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Do we need DelphiOverflow.com?
Why Delphi developers need a Delphi Overflow
Which Delphi-vcl technology is mature enough to handle thousands of users?
- You could use RealThinClient, with custom ISAPI, and serious coding, but that suffers from immature HTML handling (you do it yourself and every page is hard-coded), errors in scripting causes blank pages, database usage could leak memory (can you explain how to use RealThinClient with Databases other than some notes on RealThinClient's forum?)
- You could use Cold-fusion, like what DelphiPages used to use, until they got hacked. But wait, that's not Delphi, right?
- IntraWeb, but it costs thousands of dollars and requires 2* dedicated server to host it. Not very money-friendly.
- extJs. Radical new technology that's Ajax friendly.
- You could use ASP.NET, or ASP, which is considered a bastard language (hint: VB/VB.NET) by most Delphi users.
- You could use Kylix with Linux, provided you could get the ISP to host 2* servers with older Linux versions, provided you have good firewall, make sure everything works...
- You could use "depreciated" WebSnap, but it sounds like you could "snap" under pressure and wondering who uses this stuff?
Suggested answerer: It seems no Delphi VCL technology is ready to use to create a site similar to "StackOverflow". We could possibly use JavaScript ExtJs solution with Delphi back end.
Which Delphi database solution could scale thousands of customers?
Your reviewer looked around and found:
- ADO, the one that Microsoft uses, but too-bad, the version shipped in Delphi is 2.1, not upgraded to ADO/2.9SP4, and any attempt to update DbGo leads to BPL issues, since Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero does not ship full set of files required to build all the BPLs.
- AnyDac/Unidac. Serious contender, but..., costs money. Your reviewer thinks at least RemObjects got the MSSQL/ MySQL issue correct. That's US$399 solution.
- Delphi's own Database Technology. Serious contender, but not production quality. There's this issue about DFM/Fields corruption, Database issues (driver issues for MSSQL2005/MySQL 5) and no bug-fixes until next version of Delphi.
Which Delphi solution exposes SOAP/RSS/ATOM/Ajax?
Your reviewer looked at it and sighed.
- There's IntraWeb, but IntraWeb does not support DoJo or extJS, or other frameworks.
(If IntraWeb supported DoJo or extJS, they would have to seriously consider marking-down their price from Euro 600 a person to Euro 50, if they consider people buying it)
- SOAP, requires RemObjects payment, so ho-hum, another US$399 spent on buying something that should have came with Delphi. There's also that stinking feeling we'll need it if Delphi SOAP implementation is not robust enough.
Maddening costs
Your reviewer looked at it, and gasped:
- Delphi 2010 Enterprise at US$2,799 + (probably need for 20% SA)
- RemObjects (to expose SOAP interfaces) at US$399 per user.
- AnyDac (to expose Database interfaces) at US$399 per user.
- ExtJS/Delphi (there's Delphi wrappers)
- ExtJS at US$400 per user.
- MadExcept (to trap exceptions) at US$100 per user.
= cost per developer = US$4,097 (Excluding VAT, S&H and other charges)
Estimated cost for person working 6 months @ US$5,000 = US$30,000.*
Estimated cost for 2 servers (at 1and1, others) for 6 months (server rentals) = US$8,000
* Let's assume we're hiring an expert Delphi developer, not "Ajay" the outsourced Indian Delphi developer.
Estimated cost for 6 months expenses: US$4,097 + US$30,000 + US$8,000 = US$42,097
If you have your own server-based solution, you need 2 servers, because NS (Name-server resolution requires 2 servers minimum, or 2 IP addresses going to 2 different servers). If one fails, the other server is still alive to respond to WWW requests.
Advertisements, Advertisements and more money please!!
Your reviewer wishes to remind those who want a DelphiOverflow, (including Mr. Primoz Gabrijelcic who wrote the original blog entry), it costs alot of money, and if there was a better way to blow US$40,000 windfall, this has to be the best way to do it.
Think about it:
- why bother develop in Delphi if after 6 months, you cannot recover US$40,000 in costs?
- DelphiPages owner sold off his DelphiPages.com, because he did not make so much money off his site.
For those hard-core Delphi developers:
- We need more people (other than Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero) to cheer for Delphi, and tell others that losing money on Delphi is the best way to go.
- Tell other people that there is a StackOverflow "clone" made fully with Delphi technologies, for non-Delphi developers to marvel at.
- We need more people to invest in Delphi, that is one example of what Delphi can do.
For those who see reality:
- There will never be a StackOverflow. Embarcadero uses Confluence and JIRA. Nick Hodges refer to this as their "internal bug tracking system".
(Since you can buy JIRA and Confluence for yourself, you can setup something similar to what Embaracdero uses for their newsgroups and internal bug tracking system.
Example:
http://support.citrix.com/forums)
- US$40,000 is lot of money and to blow it on a business project that makes little or no sense (It makes alot of sense for Delphi developers) is a terrible investment, and in this market, I doubt if you could ever re-coup back any profits from this project.
- Delphi Developers are lazy, they will probably screw-it-up and make an even worse solution than StackOverflow. Did anyone see any Delphi-forum solutions?
- You could outsource it to some Indian developers, but they could make such bad job, the project could go around in circles with ever-increasing costs.
- Then, did you hear about Delphi developers who were overworked, underpaid and did such a project and got laid-off?
Conclusions
You could get VBulletin 4.0 at US$399, or free SMF forums, or free PhpBB forum to build your community. But wait, we really need a DelphiOverflow, because it's fresh, clean, nice, and fully made with Delphi...
It does not matter about costs, we live in a dream-world where costs does not matter, and we live in some kind of delusion where only Delphi developers have better jobs (less than 1% of jobs) and customers don't blink when it comes to money.
It's time to give the Dream team a wake-up call :)
[Article correction, Delphi prices, RemObject prices, Citrix URL added]
Do we need DelphiOverflow.com?
Why Delphi developers need a Delphi Overflow
Which Delphi-vcl technology is mature enough to handle thousands of users?
- You could use RealThinClient, with custom ISAPI, and serious coding, but that suffers from immature HTML handling (you do it yourself and every page is hard-coded), errors in scripting causes blank pages, database usage could leak memory (can you explain how to use RealThinClient with Databases other than some notes on RealThinClient's forum?)
- You could use Cold-fusion, like what DelphiPages used to use, until they got hacked. But wait, that's not Delphi, right?
- IntraWeb, but it costs thousands of dollars and requires 2* dedicated server to host it. Not very money-friendly.
- extJs. Radical new technology that's Ajax friendly.
- You could use ASP.NET, or ASP, which is considered a bastard language (hint: VB/VB.NET) by most Delphi users.
- You could use Kylix with Linux, provided you could get the ISP to host 2* servers with older Linux versions, provided you have good firewall, make sure everything works...
- You could use "depreciated" WebSnap, but it sounds like you could "snap" under pressure and wondering who uses this stuff?
Suggested answerer: It seems no Delphi VCL technology is ready to use to create a site similar to "StackOverflow". We could possibly use JavaScript ExtJs solution with Delphi back end.
Which Delphi database solution could scale thousands of customers?
Your reviewer looked around and found:
- ADO, the one that Microsoft uses, but too-bad, the version shipped in Delphi is 2.1, not upgraded to ADO/2.9SP4, and any attempt to update DbGo leads to BPL issues, since Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero does not ship full set of files required to build all the BPLs.
- AnyDac/Unidac. Serious contender, but..., costs money. Your reviewer thinks at least RemObjects got the MSSQL/ MySQL issue correct. That's US$399 solution.
- Delphi's own Database Technology. Serious contender, but not production quality. There's this issue about DFM/Fields corruption, Database issues (driver issues for MSSQL2005/MySQL 5) and no bug-fixes until next version of Delphi.
Which Delphi solution exposes SOAP/RSS/ATOM/Ajax?
Your reviewer looked at it and sighed.
- There's IntraWeb, but IntraWeb does not support DoJo or extJS, or other frameworks.
(If IntraWeb supported DoJo or extJS, they would have to seriously consider marking-down their price from Euro 600 a person to Euro 50, if they consider people buying it)
- SOAP, requires RemObjects payment, so ho-hum, another US$399 spent on buying something that should have came with Delphi. There's also that stinking feeling we'll need it if Delphi SOAP implementation is not robust enough.
Maddening costs
Your reviewer looked at it, and gasped:
- Delphi 2010 Enterprise at US$2,799 + (probably need for 20% SA)
- RemObjects (to expose SOAP interfaces) at US$399 per user.
- AnyDac (to expose Database interfaces) at US$399 per user.
- ExtJS/Delphi (there's Delphi wrappers)
- ExtJS at US$400 per user.
- MadExcept (to trap exceptions) at US$100 per user.
= cost per developer = US$4,097 (Excluding VAT, S&H and other charges)
Estimated cost for person working 6 months @ US$5,000 = US$30,000.*
Estimated cost for 2 servers (at 1and1, others) for 6 months (server rentals) = US$8,000
* Let's assume we're hiring an expert Delphi developer, not "Ajay" the outsourced Indian Delphi developer.
Estimated cost for 6 months expenses: US$4,097 + US$30,000 + US$8,000 = US$42,097
If you have your own server-based solution, you need 2 servers, because NS (Name-server resolution requires 2 servers minimum, or 2 IP addresses going to 2 different servers). If one fails, the other server is still alive to respond to WWW requests.
Advertisements, Advertisements and more money please!!
Your reviewer wishes to remind those who want a DelphiOverflow, (including Mr. Primoz Gabrijelcic who wrote the original blog entry), it costs alot of money, and if there was a better way to blow US$40,000 windfall, this has to be the best way to do it.
Think about it:
- why bother develop in Delphi if after 6 months, you cannot recover US$40,000 in costs?
- DelphiPages owner sold off his DelphiPages.com, because he did not make so much money off his site.
For those hard-core Delphi developers:
- We need more people (other than Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero) to cheer for Delphi, and tell others that losing money on Delphi is the best way to go.
- Tell other people that there is a StackOverflow "clone" made fully with Delphi technologies, for non-Delphi developers to marvel at.
- We need more people to invest in Delphi, that is one example of what Delphi can do.
For those who see reality:
- There will never be a StackOverflow. Embarcadero uses Confluence and JIRA. Nick Hodges refer to this as their "internal bug tracking system".
(Since you can buy JIRA and Confluence for yourself, you can setup something similar to what Embaracdero uses for their newsgroups and internal bug tracking system.
Example:
http://support.citrix.com/forums)
- US$40,000 is lot of money and to blow it on a business project that makes little or no sense (It makes alot of sense for Delphi developers) is a terrible investment, and in this market, I doubt if you could ever re-coup back any profits from this project.
- Delphi Developers are lazy, they will probably screw-it-up and make an even worse solution than StackOverflow. Did anyone see any Delphi-forum solutions?
- You could outsource it to some Indian developers, but they could make such bad job, the project could go around in circles with ever-increasing costs.
- Then, did you hear about Delphi developers who were overworked, underpaid and did such a project and got laid-off?
Conclusions
You could get VBulletin 4.0 at US$399, or free SMF forums, or free PhpBB forum to build your community. But wait, we really need a DelphiOverflow, because it's fresh, clean, nice, and fully made with Delphi...
It does not matter about costs, we live in a dream-world where costs does not matter, and we live in some kind of delusion where only Delphi developers have better jobs (less than 1% of jobs) and customers don't blink when it comes to money.
It's time to give the Dream team a wake-up call :)
[Article correction, Delphi prices, RemObject prices, Citrix URL added]
8 comments:
RemObjects SDK for Delphi does not cost $900. i'm all for complaining and whining, but at least get the facts straight!?
btw,
I hate the subscription model you use. After 1 year your RO subscription becomes useless without paying more and more money over and over again.
If I had to pay over and over again, I'd choose PHP or ASP.NET for this project.
Prices for RO was corrected
I wish Emborcodero stopped wasting money on any Web solutions and used those resources for kick ass desktop with Xplatform/64bit!
Delphi has lost on the webapp. arena. It didn't even joined the battle in a serious way. I hope they finally make peace with that fact and return to their real business: NATIVE APPS!
I once wrote it at http://delphi.newswhat.com... that's all Delphi web code backed by a Delphi newsgroup. So it can be done, but it is worth? Better have open communities...
Marco Cantu,
From what I know, the code is worth just spare change... because the ROI (Return on Investment) is basically Google Ads and Click-throughs.
Your site is interesting, but with an average site getting US$2-US$200 per month on Google ads, your books and some advertisement deals with Raize and other Delphi vendors...
Here's a brave thing to do for you: Hire more Italian Delphi Developers, expand your site from blogs to a full-publishing house employing many people...
But that will kill your own business, right?*
* Ref: http://blog.marcocantu.com/
to expand on what I said: It would be nice if you could hire 50 or maybe 100 Italian Delphi developers and keep them employed rather than keep preaching to the choir about how good Delphi is, or what's new with Delphi.
Hiring 50 or 100 Delphi developers is a big commitment on money, and need for serious works to be done for those developers to be kept employed and drawing a nice big salary.
Take the challenge and find out, maybe report it on your site. Not that I'm right or wrong, but with this ridiculous subscriptions, and ever-increasing costs and more and more price-increases for Delphi and Delphi components, without good web-components, good NET library, 64-bit compiler,
it will probably explain why so many Delphi developers are still one-man companies, unable to expand, unable to hire, unable to do anything
hi
it a good information.
nice article
thanks for sharing.
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