out yourself. Does that sound similar to real-life Delphi development?
The game-play in the "Secret of Monkey Island" feels like real-life Delphi software development. This blog posting is a humorous and satirical look on Delphi software development.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Humour: Delphi "Love"
Your reviewer was looking at several Delphi not-so-legal sites and really amused at them. I won't give any names, but it gives some ideas what to look for.
The first three are in Arabic and Persian language, from Egypt, Saudi and Iran respectively. It was really hard for your reviewer to browse the site, except using Google Translate (Arabic to English, Persian to English). The next three in Czech, Romanian and Spanish. Everyone probably knows the Czech site very well. There are two Russian site that are dedicated for this (Russian to English).
If you browse around these sites... You'll get 101 links to RapidShare, HotFiles and so on to download these things not-so-legally.
I love you... until you have no job and no money
Every now and then, these URLs to Rapidshare will go bad or stale. Why does this happen? The owners of TMS, DevExpress and Components4Developers are busy sending emails requesting those sites to delete illegal uploads to those sites.
The next obvious thing happens - these Delphi lovers re-upload the files to those file-sharing sites again and again and again and again and again ....
Here are some interesting suggestions for the Component vendors:
1) Some of the harder-to-reach URLs require some reputation, like 50 thanks, 100 thanks. Upload some other component to that site and protect it... and within 8 hours, you will get more than 100 thanks and be able to view these hard-to-reach URLs.
2) Buy the MaxMind GeoIP or IP location site and protect your downloads using it. If your user specify he is from America but the download IP from Russia, shut down the account.
3) Automate the routine. Use the same build utility (e.g., either Final Builder or AutomatedQA) to automate sending emails to these file-sharing sites to remove these links.
4) Consider better background checks of your customers.
The people who really love Delphi, do things such as spreading the "Component Love", spreading "free copies of Delphi", spreading all the serial numbers, cracks and so on...
They are going to cause Delphi sales to drop, Delphi-component sales to drop... When component vendors sees little or no sales, month after month, they will start to stop development and probably close shop.
Look at DevExpress. Their WinForms and WebForms NET components are 10 or 20 times more advanced than the Delphi components. Look at other Delphi component vendors. If they cannot sustain the business, they will close down and put their components on SourceForge.
It affects other Delphi developers indirectly. These Delphi developers are waiting for the next raise, better pay... they probably are sweating and working really hard to make things work... or out of job and out of money.
Thank You
Your reviewer says "thank you" to Delphi lovers for causing Delphi job losses, business failure, loss of revenue and causing Delphi developers to remain jobless.
Keep up the Delphi Lover cheers and warmth!
:)
The first three are in Arabic and Persian language, from Egypt, Saudi and Iran respectively. It was really hard for your reviewer to browse the site, except using Google Translate (Arabic to English, Persian to English). The next three in Czech, Romanian and Spanish. Everyone probably knows the Czech site very well. There are two Russian site that are dedicated for this (Russian to English).
If you browse around these sites... You'll get 101 links to RapidShare, HotFiles and so on to download these things not-so-legally.
I love you... until you have no job and no money
Every now and then, these URLs to Rapidshare will go bad or stale. Why does this happen? The owners of TMS, DevExpress and Components4Developers are busy sending emails requesting those sites to delete illegal uploads to those sites.
The next obvious thing happens - these Delphi lovers re-upload the files to those file-sharing sites again and again and again and again and again ....
Here are some interesting suggestions for the Component vendors:
1) Some of the harder-to-reach URLs require some reputation, like 50 thanks, 100 thanks. Upload some other component to that site and protect it... and within 8 hours, you will get more than 100 thanks and be able to view these hard-to-reach URLs.
2) Buy the MaxMind GeoIP or IP location site and protect your downloads using it. If your user specify he is from America but the download IP from Russia, shut down the account.
3) Automate the routine. Use the same build utility (e.g., either Final Builder or AutomatedQA) to automate sending emails to these file-sharing sites to remove these links.
4) Consider better background checks of your customers.
The people who really love Delphi, do things such as spreading the "Component Love", spreading "free copies of Delphi", spreading all the serial numbers, cracks and so on...
They are going to cause Delphi sales to drop, Delphi-component sales to drop... When component vendors sees little or no sales, month after month, they will start to stop development and probably close shop.
Look at DevExpress. Their WinForms and WebForms NET components are 10 or 20 times more advanced than the Delphi components. Look at other Delphi component vendors. If they cannot sustain the business, they will close down and put their components on SourceForge.
It affects other Delphi developers indirectly. These Delphi developers are waiting for the next raise, better pay... they probably are sweating and working really hard to make things work... or out of job and out of money.
Thank You
Your reviewer says "thank you" to Delphi lovers for causing Delphi job losses, business failure, loss of revenue and causing Delphi developers to remain jobless.
Keep up the Delphi Lover cheers and warmth!
:)
Job Searching: Delphi Job not found.
Your reviewer found some newsgroup gems:
Disturbing Trend:
"I've been searching for a new gig for several weeks now and have interviewed with several companies. Every company I've interviewed with has intentions of moving away from Delphi. This is a very disturbing trend.
When I ask why, invariably the perception is that Delphi is old and out dated. A company today told me that it was going to C# because "upgrading its Delphi 5 app to a later version would be too much trouble". It is willing to rewrite its software in another language rather than upgrade!
How do we change this perception?"
Lajos writes:
I don't think so. At the moment in the USA I'm afraid it's more hard to find any Delphi job. I'm looking for 4 month without any luck.
In some job postings there is a Delphi as a language they need a developer with a Delphi skill enough just to make some changes. But most of time Delphi is just a legacy product they did and moved to C#.
Mr David writes:
What makes you think the perception is wrong?
If you look at history for this past decade, the Borland (Delphi/C++ Builder VCL products) have lagged behind their major competitor, Microsoft, by months, often years.
They 'owned' the C++ market prior to C++ Builder, but then gave away compatibility (and the ability to write drivers, etc.) when they made the VCL switch to C++ Builder. They still haven't made it possible use C++ Builder stuff in Delphi, which means that there C++ product is essentially a 'stub' product.
The whole 'Delphi.NET' stuff showed how impossible it was going to be to keep pace with MS, especially on their own turf. It finally became obvious even to Borland, and they terminated it.
The fact that they are so far behind on the 64-bit curve shows that they are continuing that trend, and the fact that documentation is still so poor (let alone in comparison to the MS offerings) means that there is no way to get new folks reasonably involved in the product.
If I were a software manager, looking at a completely subjective breakdown of doing a re-write of the software (for any of several ancillary reasons, such as new features of the operating systems, larger memory needs, new GUI features, etc.), then the evaluation of doing a re-write in C# vs. doing an upgrade/add-on in Delphi, looking at who I think will be keeping up with technology for the NEXT decade, the record of reliability/support for the product, etc., I'd be hard-pressed to argue that a company should stay with Delphi.
Embarcadero really hasn't done much to fix this, either, and I do understand that they're living with the baggage that Borland left behind, but that is part of what they bought when they bought the product line.
Here's one aspect of how things could have been 'better' over the years:
-- I don't know how much "catch-up" they can do from this point, but hopefully you'll get the drift.
1. Embarcadero should be their own third-party vendor (at least for many things). Folks argue that they can't possibly lower the price of the product, they need the revenue stream. I would argue that I spend as much, or more, on third-party tools as I do on the basic product itself. With the loss of TurboPower, for example, there was a market for (at least maintaining/updating) that type of product line. I have/use the TMS line of products, but the documentation is HORRID (arguably worse than Delphi, which is saying something). I use madExcept, some scheduling tools, charting tools, etc. If Embarcadero LOWERED the price of the main tool, and charged for some 'additional modules' (i.e., third-party add-ons), that would be a significant revenue stream.
2. Documentation. This means getting some books out, or re-issuing some of the old ones (buy the @^!*# rights from some of the authors, for heavens' sake, and re-issue them as free PDF files, if nothing else). Get the help system working, even if it means doing one from scratch. Get the samples updated/working, etc. Do a WHOLE LOT of white papers, 'how to' guides, upgrading guides, etc.
3. Do better with the quality assurance/beta tests. Lots of ways this can be handled, but the current methods simply aren't working very well. Just look at how poorly the 'update' functions work in your OWN PRODUCT -- you can't even tell if product is current, you often have to manually download updates, installation procedures fail, etc.
4. Get rid of the 'product activation' crap, and go back to the simpler methods of licensing. I'm not going to re-argue the whole activation/licensing thing right now, but I am absolutely convinced that this stuff provides no real benefit overall for most software. I, and most folks I know, will actively shy away from using products that require this, or finding methods to subvert it. It just creates problems for the 'honest' user, and doesn't really discourage the dishonest ones for more than five minutes. That's my short list...
:)
Disturbing Trend:
"I've been searching for a new gig for several weeks now and have interviewed with several companies. Every company I've interviewed with has intentions of moving away from Delphi. This is a very disturbing trend.
When I ask why, invariably the perception is that Delphi is old and out dated. A company today told me that it was going to C# because "upgrading its Delphi 5 app to a later version would be too much trouble". It is willing to rewrite its software in another language rather than upgrade!
How do we change this perception?"
Lajos writes:
I don't think so. At the moment in the USA I'm afraid it's more hard to find any Delphi job. I'm looking for 4 month without any luck.
In some job postings there is a Delphi as a language they need a developer with a Delphi skill enough just to make some changes. But most of time Delphi is just a legacy product they did and moved to C#.
Mr David writes:
What makes you think the perception is wrong?
If you look at history for this past decade, the Borland (Delphi/C++ Builder VCL products) have lagged behind their major competitor, Microsoft, by months, often years.
They 'owned' the C++ market prior to C++ Builder, but then gave away compatibility (and the ability to write drivers, etc.) when they made the VCL switch to C++ Builder. They still haven't made it possible use C++ Builder stuff in Delphi, which means that there C++ product is essentially a 'stub' product.
The whole 'Delphi.NET' stuff showed how impossible it was going to be to keep pace with MS, especially on their own turf. It finally became obvious even to Borland, and they terminated it.
The fact that they are so far behind on the 64-bit curve shows that they are continuing that trend, and the fact that documentation is still so poor (let alone in comparison to the MS offerings) means that there is no way to get new folks reasonably involved in the product.
If I were a software manager, looking at a completely subjective breakdown of doing a re-write of the software (for any of several ancillary reasons, such as new features of the operating systems, larger memory needs, new GUI features, etc.), then the evaluation of doing a re-write in C# vs. doing an upgrade/add-on in Delphi, looking at who I think will be keeping up with technology for the NEXT decade, the record of reliability/support for the product, etc., I'd be hard-pressed to argue that a company should stay with Delphi.
Embarcadero really hasn't done much to fix this, either, and I do understand that they're living with the baggage that Borland left behind, but that is part of what they bought when they bought the product line.
Here's one aspect of how things could have been 'better' over the years:
-- I don't know how much "catch-up" they can do from this point, but hopefully you'll get the drift.
1. Embarcadero should be their own third-party vendor (at least for many things). Folks argue that they can't possibly lower the price of the product, they need the revenue stream. I would argue that I spend as much, or more, on third-party tools as I do on the basic product itself. With the loss of TurboPower, for example, there was a market for (at least maintaining/updating) that type of product line. I have/use the TMS line of products, but the documentation is HORRID (arguably worse than Delphi, which is saying something). I use madExcept, some scheduling tools, charting tools, etc. If Embarcadero LOWERED the price of the main tool, and charged for some 'additional modules' (i.e., third-party add-ons), that would be a significant revenue stream.
2. Documentation. This means getting some books out, or re-issuing some of the old ones (buy the @^!*# rights from some of the authors, for heavens' sake, and re-issue them as free PDF files, if nothing else). Get the help system working, even if it means doing one from scratch. Get the samples updated/working, etc. Do a WHOLE LOT of white papers, 'how to' guides, upgrading guides, etc.
3. Do better with the quality assurance/beta tests. Lots of ways this can be handled, but the current methods simply aren't working very well. Just look at how poorly the 'update' functions work in your OWN PRODUCT -- you can't even tell if product is current, you often have to manually download updates, installation procedures fail, etc.
4. Get rid of the 'product activation' crap, and go back to the simpler methods of licensing. I'm not going to re-argue the whole activation/licensing thing right now, but I am absolutely convinced that this stuff provides no real benefit overall for most software. I, and most folks I know, will actively shy away from using products that require this, or finding methods to subvert it. It just creates problems for the 'honest' user, and doesn't really discourage the dishonest ones for more than five minutes. That's my short list...
:)
Core Values: 64-bit "Love"
Your reviewer was looking at yet-another-64-bit-thread on Embarcadero's newsgroups and found one particular vendor could not scale beyond 4 gigs.
NewsLeecher, written by Mr. Simon Horup has a serious problem none of his competitors face, his product cannot scale beyond 4 gigs as his product uses all 4 gigs of memory. Mr Simon Horup says:
"I'm having similar problems with the news reader ( NewsLeecher ) I'm developing, using Delphi.
Furthermore, a 64 bit release of our news reader, is one of the most requested features we get. Literally every single day, users ask us why we haven't made a 64 bit release available yet, referring to our main binary
news reader competitors, who have all released 64 bit versions year(s) ago. And all I can tell them, is that I have no idea whatsoever, when I will be able to provide them what they want in that regards. Something I find really frustating and unprofessional."
Just imagine how you would be in Mr. Simon Horup situation. Everyday, literally someone is asking for a 64-bit version of their product and he cannot deliver such product. That means lost sales, lost time and need to port to either MFC or C# or Java... (either way, at least C# and Java can scale)
In the weeks, months to come... Mr. Simon Horup will probably lose all his customers... because his product cannot utilize the millions of posts on those usenet forums.
Everyone is starting to ask for a 64-bit executables. If Embarcadero cannot deliver an x64 compiler soon... there will be no money coming in to pay for the bills, the wages/salary for the developers, might as well get another job or learn another language...
VB.NET, C#, WinForms, WebForms, MFC C++, QT C++ compiles in less than one second, works with 64-bits and is here today...
:)
NewsLeecher, written by Mr. Simon Horup has a serious problem none of his competitors face, his product cannot scale beyond 4 gigs as his product uses all 4 gigs of memory. Mr Simon Horup says:
"I'm having similar problems with the news reader ( NewsLeecher ) I'm developing, using Delphi.
Furthermore, a 64 bit release of our news reader, is one of the most requested features we get. Literally every single day, users ask us why we haven't made a 64 bit release available yet, referring to our main binary
news reader competitors, who have all released 64 bit versions year(s) ago. And all I can tell them, is that I have no idea whatsoever, when I will be able to provide them what they want in that regards. Something I find really frustating and unprofessional."
Just imagine how you would be in Mr. Simon Horup situation. Everyday, literally someone is asking for a 64-bit version of their product and he cannot deliver such product. That means lost sales, lost time and need to port to either MFC or C# or Java... (either way, at least C# and Java can scale)
In the weeks, months to come... Mr. Simon Horup will probably lose all his customers... because his product cannot utilize the millions of posts on those usenet forums.
Everyone is starting to ask for a 64-bit executables. If Embarcadero cannot deliver an x64 compiler soon... there will be no money coming in to pay for the bills, the wages/salary for the developers, might as well get another job or learn another language...
VB.NET, C#, WinForms, WebForms, MFC C++, QT C++ compiles in less than one second, works with 64-bits and is here today...
:)
Core Values: Threading Problems
Your reviewer found an unpopular posting by synopse (you can read it and jump back to this site) and read about how slow Delphi applications are.
Your reviewer brought an Intel Core i7 - 980, 16gigs RAM, Intel SSD HDD and x64 Windows 2008 as personal workstation because your reviewer could not tolerate slow Visual C++ compiles, somewhat slow speeds for C# compiles...
Pride comes before the fall...
Everyone in the whole world thinks C#.NET applications smells stinky and since it's written in NET - these applications are slow and consume valuable memory...
Here comes applications built with Delphi showing-off the supposedly fast memory manager (FastMM), new, improved speeds and supposedly faster maths...
The reality is:
- Delphi multi-threaded applications utilize just one core. if you have a Delphi app, all cores just freeze and your Delphi app runs like as it was sitting on a single core. Even if you have 2 or 3 cores... or 4 or 6 or maybe 16 cores... your Delphi app runs like as it was sitting on a single core.
- The maths is based on i486 with some FastCode MMX assembly in the RTL.
- There are serious threading issues
Delphi for scalable apps? Don't bet your career on it...
Delphi apps that could possibly scale and provide better performance and speed are "not there yet" while Visual C++, Java and NET applications are "there". Since Delphi apps cannot "perform" and "scale", the race is over before it has started.
To fix these issues, you need to fix issues with the Delphi Compiler and provide better multi-threading support...Of course, only Embarcadero can do this...
But wait -
Embarcadero is probably preparing for Delphi 2011 launch (ref: www.delphi.org - "It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking CodeRage is pretty close to the release of the new version of Delphi, not that anyone will be surprised by that time frame.")
Let's hope these multithreading issues are fixed in Delphi 2011... or maybe in Delphi 2012 or ... Delphi 2015 or ...
Your reviewer brought an Intel Core i7 - 980, 16gigs RAM, Intel SSD HDD and x64 Windows 2008 as personal workstation because your reviewer could not tolerate slow Visual C++ compiles, somewhat slow speeds for C# compiles...
Pride comes before the fall...
Everyone in the whole world thinks C#.NET applications smells stinky and since it's written in NET - these applications are slow and consume valuable memory...
Here comes applications built with Delphi showing-off the supposedly fast memory manager (FastMM), new, improved speeds and supposedly faster maths...
The reality is:
- Delphi multi-threaded applications utilize just one core. if you have a Delphi app, all cores just freeze and your Delphi app runs like as it was sitting on a single core. Even if you have 2 or 3 cores... or 4 or 6 or maybe 16 cores... your Delphi app runs like as it was sitting on a single core.
- The maths is based on i486 with some FastCode MMX assembly in the RTL.
- There are serious threading issues
Quoted:
- Default memory manager, i.e. FastMM4, uses a LOCKed asm instruction for every memory allocation or dis-allocation.
- string types and dynamic arrays just use the same LOCKed asm instruction everywhere, i.e. for every access which may lead into a write to the string.
Delphi for scalable apps? Don't bet your career on it...
Delphi apps that could possibly scale and provide better performance and speed are "not there yet" while Visual C++, Java and NET applications are "there". Since Delphi apps cannot "perform" and "scale", the race is over before it has started.
To fix these issues, you need to fix issues with the Delphi Compiler and provide better multi-threading support...Of course, only Embarcadero can do this...
But wait -
Embarcadero is probably preparing for Delphi 2011 launch (ref: www.delphi.org - "It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking CodeRage is pretty close to the release of the new version of Delphi, not that anyone will be surprised by that time frame.")
Let's hope these multithreading issues are fixed in Delphi 2011... or maybe in Delphi 2012 or ... Delphi 2015 or ...
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Humour: Amnesty for Delphi Developers
Your reviewer thinks Embarcadero is going to start many legal lawsuits and truely milk the Delphi-cash cow.
How will Embarcadero do so?
The first legal lawsuit was against a bozo Delphi developer living in South America. That bozo person uploaded the files, posted the download information to certain warez forums and said "Please turn off Internet Access to Delphi 2010 and install it inside a Virtual Machine", so Delphi will not call home. Unfortunately, most of the idiots on certain warez forum are deaf, dumb, lazy and stupid - so they installed it on multiple computers, all over the world. Eventually, Embarcadero traced down that bozo Delphi developer and sued his employer, but his employer blamed that bozo Delphi developer for doing this and was not responsible for it.
Your reviewer got some private information from certain lawyers and estimates the cost of settling such lawsuit is about US$25,000 per user (ignore older prices - this US$25,000 settlement figure is more accurate). If you have 5 Delphi developers, that will be US$125,000 in fines. If you have 10 Delphi developers, make sure all of them are properly licensed and good luck you do not get your business shut-down :).
(That's also good for the Delphi jobs market. Got another software developer using Delphi? Not enough licenses? -- too bad, no job)
Forensic Analysis
The following statements are subject to peer-review, but I did check it for D2007, D2009, D2010 -
Your reviewer did some forensic analysis into Delphi. Starting from Delphi 2007, Delphi installs certain files which will collect forensic information and send it to Borland's, (formerly called CodeGear, now called Embarcadero) servers on regular basis.
Ever since your reviewer posted his white-hat analysis to aid Embarcadero some time ago, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010 collects more information than previously and used low-level WinSock (which will not trigger off Windows Firewall) and send it off over the Internet.
How will this information aid Embarcadero?
Most of the IP addresses in the whole world can be traced to a certain ISP, a certain user, a certain company who is illegally using Delphi and all Embarcadero has to do is match IP addresses to Delphi calling home for long periods of time.
If that person is licensed and fully paid-up, no problem, Embarcadero closes one eye on him. If that person is... not licensed, abuses his serial number, or do funny things... and living in an European, Australian, or USA, or some modern day country where the legal system is not very transparent - good luck to those people.
How will they get there?The first place to look at is built with Delphi list, if any bozo company dares to advertise they are using Delphi or provide services for Delphi - that company better get their act together and start getting legal before they get nasty lawsuits. The next place is to get backup from certain warez forums. Your reviewer found some forum are selling such information (yes, believe it or not).
The next funny thing is those forums are fake, so you can imagine a bait-car situation. You know, you see the thief stealing the car and then the car gets shut down. In this case, the forum would have all the IP address information which will then be shared with Embarcadero and the people with highest thanks will be prime targets.
Your reviewer noticed it that many "highly-respected" members suspected this and started to withdraw their participation. That leaves the stupid Delphi developers who do not know any better and few months later (from now), the Feds will start to move in and stop the whole thing It will be mass-orgy, mass master-baiting and fun, real fun. :)
How many software pirates are there?
Your reviewer did some estimating. Your reviewer thinks there are 50,000 Delphi software pirates. This is counting the "thanks", "uploaders" and other analysis over several forums.
50,000 Delphi software pirates translates to approx US$750,000,000 in new sales for Embarcadero -- that would probably give Embarcadero enough money to finance a new Delphi x64 compiler everyone is waiting for...
Your reviewer looked at the last quarter results from Embarcadero - while Embarcadero is not a public company, your reviewer looked at how sickly and pathetic Delphi sales are. Either way, if there's going to be an amnesty now, your reviewer thinks, Embarcadero will start going after their customer base and get more sales.
Delphi, the new virtual prison
I think everyone knows in order to develop in Delphi, or do any business in Delphi, you need to have licensed products. Your reviewer was paying heavily, heavily to make sure all of these are licensed and proper... except some stupid people who think they can save money.
It becomes a prison of sorts - if you cannot pay your bills, you cannot pay this, and all the money goes to pay for 3rd party (or maybe 4th party), Delphi, and this Delphi (thing) and that Delphi (thing)...
United Nations of Installed Dephi Products (or uninstall Delphi)
That gives some people good reason to do the right thing -
1) Get the boss that if Delphi is not making enough sales or Delphi business is very bad.
2) Tell the Delphi developers to switch to C#, VB.NET or Java or PHP or Ruby...
3) Uninstall Delphi.
4) If the Delphi developers, after some time, cannot adapt and move to C# or VB.NET or Java or other languages, just tell them their services are not needed anymore.
You can look at the jobs forums where several people posts on the Embarcadero.jobs or other job sites that - their company is moving from Delphi to C#, or Delphi to Java, etc. and they no longer need Delphi Developers anymore.
Your reviewer is waiting for few more weeks more, and waiting for the fun to start...
:)
The link is here:
http://www.embarcadero.com/get-legal
So you know what to do before it's too late. Salvation or Redemption or Damnation...
How will Embarcadero do so?
The first legal lawsuit was against a bozo Delphi developer living in South America. That bozo person uploaded the files, posted the download information to certain warez forums and said "Please turn off Internet Access to Delphi 2010 and install it inside a Virtual Machine", so Delphi will not call home. Unfortunately, most of the idiots on certain warez forum are deaf, dumb, lazy and stupid - so they installed it on multiple computers, all over the world. Eventually, Embarcadero traced down that bozo Delphi developer and sued his employer, but his employer blamed that bozo Delphi developer for doing this and was not responsible for it.
Your reviewer got some private information from certain lawyers and estimates the cost of settling such lawsuit is about US$25,000 per user (ignore older prices - this US$25,000 settlement figure is more accurate). If you have 5 Delphi developers, that will be US$125,000 in fines. If you have 10 Delphi developers, make sure all of them are properly licensed and good luck you do not get your business shut-down :).
(That's also good for the Delphi jobs market. Got another software developer using Delphi? Not enough licenses? -- too bad, no job)
Forensic Analysis
The following statements are subject to peer-review, but I did check it for D2007, D2009, D2010 -
Your reviewer did some forensic analysis into Delphi. Starting from Delphi 2007, Delphi installs certain files which will collect forensic information and send it to Borland's, (formerly called CodeGear, now called Embarcadero) servers on regular basis.
Ever since your reviewer posted his white-hat analysis to aid Embarcadero some time ago, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010 collects more information than previously and used low-level WinSock (which will not trigger off Windows Firewall) and send it off over the Internet.
How will this information aid Embarcadero?
Most of the IP addresses in the whole world can be traced to a certain ISP, a certain user, a certain company who is illegally using Delphi and all Embarcadero has to do is match IP addresses to Delphi calling home for long periods of time.
If that person is licensed and fully paid-up, no problem, Embarcadero closes one eye on him. If that person is... not licensed, abuses his serial number, or do funny things... and living in an European, Australian, or USA, or some modern day country where the legal system is not very transparent - good luck to those people.
How will they get there?The first place to look at is built with Delphi list, if any bozo company dares to advertise they are using Delphi or provide services for Delphi - that company better get their act together and start getting legal before they get nasty lawsuits. The next place is to get backup from certain warez forums. Your reviewer found some forum are selling such information (yes, believe it or not).
The next funny thing is those forums are fake, so you can imagine a bait-car situation. You know, you see the thief stealing the car and then the car gets shut down. In this case, the forum would have all the IP address information which will then be shared with Embarcadero and the people with highest thanks will be prime targets.
Your reviewer noticed it that many "highly-respected" members suspected this and started to withdraw their participation. That leaves the stupid Delphi developers who do not know any better and few months later (from now), the Feds will start to move in and stop the whole thing It will be mass-orgy, mass master-baiting and fun, real fun. :)
How many software pirates are there?
Your reviewer did some estimating. Your reviewer thinks there are 50,000 Delphi software pirates. This is counting the "thanks", "uploaders" and other analysis over several forums.
50,000 Delphi software pirates translates to approx US$750,000,000 in new sales for Embarcadero -- that would probably give Embarcadero enough money to finance a new Delphi x64 compiler everyone is waiting for...
Your reviewer looked at the last quarter results from Embarcadero - while Embarcadero is not a public company, your reviewer looked at how sickly and pathetic Delphi sales are. Either way, if there's going to be an amnesty now, your reviewer thinks, Embarcadero will start going after their customer base and get more sales.
Delphi, the new virtual prison
I think everyone knows in order to develop in Delphi, or do any business in Delphi, you need to have licensed products. Your reviewer was paying heavily, heavily to make sure all of these are licensed and proper... except some stupid people who think they can save money.
It becomes a prison of sorts - if you cannot pay your bills, you cannot pay this, and all the money goes to pay for 3rd party (or maybe 4th party), Delphi, and this Delphi (thing) and that Delphi (thing)...
United Nations of Installed Dephi Products (or uninstall Delphi)
That gives some people good reason to do the right thing -
1) Get the boss that if Delphi is not making enough sales or Delphi business is very bad.
2) Tell the Delphi developers to switch to C#, VB.NET or Java or PHP or Ruby...
3) Uninstall Delphi.
4) If the Delphi developers, after some time, cannot adapt and move to C# or VB.NET or Java or other languages, just tell them their services are not needed anymore.
You can look at the jobs forums where several people posts on the Embarcadero.jobs or other job sites that - their company is moving from Delphi to C#, or Delphi to Java, etc. and they no longer need Delphi Developers anymore.
Your reviewer is waiting for few more weeks more, and waiting for the fun to start...
:)
The link is here:
http://www.embarcadero.com/get-legal
So you know what to do before it's too late. Salvation or Redemption or Damnation...
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Vendors who stopped supporting Delphi
Vendors who went out of business
athrasoft.com - Vendor of Athrasoft Plugins
cgiexpert.com - Vendor of CGIExpert
odbc98.com - Vendor of ODBC98 - reason cited as poor or non-existent sales
classicsw.com - Vendor of Classic Component
fesoft.com - Vendor of PIMFlash
turbopower.com - Vendor of TurboPower Components
maxcomponents.net - Vendor of Max Help and Max Components
buypin.com - Vendor of B.S. components
vistadb.com - Vendor of Apollo database
asp-express.com - Vendor of classic ASP components
classicworks.com.au - Vendor of Classworks Development VCL
defined.net - Vendor of Defined Forms
dream-com.com - Vendor of Dream Company
crynesoft.com - Vendor of Genesis Component Pack
teletech-systems.com - HelpWriter application
volgadb.com - Vendor of Volga Database
DFS (Delphi Free Stuff)
animatedmenus.com - Vendor of Animated Menus - cited Poor sales
acctsync.com - Vendor of QuickBooks Components
DuckReports - Vendor of Duck Reporting Components
BalticSolutions - Vendor of ColorMemo
Helping Hands Software - n/a
UDC Corp - Vendor of MemoWriter, PowerSpreadsheet
IBrightSolutions - Vendor of Simulation Software
Unley Software - KeyDB
Vendors who stopped supporting Delphi
Softel VDM - Vendor of SftTree, SftBox, SftButton - reason cited as "massive software piracy"
AHM Tritron Tools - Vendor of AHM Components
adrock.com - Adrock Calendar Components (GPL)
tekhnologos.com - Their VCL library is no longer for licensing
SweetControls.com - Sweet Controls
degisy.com - Degisy Controls
Vendors whose Website is not updated for long time
utilmind.com
appcontrols.com
columbusoft.com, visualaccounting.com
obsoft.com - ABC Components
borshack.com
shellplus.com
VTK Tools Company - GridReport, PReport and VtkExport.
Timur Islamov - Diamond Access
Skyline Tools Imaging -> Makers of ImageLib
Dimeric Rinse
Asta - no public Delphi 2009 release (yet)
Spider Object Database
SAP/Crystal Report - their comps is Delphi 6/7.
See also: Part 2
athrasoft.com - Vendor of Athrasoft Plugins
cgiexpert.com - Vendor of CGIExpert
odbc98.com - Vendor of ODBC98 - reason cited as poor or non-existent sales
classicsw.com - Vendor of Classic Component
fesoft.com - Vendor of PIMFlash
turbopower.com - Vendor of TurboPower Components
maxcomponents.net - Vendor of Max Help and Max Components
buypin.com - Vendor of B.S. components
vistadb.com - Vendor of Apollo database
asp-express.com - Vendor of classic ASP components
classicworks.com.au - Vendor of Classworks Development VCL
defined.net - Vendor of Defined Forms
dream-com.com - Vendor of Dream Company
crynesoft.com - Vendor of Genesis Component Pack
teletech-systems.com - HelpWriter application
volgadb.com - Vendor of Volga Database
DFS (Delphi Free Stuff)
animatedmenus.com - Vendor of Animated Menus - cited Poor sales
acctsync.com - Vendor of QuickBooks Components
DuckReports - Vendor of Duck Reporting Components
BalticSolutions - Vendor of ColorMemo
Helping Hands Software - n/a
UDC Corp - Vendor of MemoWriter, PowerSpreadsheet
IBrightSolutions - Vendor of Simulation Software
Unley Software - KeyDB
Vendors who stopped supporting Delphi
Softel VDM - Vendor of SftTree, SftBox, SftButton - reason cited as "massive software piracy"
AHM Tritron Tools - Vendor of AHM Components
adrock.com - Adrock Calendar Components (GPL)
tekhnologos.com - Their VCL library is no longer for licensing
SweetControls.com - Sweet Controls
degisy.com - Degisy Controls
Vendors whose Website is not updated for long time
utilmind.com
appcontrols.com
columbusoft.com, visualaccounting.com
obsoft.com - ABC Components
borshack.com
shellplus.com
VTK Tools Company - GridReport, PReport and VtkExport.
Timur Islamov - Diamond Access
Skyline Tools Imaging -> Makers of ImageLib
Dimeric Rinse
Asta - no public Delphi 2009 release (yet)
Spider Object Database
SAP/Crystal Report - their comps is Delphi 6/7.
See also: Part 2
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Newsgroup Forgiveness
Your reviewer was looking at this post[1] by Mr. Simon Kissel. You might remember him in one of my blog posts where your reviewer mentions Mr. Simon Kissel got into a fight on the newsgroups and all manner of insults were said to him.
Fast forward to today, four years have passed. That is 1,460 days. Today, Mr Simon Kissel says:
No, the reason my stuff [posts] here is deleted most likely ... some people who tend not to forgive & forget past fights even after 4 years."
Now let me change topic to forgiveness. For your reviewer, it is almost 12 years had passed (4,380 days) and if your reviewer posts to Embarcadero's newsgroups today, your reviewer will get the same treatment as Mr. Simon Kissel did.
Why do I mention about forgiveness? Look at how long has passed. For Mr. Simon Kissel, 1,460 days has passed and the people on the newsgroups have not forgiven. For your reviewer, more than 4,380 days has passed and the people on the newsgroups gave same treatment to your reviewer, like as if there is no sense of forgiveness and no mercy.
Let me change topics to the religion that some of these people believe in. The Lord Jesus Christ, in his parable Matthew 18:21-35. Since many people don't read the bible, I will paste the texts here:
Then Peter approaching said to him,
"Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me
and shall I forgive him?
Up to seven times?"
Jesus says to him, "I do not tell you up to seven times,
but up to seventy times seven.
For this reason the sovereignty of heaven is like a king,
who wished to settle accounts with his servants.
As he began the accounting,
one debtor of ten thousand talents was brought to him.
And as he did not have it to pay back,
the Lord commanded him and his wife and children
and everything he had to be sold, and it be paid back.
"So the servant fell on his knees to him saying,
'Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything to you.'
And empathizing with that servant the lord released him,
and forgave him the loan.
"But going out that servant found one of his fellow servants,
who owed him a hundred days' wages,
and grabbing him he choked him
saying, 'Pay back if you owe anything.'
"So falling down his fellow servant begged him
saying, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
"And he did not want to,
but going away he threw him into prison
until he should pay back the debt.
"So seeing what happened
his fellow servants were deeply grieved,
and coming explained to the lord themselves
everything that happened.
"Then his lord calling him says to him, 'Bad servant,
I forgave you all that debt, since you begged me to;
must not you also have mercy on your fellow servant,
as I had mercy on you?'
"And being angry his lord gave him over to the jailers
until he should pay back all the debt to him.
Thus also my heavenly Father will do to you,
unless you each forgive your brother from your hearts."
Matthew 18:21-35
Your reviewer is really sick of the contempt, ridicules and stupid remarks faced on the newsgroups. It's amazing that TeamB never cancels these manner of insults but any bad remarks to TeamB or to Borland or CodeGear or to now, Embarcadero's staff, they are just cancelled. Or how they continue this hypocrisy where there is "Delphi Love" but hate thy enemy instead.
Fast forward to the future, say, 2015. It will be almost 15 years, the same old people will be there too (except those who passed away). It will be 5,475 days and your reviewer will post to the newsgroups and no surprise, get the same shabby treatment.
Let's not talk about Lazarus and the Rich Man:
There was a rich manDelphi developer who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's Side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hell,where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.' But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.' He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.' 'No, Father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'
Which comes to the next topic. Many years ago, your reviewer was constantly arguing with one guy, who was described as a person passionate about Delphi to his very last days. I told him politely to stop his insults to me just because he don't agree with what I said. He was so full of hate that eventually I gave up posting to the newsgroup, but lo and behold - that person picked up a fight with other people too, and gave all sorts of insults, slurs and animosity such that those other people, probably stopped using Delphi altogether.
Your reviewer still remember, hi ______, I'm sorry, can you forgive me? click - the phone went dead.
There really does not need much to be said about this matter onwards and for whatever reason, five, ten or twenty years later, forget it. It's not worth saying anymore. If you cannot forgive a damn in your heart, just remember why I wrote this blog for...
Why is this called Delphi Hater's blog?
Because your reviewer is sick of the hypocrisy these Delphi-lovers give:
- like this ridiculous software piracy issue where Mr. Kim Bo Madsen, Mr. Bruno Fiens, and others have to constantly monitor warez sites to delete the warez links,
- this money issue where the vendors are not paid and people use all illegal software instead of proper licensing,
- this attitude on the newsgroups where people who you do not agree with are treated with concept and ridicule,
- this vendor attitude where it seems like buying 3rd party is like buying used-cars, the vendor disappears, or the vendor does not fix bugs (more like extortion) except annual payments,
- this "employee" attitude where people seem to do poor works and expect high salaries.
or ... all hypocrisy in other words.
[1] https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=40300
Fast forward to today, four years have passed. That is 1,460 days. Today, Mr Simon Kissel says:
No, the reason my stuff [posts] here is deleted most likely ... some people who tend not to forgive & forget past fights even after 4 years."
Now let me change topic to forgiveness. For your reviewer, it is almost 12 years had passed (4,380 days) and if your reviewer posts to Embarcadero's newsgroups today, your reviewer will get the same treatment as Mr. Simon Kissel did.
Why do I mention about forgiveness? Look at how long has passed. For Mr. Simon Kissel, 1,460 days has passed and the people on the newsgroups have not forgiven. For your reviewer, more than 4,380 days has passed and the people on the newsgroups gave same treatment to your reviewer, like as if there is no sense of forgiveness and no mercy.
Let me change topics to the religion that some of these people believe in. The Lord Jesus Christ, in his parable Matthew 18:21-35. Since many people don't read the bible, I will paste the texts here:
Then Peter approaching said to him,
"Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me
and shall I forgive him?
Up to seven times?"
Jesus says to him, "I do not tell you up to seven times,
but up to seventy times seven.
For this reason the sovereignty of heaven is like a king,
who wished to settle accounts with his servants.
As he began the accounting,
one debtor of ten thousand talents was brought to him.
And as he did not have it to pay back,
the Lord commanded him and his wife and children
and everything he had to be sold, and it be paid back.
"So the servant fell on his knees to him saying,
'Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything to you.'
And empathizing with that servant the lord released him,
and forgave him the loan.
"But going out that servant found one of his fellow servants,
who owed him a hundred days' wages,
and grabbing him he choked him
saying, 'Pay back if you owe anything.'
"So falling down his fellow servant begged him
saying, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
"And he did not want to,
but going away he threw him into prison
until he should pay back the debt.
"So seeing what happened
his fellow servants were deeply grieved,
and coming explained to the lord themselves
everything that happened.
"Then his lord calling him says to him, 'Bad servant,
I forgave you all that debt, since you begged me to;
must not you also have mercy on your fellow servant,
as I had mercy on you?'
"And being angry his lord gave him over to the jailers
until he should pay back all the debt to him.
Thus also my heavenly Father will do to you,
unless you each forgive your brother from your hearts."
Matthew 18:21-35
Your reviewer is really sick of the contempt, ridicules and stupid remarks faced on the newsgroups. It's amazing that TeamB never cancels these manner of insults but any bad remarks to TeamB or to Borland or CodeGear or to now, Embarcadero's staff, they are just cancelled. Or how they continue this hypocrisy where there is "Delphi Love" but hate thy enemy instead.
Fast forward to the future, say, 2015. It will be almost 15 years, the same old people will be there too (except those who passed away). It will be 5,475 days and your reviewer will post to the newsgroups and no surprise, get the same shabby treatment.
Let's not talk about Lazarus and the Rich Man:
There was a rich man
Which comes to the next topic. Many years ago, your reviewer was constantly arguing with one guy, who was described as a person passionate about Delphi to his very last days. I told him politely to stop his insults to me just because he don't agree with what I said. He was so full of hate that eventually I gave up posting to the newsgroup, but lo and behold - that person picked up a fight with other people too, and gave all sorts of insults, slurs and animosity such that those other people, probably stopped using Delphi altogether.
Your reviewer still remember, hi ______, I'm sorry, can you forgive me? click - the phone went dead.
There really does not need much to be said about this matter onwards and for whatever reason, five, ten or twenty years later, forget it. It's not worth saying anymore. If you cannot forgive a damn in your heart, just remember why I wrote this blog for...
Why is this called Delphi Hater's blog?
Because your reviewer is sick of the hypocrisy these Delphi-lovers give:
- like this ridiculous software piracy issue where Mr. Kim Bo Madsen, Mr. Bruno Fiens, and others have to constantly monitor warez sites to delete the warez links,
- this money issue where the vendors are not paid and people use all illegal software instead of proper licensing,
- this attitude on the newsgroups where people who you do not agree with are treated with concept and ridicule,
- this vendor attitude where it seems like buying 3rd party is like buying used-cars, the vendor disappears, or the vendor does not fix bugs (more like extortion) except annual payments,
- this "employee" attitude where people seem to do poor works and expect high salaries.
or ... all hypocrisy in other words.
[1] https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=40300
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Embarcadero Technologies Anagram
Your reviewer was reading The Da Vinci Code and wondered if there was real-life conspiracy?
Could it be EMBARCADERO TECHNOLOGIES is an anagram for "A BORLAND HERETIC EGO COMES" and the sudden departure of Nick Hodges be the work of FreePascal users? There's a Masonic Wheeler posting here and there... Don't be surprised there's also an albino person lurking around the newsgroups too...
Maybe the holy grail is the hidden 64-bit compiler? When it comes in Sept 2012, it will be few more months before the end of the world...
:)
Could it be EMBARCADERO TECHNOLOGIES is an anagram for "A BORLAND HERETIC EGO COMES" and the sudden departure of Nick Hodges be the work of FreePascal users? There's a Masonic Wheeler posting here and there... Don't be surprised there's also an albino person lurking around the newsgroups too...
Maybe the holy grail is the hidden 64-bit compiler? When it comes in Sept 2012, it will be few more months before the end of the world...
:)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Spare Change
The situation is currently unfolding raises more questions than answers about Mr. Nick Hodge's departure:
Embarcadero can probably get any good manager a dime a dozen, but Nick's work is worth a nickel.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_silence
2) http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/megaphone+diplomacy.html
- Why is there "radio-silence"(1) at Embarcadero about Mr. Nick Hodges departure? When Mr. Todd Nelson departed, there was an official press release. Nick himself had to post to the newsgroups to explain what happened.
What kind of Developer Relations is it that when a senior member is let go and there are no official announcements?
- Why is it necessary for customers to engage in "megaphone diplomacy" (2) ? Is the customer service department so tied up in bureaucracy such that customers need to post a newsgroup posting to get some help?
Will the new product manager, Mr. Michael Rezlog, will customers have a kind person to turn to when they have issues?
- Why is there no sympathy and appreciation for Mr. Nick Hodges? Look at this post. What the Embarcadero people did was swat flies and post stupid newsgroup replies
After Mr. Nick Hodges leaves, will Delphi developers know what's going on?
There is still not even one single post about 64-bit Delphi yet.
Embarcadero can probably get any good manager a dime a dozen, but Nick's work is worth a nickel.
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_silence
2) http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/megaphone+diplomacy.html
Friday, July 16, 2010
A Nick of time
The problems with Delphi may be too great to fix
Your reviewer was saddened by Nick Hodges leaving Embarcadero. Like many others who have joined, like Mr. Chee Wee Chua (Chewy), Tod Nelson and others, it may be perhaps, the problem with Delphi lies in beyond just a single individual to change Borland's culture.
Total Eclipse of the Delphi
The problems started right after Delphi 6. For those who can remember, the best versions of Delphi was Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7. Delphi 7 marked the "golden age" of Delphi, where you could compile once and supposedly recompile it with Kylix and almost get a working product in Linux... The bad things about Delphi is Borland's "depreciation" of many key technologies and leaving people to complain at it...
.. until Nick Hodges came and turned many things around. If there was one thing Nick did, it would be to soften the cold, hard and distasteful attitudes and behavior that persisted in Borland. Your reviewer and others who complained on the newsgroups would get cold replies and insults on Borland's newsgroups, very slow or non-existent replies to problems and issues. it became so bad, that even Mr. Luigi Sandon said that he would not even consider buying Delphi SA until many bugs are fixed. In usual newsgroup style, Mr. Luigi Sandon was told he was a troll, trouble-maker, etc. - except that if this happened on Sybase newsgroups, SAP R/3 internal customer support forums, or on other customer-service oriented companies, the offenders would have lost their job immediately.
The unlikely Nick
If Nick lost his job because of the comments on that post, other people should have taken the fall instead of him like...
which all leads to Nick being the fall guy for all the troubles that are happening. If there was change, change would come from getting the people to do the opposite of what they are doing now.
If there was something Embarcadero would do, it would be to find a better razor blade so that all the nicks and cuts that Nick did, would be more effective upon Embarcadero's corporate culture so that sales would increase, customer satisfaction would increase.. instead of this "megaphone diplomacy" which everything is taken to the newsgroups and this blame game starts.
Maybe get a doctor to do house-calls instead...
The week after Nick left, it is business as usual, the same old Borland appears from underneath. What would it take to improve Embarcadero's image?
Of course, the clock is ticking... no 64-bit Delphi, no Delphi for Linux, no Delphi for Mac...
Your reviewer hope this situation will not happen:
Doctor, doctor, Delphi has a heart attack and needs massive cash-flow infusions and new management. All the vital organs are diseased and either need to be amputated or transplanted. Delphi is in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and is in bad shape and needs "strong dose of medicine" and better Corporate governance to make sure Delphi survives... Delphi needs fresh blood, vigorous support follow-up and sales physiotherapy. Delphi needs strong antibiotics to counter bug-infested organs. New X-Ray models and PET models needs to be done and...
Let's hope the new people, for whom Embarcadero chooses, know what they are doing before it's too late.
Embarcadero was smart enough to license SalesForce and Atlassian instead of going with StarTeam, CalibreRM, and Together.
Your reviewer was saddened by Nick Hodges leaving Embarcadero. Like many others who have joined, like Mr. Chee Wee Chua (Chewy), Tod Nelson and others, it may be perhaps, the problem with Delphi lies in beyond just a single individual to change Borland's culture.
Total Eclipse of the Delphi
The problems started right after Delphi 6. For those who can remember, the best versions of Delphi was Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7. Delphi 7 marked the "golden age" of Delphi, where you could compile once and supposedly recompile it with Kylix and almost get a working product in Linux... The bad things about Delphi is Borland's "depreciation" of many key technologies and leaving people to complain at it...
.. until Nick Hodges came and turned many things around. If there was one thing Nick did, it would be to soften the cold, hard and distasteful attitudes and behavior that persisted in Borland. Your reviewer and others who complained on the newsgroups would get cold replies and insults on Borland's newsgroups, very slow or non-existent replies to problems and issues. it became so bad, that even Mr. Luigi Sandon said that he would not even consider buying Delphi SA until many bugs are fixed. In usual newsgroup style, Mr. Luigi Sandon was told he was a troll, trouble-maker, etc. - except that if this happened on Sybase newsgroups, SAP R/3 internal customer support forums, or on other customer-service oriented companies, the offenders would have lost their job immediately.
The unlikely Nick
If Nick lost his job because of the comments on that post, other people should have taken the fall instead of him like...
- the manager of the almost-unusable-Help-Files department,
- the persons who answered the phone and could not call back or even send an email,
- the head of the almost useless marketing department which for some reason, can never seem to explain why Delphi has so many issues and the need to pay so much money every year without an assurance of the latest Delphi version except continuous annual payments,
- the head of the report-writer department for which your reviewer and many other people will surely uninstall Rave Reports and buy FastReports or something else,
- the head of the TCP/IP department who face the deluge of almost "every version of Indy breaks something", almost "every version of Indy has some screwball problem" issues.
- the head of the cloud department (IntraWeb) for which TeamB blogs talk about ASP.NET all the time (which tool did they use?)
- One slip of the tongue from Nick Hodges and everyone knows the internal bug tracker they use is based on Java/ Atlassan Jira, Confluence instead of the dummy NET1.1 Quality Central public website and the dummy DNEWS newsgroup web-gateway Embarcadero replaced,
- the head of the almost every Department which Nick Hodges has to expedite customer requests from and to.
which all leads to Nick being the fall guy for all the troubles that are happening. If there was change, change would come from getting the people to do the opposite of what they are doing now.
If there was something Embarcadero would do, it would be to find a better razor blade so that all the nicks and cuts that Nick did, would be more effective upon Embarcadero's corporate culture so that sales would increase, customer satisfaction would increase.. instead of this "megaphone diplomacy" which everything is taken to the newsgroups and this blame game starts.
Maybe get a doctor to do house-calls instead...
The week after Nick left, it is business as usual, the same old Borland appears from underneath. What would it take to improve Embarcadero's image?
- Get a group of people who are pro-customer, pro-business, pro-Delphi and press for Delphi to be used everywhere. Not ones and twos...
- Get people who are proficient in dealing with those bugs. The best thing to do is stop new developments and make a "DELPHI4EVER" with all bugs fixed and release it to every customer who has brought Delphi,
- Get a community response (with at least minimum of 50,000 respondents) to vote to get a new report writer or at least get some help to Jim Gunkel of Nevrona Reports before the Rave party ends...
- Beg, borrow or at least get some kind of ORM or Persistence Model into Delphi. It would make Delphi go BOLDLY where no Delphi has gone before.
(Once your reviewer used a Visual Studio ORM product, your reviewer cannot believe how much coding your reviewer used to do to do something simple vs. almost 90% less code written)
- and so on...
Of course, the clock is ticking... no 64-bit Delphi, no Delphi for Linux, no Delphi for Mac...
Your reviewer hope this situation will not happen:
Doctor, doctor, Delphi has a heart attack and needs massive cash-flow infusions and new management. All the vital organs are diseased and either need to be amputated or transplanted. Delphi is in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and is in bad shape and needs "strong dose of medicine" and better Corporate governance to make sure Delphi survives... Delphi needs fresh blood, vigorous support follow-up and sales physiotherapy. Delphi needs strong antibiotics to counter bug-infested organs. New X-Ray models and PET models needs to be done and...
Let's hope the new people, for whom Embarcadero chooses, know what they are doing before it's too late.
Embarcadero was smart enough to license SalesForce and Atlassian instead of going with StarTeam, CalibreRM, and Together.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Congratulations to TMS, DevExpress
Your reviewer sees some progress with vendors implementing better protection towards their products.
My congratulation goes towards DevExpress for implementing their new Copy-protection which has seen 0 public leaks so far. There are no public leaks of DevExpress.VCL build #51 yet. They have fixed their copy-protection scheme such that leaks are afraid to release their leaks to public, for fear of being identified, people have started to beg, beg for latest version of DevExpress.VCL build #51.
My congratulation also goes towards TMS for implementing their new copy-protection scheme by reading the copy-protection ideas found on this blog. There are no more public leaks for TMS packs for latest versions.
This is good news. These vendors must be reporting new sales where there is none, people who are dishonest can no longer get free copies of these products.
My congratulation goes towards DevExpress for implementing their new Copy-protection which has seen 0 public leaks so far. There are no public leaks of DevExpress.VCL build #51 yet. They have fixed their copy-protection scheme such that leaks are afraid to release their leaks to public, for fear of being identified, people have started to beg, beg for latest version of DevExpress.VCL build #51.
My congratulation also goes towards TMS for implementing their new copy-protection scheme by reading the copy-protection ideas found on this blog. There are no more public leaks for TMS packs for latest versions.
This is good news. These vendors must be reporting new sales where there is none, people who are dishonest can no longer get free copies of these products.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Anti Piracy Technique - Watermarking Images
Your reviewer found two interesting vendors who started to get tough on leaks. I will discuss about this interesting new feature added by one of these vendors.
This vendor sells skinning and special effects libraries in Delphi. This vendor uses CCR Exif library to embed a small change into the PNG and JPG files that makes up the skins and special effects library.
What happened the next few days? Vendor releases new version of his skinning library, pirate took the bait and the vendor recovered his library package (on certain file sharing websites), opened some of the images and on next release, your reviewer noticed people were begging for the latest version.
It sure beats clicking on those Rick Roll links. Thanks goes towards Mr. Christopher R. for his excellent library.
This vendor sells skinning and special effects libraries in Delphi. This vendor uses CCR Exif library to embed a small change into the PNG and JPG files that makes up the skins and special effects library.
What happened the next few days? Vendor releases new version of his skinning library, pirate took the bait and the vendor recovered his library package (on certain file sharing websites), opened some of the images and on next release, your reviewer noticed people were begging for the latest version.
It sure beats clicking on those Rick Roll links. Thanks goes towards Mr. Christopher R. for his excellent library.
QA Dept: IsDelphiDead.com in Denial?
IsDelphiDead.com in denial?
Your reviewer was looking at the site "IsDelphiDead.com" and there was a big "No" sign.
Is Delphi Dead? Let's take a look at the site:
The site is hosted in Linux with Apache. Along with that site, the person also uses PHP and WordPress.
The owner is a Delphi developer.
Your reviewer was looking at the site "IsDelphiDead.com" and there was a big "No" sign.
Is Delphi Dead? Let's take a look at the site:
The site is hosted in Linux with Apache. Along with that site, the person also uses PHP and WordPress.
The owner is a Delphi developer.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Anti Piracy Technique - Total Code Reordering.
Your reviewer found a superb example of watermarking. Your reviewer call this "Total Code Reordering", where the Implementation part of the unit is totally randomized and watermarked. This deterred some people from releasing vendor's source codes.
Who should use this?
The first person your reviewer thinks should use this is Mr. Michael Philippenko, the Fast Reports vendor. The watermarks are always removed from the files and files made public. Your reviewer won't say how exactly FR source codes are watermarked, but with this technique, Mr. Michael Philippenko can trace down who exactly leaked Fast Reports next time.
Same goes for LMD, TMS, and other vendors who sell with source codes. With the latest version of TMS, files are watermarked, but this technique goes one step further -- with all files randomized, it becomes impossible to do a "difference" search between each version to remove the watermarks in those files.
Source code preparation.
1) Split the source-codes into interface and implementation. Make a program to make 1 procedure or 1 function as 1 line entries.
2) Encrypt the files using AES with a strong key. Make sure you do not embed the key in the EXE file.
Source code install:
1) On decrypt the file, since each line = 1 entry, translate the key into an ordered scheme where you can reverse or work out back who leaked the source codes
2) Reorder the implementation section and combine with interface. It will compile since a procedure can be anywhere inside the implementation section.
3) Add your additional watermarks, etc.
4) Run the GExperts code re-format in-memory where new line on begin, new line on end option and statements on each line makes the source codes readable again and then save result file to disk.
On Software Pirate's PC:
The software pirate using Fast Report source codes is dying to release the source codes but needs to remove the watermarks. Since the source code implementation section is randomized, the compare shows many, many changes and since comparing it takes long time (have to trace many changes including new features, etc.), that frustrates software pirate and since he paid it with his money or fake credit card/ (or begged for it from vendor).
Your reviewer pays, pays, pays, the free-loaders don't. Now they will...
Every year, your reviewer pays for the licenses, there are lots of Delphi developers who have very high morale and donate lot of money to Church, etc. but do not know what the left-hand does and what the right-hand do and deny about it. These Delphi developers cheer the vendors for releasing new products, but sales are very slow.
Now that knowledge of this technique is made public, almost all the vendors will certainly implement this scheme to protect their source codes.
What will happen...
1) Developer sales will start to jump from 1's, 2's, 3's to maybe 50 or 60 copies per month.
2) With strong sales, more people get hired.
3) People will think twice about leaking source codes out.
4) Vendors who sweat blood and tears to make new products will not face what is happening today - Ruin and famine with no end in sight.
Who should use this?
The first person your reviewer thinks should use this is Mr. Michael Philippenko, the Fast Reports vendor. The watermarks are always removed from the files and files made public. Your reviewer won't say how exactly FR source codes are watermarked, but with this technique, Mr. Michael Philippenko can trace down who exactly leaked Fast Reports next time.
Same goes for LMD, TMS, and other vendors who sell with source codes. With the latest version of TMS, files are watermarked, but this technique goes one step further -- with all files randomized, it becomes impossible to do a "difference" search between each version to remove the watermarks in those files.
Source code preparation.
1) Split the source-codes into interface and implementation. Make a program to make 1 procedure or 1 function as 1 line entries.
2) Encrypt the files using AES with a strong key. Make sure you do not embed the key in the EXE file.
Source code install:
1) On decrypt the file, since each line = 1 entry, translate the key into an ordered scheme where you can reverse or work out back who leaked the source codes
2) Reorder the implementation section and combine with interface. It will compile since a procedure can be anywhere inside the implementation section.
3) Add your additional watermarks, etc.
4) Run the GExperts code re-format in-memory where new line on begin, new line on end option and statements on each line makes the source codes readable again and then save result file to disk.
On Software Pirate's PC:
The software pirate using Fast Report source codes is dying to release the source codes but needs to remove the watermarks. Since the source code implementation section is randomized, the compare shows many, many changes and since comparing it takes long time (have to trace many changes including new features, etc.), that frustrates software pirate and since he paid it with his money or fake credit card/ (or begged for it from vendor).
Your reviewer pays, pays, pays, the free-loaders don't. Now they will...
Every year, your reviewer pays for the licenses, there are lots of Delphi developers who have very high morale and donate lot of money to Church, etc. but do not know what the left-hand does and what the right-hand do and deny about it. These Delphi developers cheer the vendors for releasing new products, but sales are very slow.
Now that knowledge of this technique is made public, almost all the vendors will certainly implement this scheme to protect their source codes.
What will happen...
1) Developer sales will start to jump from 1's, 2's, 3's to maybe 50 or 60 copies per month.
2) With strong sales, more people get hired.
3) People will think twice about leaking source codes out.
4) Vendors who sweat blood and tears to make new products will not face what is happening today - Ruin and famine with no end in sight.
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