Comparing stability, speed and help of Delphi 2010 to other Delphi versions

Question

From what I've read from the previous posts, Delphi 7 is stable and has the best help system but is slow, Delphi 2007 is fast but the help system is bad and the IDE is buggy. Delphi 2009 is stable and fast but the help system is bad too. The posts were made when 2010 isn't available yet. I am planning to upgrade from Delphi 7 to 2010. Is Delphi 2010 stable, fast and has a good help system?

Answer 1

delphi 2010 is stable and fast and is actually a good delphi compiler after years of half-baked releases, they have improved help system in delphi 2010 but i still think delphi 7 help system is superior(but thats just my opinion).you do know delphi 2010 has a 1 month trial do you? download it and play around and see if you like it
EDIT: forgot to mention if you buy delphi 2010 you'll get marco cantu's Delphi 2010 Handbook for free ,the book covers whats new in D2010 so if you consider book as part of help system than help system is OK :)

Answer 2

Delphi 2010 is one of the best Delphi releases ever. It stabilizes some of the new features introduced in Delphi 2009. The IDE is fast, and in the project I used it was very stable.

The thing there is that the IDE and the help system are build as a RAD Studio for different languages. Especially the help system tries to be everything for everybody. Even having only one personality installed, it has many entires about other languages I do not care about (but I can filter them). Yet there are many entires missing depth that never made it into the new help format.

The help system starts painstakingly slow (especially at first startup). But, to be fair, this is partially do to the MS Help System being a pain in the neck (this, in my opinion, just was the wrong path to chose).

Embarcadero invests quite some effort into the help system, and it had several updates during the 2010 release.

You do know about the varying expense of conversion to Unicode as 2010 is fully Unicode based?

Answer 3

You can use Delphi 7 help in Delphi 2010, if you want to.

Use this or this addon. See item 5 here for instructions (sorry, it's machine auto-tranlation).

P.S. You can have more than one help installed. Say, a F1 for Delphi 7 help and Ctrl+F1 for Delphi 2010 help.

Answer 4

Here are some reasons why I stick to Delphi 7, having Delphi 2010 at hand to recompile and test what I wrote in Delphi 7, in a cross-version manner:

• if your source code compiles on Delphi 7, and you make careful usage of Unicode/AnsiString, it will work as well with Delphi 2010;
• if your source code compiles on Delphi 7, it will work as well with Free Pascal, so cross-platform and 64 bits are open to you;
• if your source code compiles on Delphi 7, it can be cross-compiled with CrossKylix directly from the Delphi 7 IDE - see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3387501/has-any-one-used-crosskylix-for-real-cross-platform-development
• Delphi 7 runs well on my Windows Seven 64 bits system, if you install it not in "C:\Program Files" but in "C:\Progs" for example;
• Delphi 7 starts faster than Delphi 2007, and MUCH faster than Delphi 2009/2010 - see http://andy.jgknet.de/dspeedup
• generated code is almost the same since Delphi 7 - when I need speed, I use better algorithms, and assembler if it's worth it;
• Delphi 7 IDE is as powerful as Delphi 2010 IDE, if you use some IDE enhancements like http://www.cnpack.org;
• Delphi 7 help is still the reference - why waiting for 20 seconds on my Core i7 processor waiting for the awful MS help system to launch? and if you want to create an application able to run under XP, its content will be enough for you; if you want to know about newer OS, just use msdn web site directly, or via google: it sounded to me easier than the help integrated with Delphi 2005/2010;
• I use the assembler/CPU view a lot: all Delphi IDE have the Alt-F2, but you can close this window by the escape key on Delphi 7 - I was not able to find such a keyboard shortcut under Delphi 2007/2010, and it's very annoying;
• Delphi 7 executable size are small, and even smaller with our LVCL libraries (30 KB for a form with buttons);
• I didn't have the need for generics and such up to now - I like knowing which code is generated;
• Delphi 7 is Unicode ready, whatever you say - its associated VCL was not, but CharSets are not evil, and work well - what I do is develop under Delphi 7, then compile with Delphi 2010 and get all the Unicode benefits if needed;
• I use a large screen (at 1920x1280 resolution), and Delphi 7 makes it easy to have multiple edit windows at once - newer IDE locked layout was not a good idea... at such that EMB officially added the "Delphi 7 way undocked IDE" feature to Delphi 2010: and marketing sell it as a new feature;
• and so on, and so on...

Answer 5

Delphi7 was faster, but it was a lot simpler. I wouldn't worry too much about performance of the IDE, especially if you're working on a modern PC. At work I've got an old P4 machine, and it runs just fine.

New language features like methods on records and generics make it well worth it to switch.

For me it's hard to live without TList<T> nowadays.

For a while I've desperately tried to keep code Delphi7-compatible, but I've ported most of the important applications to D2010 already, and whenever I need to start D7, it all feels so low-tech and simple.

I've always hated the crappy component palette in the older Delphi's. Delphi 2010 has a much better interface, and the filter function is a real time-saver.

I've decided to give up on Delphi7 and just make full use of D2010's capabilities. That makes life a lot easier.