I am convinced that Tony Caduto is correct in everything he says about
Delphi.
If you are with some Company, and you have your full time to devote to
programming, and the support of a staff and a budget, why I am sure you can make
anything work for you. If you throw enough time and money and manpower at any
problem, you can solve it.
I knew a developer who developed the firewall product LOCKDOWN. He told me
he did it in Delphi, and he explained all the advantages of Delphi.
The real issue in my mind with any given language, or operating system or
tool is "where will it be 10 years from now, or 20." I used to program in
the PICK system. That was an amazing language and OS to work in, but it was
developed for dumb-ascii-terminals and really never seemed to make a transition
to the Windows GUI world. Revelation was an implimentation of PICK under
DOS, which also never seemed to make a smooth transition to Windows/GUI,
although they attemted to do so with a product called OpenInsight. Look at the
popularity of Ashton Tate DbaseIII, and then Foxpro which was bought out by
Microsoft, in some ways, I suspect, to be shelved as competition. Look at the
tremendous popularity in the 1980s for Focus database manager. Many companies
sprang up with products and services developed in Focus.
Look at the vicissitudes of Borland's Interbase product, and those users who
were devoted to it. Look at the history of Novell, and the history of the
Btrieve product, bought out by Novell, then neglected, then bought back by the
original developers, then transmogrified to the point that original Btrieve
enthusiasts were disillusioned and sought a rebirth/reformation with the
Tsunami product.
Look at the rise and fall of Borland and Turbo Pascal.
My point is simple, whatever one chooses to "go with", in order to lay a
foundation for some software/programming effort-project, .... well, a building
is only as secure as the foundation upon which it rests.
I guess that is why open source is so popular. Even if the things in open
source world are not as bright and shiney and glittering as some proprietary
products, well. at least there is some hope that it will be there in years to
come, ... some hope that you can take control of it,.... control of its
direction and evolution.
What is difficult to control is public opinion, and tastes, and popularity
contests, and the technology of hardware and communications upon which such
operating systems and languages function....
Just thinking out loud... thanks for listening...