I feel smart at the moment. Or maybe “wise” is the better word.
I subscribed to the Delphi RAD Studio Professional SA during a special pricing for the pre-order of 2007. I pay $399 a year (plus or minus a few dollars - I don’t remember the exact amount I pay each year). I noticed the upgrade from 2007 to 2009 costs $624. Assuming CodeGear continues the trend started in 2007 I should save more bones over time and stay current. I like it when I feel like I have a good deal.
Have you read about the new managed code version of Delphi called Prism? It’s actually not new. It’s RemObject’s Oxygen compiler for Visual Studio. I’m actually looking forward to playing with this. I was always interested in RemObject’s Chrome (renamed to Oxygen earlier this year) but didn’t want to spend the money. But since it is included as part of RAD Studio I get it for no additional cost.
Doubt I’ll ever really use it. I don’t see converting my csv file editor to manage code and I doubt customers are not going to ask me to write their .NET apps in Object Pascal, though I do prefer Delphi programming over C#. Also, I’m moving my personal web sites to python, my new favorite scripting / programming language. [Side note: I’m starting to do more and more with python. Mostly prototyping algorithms but I do have one program that downloads daily sales reports for iPhone developers hosted at Google Code. The program has been picked up and included in another open source project. It’s been fun to do.]
So I’m excited to play with Prism but honestly it’s about 2 years too late for CodeGear in my opinion. At least 2 years too late for me. And even though RemObject’s Chrome was available 2 years ago I didn’t see spending the additional money on it at that time. Still, I might use it to play with SilverLight. Unlike CodeGear/Borland’s past .NET attempts, Prism fully supports the latest .NET frameworks, libraries, and technologies coming out of Redmond. Oh, and Mono too. Though right now I will probably use python if I need to write something cross platform.
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