Delphi 2009 (And C++ Builder 2009) Released

[mouser]

Some cool news for users of Borland/Codegear/Emarcadero Delphi and C++ Builder.  Seems like Delphi 2009 (and presumably C++ Builder 2009) has been released(!) and is available for pre-order now.

A list of what's new can be found here, along with some video demos.  Robust Unicode support is one of the big things, but there are also IDE improvements and some nice component upgrades.

I'm a fan of C++ Builder myself, and many of my larger programs are built using it.

http://www.codegear....roducts/delphi/win32

[Ehtyar]

At the risk of hijacking here, it's interesting when you watch presentations about developer tools, because you pick up pronunciation of words. For example, delphi has elongated 'i' sound, and enum has an elongated 'u'. I'm not sure whether this is universal, just a side note. Also, David I at the beginning of the videos looks like he should be working for GNU, are most of the guys at the top the same kind of person, or is this just a coincidence (sorry for stereotype)?

Ehtyar.

[f0dder]

Robust Unicode support is one of the big things

-mouser (August 25, 2008, 09:59 AM)

It's amazing it's taken them until 2009 to do this, though? :-s

[Ehtyar]

Robust Unicode support is one of the big things

-mouser (August 25, 2008, 09:59 AM)

It's amazing it's taken them until 2009 to do this, though? :-s

-f0dder (August 25, 2008, 07:22 PM)

If it weren't a proprietary language it wouldn't have.

Ehtyar.

[tranglos]

Robust Unicode support is one of the big things

-mouser (August 25, 2008, 09:59 AM)

It's amazing it's taken them until 2009 to do this, though? :-s

-f0dder (August 25, 2008, 07:22 PM)

If it weren't a proprietary language it wouldn't have.

-Ehtyar (August 25, 2008, 07:26 PM)

Being proprietary may not have been the issue. After all, they now have moved to Unicode practically overnight. The problem is that this change will potentially break any Delphi code that declares anything as String (rather than Ansistring). Which is probably something like 98% of existing code. And since string handling has always been one of Delphi's strong points, and string has always been pretty much equivalent to array of char, where sizeof(char) has always been 1, you have lots and lots and lots of code that relies on that and will have to be thrown away.

If I upgrade, I can throw away all my personal libraries and all the 3rd party components I've bought over the years, or wait until they are upgraded, then buy those upgrades. It may be a necessary change, but it's also a major pain.

I also wonder what Unicodeization of Delphi is going to do to performance. There's a number of incredibly fast string handling libraries for Delphi, but not for widestrings. Oh, and since Codegear must have had to overhaul all their RTL and VCL, wonder what new bugs will start cropping up there.

[fenixproductions]

I can't find an info so I will ask here:
is it now possible to compile 64bit code or should we wait next few years?

[Ehtyar]

Being proprietary may not have been the issue. After all, they now have moved to Unicode practically overnight.
...
I also wonder what Unicodeization of Delphi is going to do to performance. There's a number of incredibly fast string handling libraries for Delphi, but not for widestrings. Oh, and since Codegear must have had to overhaul all their RTL and VCL, wonder what new bugs will start cropping up there.

-tranglos (August 26, 2008, 02:20 PM)

I can't imagine how years of ignorance becomes "overnight". At the very least it's taken them 2 years, given that their last release was 2 years ago.
New bugs in the runtimes? Goodness, people can barely keep up with the pre-existing ones, I hope they have a good internet updating mechanism

Ehtyar.

[tranglos]

I can't imagine how years of ignorance becomes "overnight". At the very least it's taken them 2 years, given that their last release was 2 years ago.

-Ehtyar (August 26, 2008, 04:09 PM)

Well, I meant "overnight" figuratively - from one version to another. People had been clamoring for Unicode support for years on Borland newsgroups. And native support certainly beats having to use third-party libraries, each with its own implementation of Unicode classes and conversions.

New bugs in the runtimes? Goodness, people can barely keep up with the pre-existing ones, I hope they have a good internet updating mechanism

-Ehtyar (August 26, 2008, 04:09 PM)

That's been different with different releases. D6 was pretty tight, and I understand so is the 2007 version. Pre-2007 versions seem to have been plagued by IDE issues/crashes and overall slowness more than library bugs, at least that was my impression from reading the newsgroups.

[wraith808]

It really depended on the release; it seemed that for a while each odd numbered release was good and even numbered releases were bad, though after patches, 6 was pretty decent.  I use 7 for my few independent projects, and have upgrades, but just haven't gotten into them since I pretty much only do win32 stuff in delphi... for .net, I see no reason not to use VS.