InstallAware

OFF TOPIC

I know that Delphi is one of the endorsed languages for plug-ins, etc but does anyone know what the state of it is as to who owns it? I believe that Borland sold off their development tools and that CodeGear had them but now I see that CodeGear is now controlled by Embarcadero?

Essentially, I'm trying to chase down a full evaluation version of the 2009 Professional edition but it's proving a little elusive. Does anyone have a link they'd recommend for evaluation downloads? I'm not finding Embarcadero too usable at this time but I'm probabaly a bit put off by our company's experiences of using their DBArtisan tool and the somewhat haphazard support we used to get (or not get) from them.

InstallAware is built in Delphi, and thus we're partial towards the product. We find that it is the best Win32 development environment out there.

In fact, IMHO, Delphi makes all of Microsoft's designed-for-obsolescence-from-the-ground-up frameworks useless. You could author software with the same ease of use in Delphi 10 years before Microsoft had a bulky, ever growing framework, just to do the same thing.

However, management is another thing. Delphi has long been Borland's cash cow, abused in an amazing number of ways. It's recently been spun off as CodeGear later sold to Embarcadero, so hopefully it'll have a fresh start there with the proper resources and end of product abuse.

Sinan,

That was my experience of Delphi as well. The bank I used to work at back home in South Africa decided the GUI applications were best served using VB3 and not Delphi 2.0. This goes back many years to the last time I last used Delphi. I'm tempted to 'rediscover' Delphi as the prospect of writing plug-ins in C++ puts me off somewhat. I'm not saying that jumping from Delphi 2 to Delphi 2009 will be a no-brainer but I'm sure that it'll be like learning to ride a bike again.

I was in London on Saturday and went to one of the best bookshops in the capital. I was amazed to see that there was not one book on Delphi on the shelf. I'm probably optimistic to expect to find a book on Delphi 2009 but can someone recommend a book that would be a good introduction to Delphi again? I can see other books listed online but choosing the right one might be difficult. I'm looking for something that is reasonably close to what 2009's IDE looks like. I don't mind buying an older version of Delphi for plug-ins but I'd like to tie a book and version together.

Any recommendations?

bokkie wrote:I was in London on Saturday and went to one of the best bookshops in the capital. I was amazed to see that there was not one book on Delphi on the shelf. I'm probably optimistic to expect to find a book on Delphi 2009 but can someone recommend a book that would be a good introduction to Delphi again? I can see other books listed online but choosing the right one might be difficult. I'm looking for something that is reasonably close to what 2009's IDE looks like. I don't mind buying an older version of Delphi for plug-ins but I'd like to tie a book and version together.

Any recommendations?

Yes books by Marco Cantu
http://www.marcocantu.com/default.htm

Or books by Dr Bob
http://www.drbob42.com/

Tommy,

Thanks for the heads-up on the books. I'll look into the UK availability of them.

You will most likely only be able to order them online.

Marcu Cantu is the classic author!

Our founder even met him