Claudio,

> You know, I typically don't start off-topic threads, but I need to ask. I
> have D6 Enterprise and it has been a lot of time since I don't use it. It
> should be that I love too much C++, but anyway.
>
> A friend mine has asked me yesterday which Delphi is the best. Geez, this is
> like asking which car brand is the best. After some years, apparently her
> employer is allowing her to return to Delphi. Latest version she used when
> she worked with me was D4. Of course, I've sent her a lot of questions
> regarding what are the employer's demands on the tool before giving an
> answer. I don't think her employer will want to go to FB because they are
> standarized on MsSql. Since Alicia worked mostly with IB4.2 years ago, I
> think that based on such experience she wouldn't dare to suggest IB/FB for
> the Ministry of Education, so let's concentrate on the programming tool for
> now.
>
> She still does't reply to me answering my questions. However, in advance I
> would like to ask you if it makes sense to go beyond D6. For what I see,
> there are much more third party components updated to work with D6 than with
> D7 and worse, going to D8 doesn't seem to be necessary. Alicia is asking if
> I know D2005. Nope.
>
> Thanks for any ideas you have from your experience.
> (Helen, if you think this is too far from this list, please let us know so
> people that have something to say can reply privately to me.)

People tend to say that Delphi 6 was buggy and therefore they've
upgraded to Delphi 7. I must say that with all service packs and RTL
updates applied, Delphi 6 is rock solid for what I'm doing (writing
Win32 database based applications). Therefore I was never in a situation
to upgrade to Delphi 7. I'm using the Professional and not the
Enterprise Edition though.

I've never gave Delphi 8 and the final Delphi 2005 version a try. From
reading the Borland newsgroups, Delphi 8 was a disaster and as Martijn
has mentioned, a .NET development environment only. Delphi 2005 combines
both Win32 and .NET development in one IDE. Opinions about Delphi 2005
vary between "it's the biggest blast on earth" to "the IDE is extremely
slow and crashes regularly".

If there is no special demand for a specific feature, I would stick with
Delphi 6.


FWIW,
Thomas