Correspondent from New York
16 years of Delphi told by an Outsider
Almost twenty years ago, there was a fine man, Mr. John Jacobson, a staunch defender of Delphi and all things in Delphi who wanted to build a newsgroup reader. He tried and tried, tried and tried. Days passed away while developing. The days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into fortnights. The fortnights turned into months, the months into quarters, years, leap-years, eventually, a decade passed. This year would mark Mr. John's 16 years with Delphi.
Software nobody will pay forFrom an outsider looking at his program, now called Internet Crypt, other newsgroup readers have came and gone and eventually faded away. Nobody uses newsgroup readers to read NNTP posts. Almost every website has a web-based forum or web-based project management system. Nobody wants to pay for a newsgroup reader, except for specialized newsgroup readers which requires more than 4GB ram access and super-search facilities. This has been partly superseded by dual-based NNTP/Web, like what the guys at NexusDB does (see their Newsgroup/Web-based webforum)
Delphi Theory & PracticeMr. John Jacobson, a defender of Delphi, eventually did the walk-the-talk: It is easier to speak about it than do it in action: Finding a Delphi job is almost non-existent in USA. When Mr. John came to defend against the Visual Basic crusaders who wreck the Borland Forums, Mr. John eventually found himself like most other Delphi developers -- without a job to sustain himself with and have to take a non-Delphi job.
Mr. John did all the confessions of the Delphi faith necessary by all Delphi developers: saying that they use Delphi, paying alms and sending money to Borland, then CodeGear, now Embarcadero, and pay respects to various holy Delphi developers and supporting them financially by buying their components, libraries, and other assortment of products.
The end-result is years of chasing the dream, the Delphi dream, year after year, hoping after hoping, neglecting his wife for his Delphi hobby. In mean time, his forum signature "Losing my religion" resulted in his conversion to an atheist and his former blog (on Mr. Robert Love's Delphi Blogs) was eventually removed. His last posted on Mr. Robert Love's blog was that he was going to leave Delphi.
Mr. John Jacobson, please take some time to reflect on your wasted 16 years with Delphi. See the other life you neglected - your religion, your finances, your wife (and kids), your family time, all the money that you could have saved by putting it into better use. Forget paying for another Delphi upgrade. Next year there will be yet-another-upgrade. Forget paying these Delphi vendors for updates, upgrades. You are not young, few more years, you will probably be considering retirement. What has Delphi brought to you? From an outsider, your correpondent see a tarnished reputation, dead-end jobs, jobs which does not require you to invest any time with Delphi or anything about Delphi.
Lot of developers will hate this post, but, they can come forward and give money to Mr. John Jacobson to help him in bad times, but none of them will come forward. If none of them can come forward, this is a very thoughtful post to say it again what Mr. John said in the past: leave behind what is no longer needed. [1].
Quoted by John Jacobson
I kind of know the feeling. I just recently took a job that has nothing to do with Delphi and will probably eventually have nothing to do with Windows. Not sure if I want to continue working on my personal software project that is in Delphi and, if I drop that, then there will be nothing Delphi in my life. 16 years of Delphi will have come to an end.
It was, as you say, a very good run.[2]
It was, as you say, a very good run.[2]
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2 comments:
From career path perspective I agree, Delphi is not the choice and never was. This has nothing to do with Delphi ... there are only few people who really stay programmer their whole life.
This makes no sense because a very tiny portion of the IT world is about programming. Software Engineering in special has a always had a lot to do with getting rid of programmers but it required RTTI + object orientation + design patterns to get have less code generated code.
Wondering what the data centers do with all those programmers if not covering a short peak first and fire the majority after a certain period .... but we will see.
Have fun Mr. Hater!
I have retired from IT. So when you one day come to Austria - give me a call.
Let's go blow these guys away:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gDiSTtABuE
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