Well I figured I should write an update on this story and say I went ahead and bought the BDS software for the upgrade price (just under $400).
It bothers me that I had to buy it. I used to buy Borland because its standards compliance was way better than VC++ (what standards compliance you ask… exactly) and because it took the VB paradigm and applied it to C++ Windows programming and added cool things like Wizard based Service creation which got all of the crappy parts of writing a service out of the way. They did that for 10 years…
Well now, VC++ is all about standards so the ONLY reason is because of the RAD development. MS has it, but only if you want to use the .NET framework, doesn’t work with native code. Great. That simple thing is enough to make me pay $400 for a competitor’s tool to compile software I give away for free and I don’t really even use the service wizard or write GUI tools all that often. But when I do want to, I don’t want to have to go use another tool just for that, I will simply learn and use one tool.
Why do I not like .NET, I just don’t have a great feeling about it. It seems a trifle fat to me and I see way too many weird issues with it in the newsgroups for things that I do. Comments from folks I respect like Russinovich and Petzold make me think about it as well though I admit I had my mind made up before I saw their comments. The day MS is producing all NET code from the bottom of the kernel up, then I will figure it is ubiquitous enough to use. I am considering it for personal Web based stuff where I know exactly what is on the server, etc. But that is really it.
So hopefully I should see that in the next week or two. The sad part is that I had to order the C# builder version of BDS because the C++ builder version is on hold until January. The C++ personality shipping with Delphi/C# BDS currently is a preview, the official final will ship in January with a free upgrade download for folks. I would rather get a chance to start playing with the preview than wait another month and start playing then.
joe
