What is Reddit's opinion of RAD Studio?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Just had a quick look at the store, and have to say it comes across as a little expensive, but then I don't think I'd get much value out of these tools given the work I'm doing.

RAD server starts at ~£2200 for a professional copy and goes up to ~£5000 for the architect edition. It doesn't say if that's for a perpetual license, or whether it includes support etc. I'm not even sure what I get for those prices as there doesn't appear to be a comparison of features. I may need to more rigorously peruse the site.

I have experience with vendors who ship closed source software, which irks me a little, so I'm curious about what makes their business model dated in your eyes. Would you mind elaborating?

Update: looks like it's a really expensive IDE that runs on Windows on a MacBook Pro.

Update 2: these guys seem to be very "enterprisey." This PDF shows the myriad of differences between the three different versions you can buy. And you've got to contact a sales person to try things out…?

I guess the combination of price, closed source, the requirement to talk to sales, and complex pricing are what make this seem dated?

The new Update Subscription "upgrades" the software maintenance / assurance. So you have the new Update Subscription automatically.

Some of the new features include:

• Larger update windows (updates and hotfixes for up to two (2) years and three (3) major releases), so if you have an XE6 project you are still maintaining, but don't want to update it to XE7, then you will get some hotfixes and updates for XE6 to make maintenance easier for you.
• Exclusive bonus features, add-ons, and technical content - Subscription members will have access to exclusives that are only available to subscribers.

And you still get all the benefits you had before. Part of the reason for the change is to add more benefits and to make it clearer the purpose and benefits.

I find unclear if x86_64 compiler is available in this edition, despite of (https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-feature-matrix.pdf)

I don't know. Lots of goodies for people doing server side work. And bug fixes and incremental improvements in the VCL, RTL and the IDE.

And I've been waiting for them to put Linux support back in for a long time.

From the Update Subscription page:

>Ongoing Maintenance and Hot-ixes for Previous Versions

> In the middle of a development cycle on an older IDE version? The RAD Studio team will now continue to release critical updates and hotfixes for up to two (2) years and three (3) major versions, improving your investment and enabling you to upgrade to the latest version on your schedule. All maintenance updates and hotfixes will only be available to users on an active Subscription and cannot be downloaded or purchased separately. Versions currently under Ongoing maintenance include XE7, XE6, and XE5 versions. Active subscribers will also have immediate access to beta hotfixes, providing the most timely access to critical fixes. All fixes, updates and hotfixes are purely at Embarcadero's discretion.

So which updates and hotfixes to be backported is at Embarcadero's discretion, and a lot of that will come down to the technical limitations, but the plan is to make them available on earlier versions, so yes, after XE8 is released, you may get bug fixes on XE7.

Or to a newer Delphi.

.Net has never been great at migrating between versions, so it might save a bunch of time in the long run.

Delphi 11 was released today.

I think is best if you have a look here:

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio

I am not a professional dev, but being in love with Pascal forever. You can build your GUI and compile to Windows/macOS/Android/ios and Linux just drawing controls in forms and doing the appropriate backend code to make it work.

Rapid Application Development.

It's a methodology and there are some great tools that support it.

See for example Embarcadero's Delphi IDE or the open-source Lazarus IDE which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux

I have the previous versions, so I don't know if there is some kind of lockout. I certainly hope not, but if there is even the chance, I recommend getting all of the available licenses and download the ISOs up front, even the ones you don't think you'll use.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/previous-versions

I always thought Starter was a little under powered, but I'm probably biased because I use Enterprise. And from the link, it looks like previous versions are only available for Professional and above. I'd check with a sales rep to be sure, though.

The subscription service is more cost effective than updates if you update frequently (every couple of releases), and there are other benefits. Highly recommended.

• https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/update-subscription

I strongly discourage pirating software (and I assume you do, too). But I wonder if irrelevant software normally "so heavily pirated"?