Huan,

Interesting that you bring this up when you did. Actually? Through my
travels? I am finding that since Borland spun off the IDE development
applications to Code Gear? There has been a good rise and renewed
interest in Delphi. In fact, a couple of the technical schools here in
Washington State are actually including Turbo Delphi as a part of
their programming classes. I know because I have heard from the
instructors about job opportunities.

Now, Code Gear has been purchased by a large organization named
Embarcadero Technologies. I have already talked to the techs at Code
Gear? They are really excited. I have talked to a Senior VP at
Embarcadero and they are also excited to acquire Code Gear. The
roadmap for development is very promising. They actually see having
Delphi and the other Code Gear applications as a great compliment to
their other development tools.

For quite awhile? I would have agreed with you. Here in the U.S. the
number of programmers with Delphi experience was getting real low.
Delphi is more popular among developers in Europe than here in the
U.S. but I expect to see that change.

I am actually releasing a commercial application written in Delphi,
using Firebird on the back-end in about six weeks. The development has
gone great and the application has been well received by our user
community as well as the techs that support them. Frustration during
the development project? Sure! I am actually concerned more about
Firebird more than I am Delphi. My programmers and I find support to
be a bit of a challenge but as documentation improves we become more
independent.

Don't give up on Delphi... Make your feelings and concerns known to
Embarcadero Technologies. The more they hear from us, the better the
product will become.

Jack Wilson
Northwest Software...

--- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com, "ruan_h" <leohuanruan@...> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I was wondering if anyone knows what percentage of applications that
> use Firebird are written in Delphi?
>
> I ask because I think Delphi's general usage is already shrinking and
> I feel like it is only going to continue to do so. If Delphi does
> continue to shrink I was wondering what effect that will have on
> Firebird's growth.
>
> I work on a large system with millions of lines of Delphi code so we
> need to consider where things will be in 3 to 5 years from now which
> is why I am interested. We already are having a lot of problems
> getting support for some Delphi code we have purchased from 3rd parties.
>
> Thanks
>
> Huan
>