Re: £3,612.60, plus VAT
You cannot compare those options. The RAD Studio, Delphi or C++ Builder is an offering that serves you well as a whole or not. As mentioned by others in this stream alternatives do exist for years now and those are well known. So an alternative offering must provide something different specialized but complete. That somehow seals the faith of all those who do not reside in the customer group to be addressed at the moment. Price is not an objective valuation or measurement. It's simply a compromise that can be found. The price of every good goes up in the end. Price can also express scarcity. I tend to think that EMB is thinking in terms of software as an asset.
Similar to any other tool RAD Studio does not fit into the early stages of utilizing a technology since especially in IT development does happen in a more 'communist' fashion in a traditional sense. What people call third-party in this what others call division of labor which is not cheaper but more flexible. I don't know in how far it is possible to industrialize IT especially software development from a more traditional view in general. I doubt that. What never did work and still does not work is 'communism' in the IT department and division of labor in the production process when a company is not aiming at IT but real world goods. Communism in a sense of getting the most out of ones own limited resource pool. Of course there is a will and a wish to extend the resource pool called knowledge - it's obvious why. As long as people are in the position to charge the customer for gaining experience everything is fine since the turnover is almost the profit. In the world of division of labor that's called expensive.
Today this resource pool can be extended by picking up source code from the neighbors garden called open source repository.
We all together are heavily working on providing both the commercial alternatives as well as the open-source route.
Embarcadero are not the bad guys that have taken away the cheap Pascal or C++ IDEs they simply made the experience at the time of Delphi or C++ Builder 2006 that offering a cheap or free alternative simply does not offer any advantage to them and also the number of users did not increase according to them or what was called Codegear. Not talking about why ...
Doing everything on one's own as an ideal. In the past when IDEs came into the focus (kind of Powerbuilder for example) those environments were signaling the beginning of the end of the underlying technology. That will not happen so soon for all the environments addressed, which puts a different light on the evolution and priorities that have to be fulfilled beside the new things offered.
The price is little high but in general you get discounts. From the pricing perspective I personally assume the vendor does not address the hobbyist at all (except from the starter). In USD but discounted even the initial offering does come at an acceptable price but for U.K. the price is heavy. The service agreement is pretty cheap. I owned E/R Studio for a long time and the service contract was cheap. Just the initial price is high. If you are a purchase manager in a company and get awarded for discounts :). Many companies are still bound to products that do offer service contracts and support mainly due to certification. Still the same story...
I personally tend to agree with LDS that when it comes to security the communist approach combined with materials picked in the neighbors garden seems to be the better alternative at the moment.
In order to address Hobbyists you have access to Appwave which is free on Android.
I personally like the RAD Studio since it serves my descent purposes well but RAD Studio is not an IDE that is focusing on communism as the major development strategy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
