My opinion prior to Delphi XE2: Yes My opinion after Delphi XE2: No
I've been a big fan of Pascal since Turbo Pascal version 4, and I've followed most of Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero since the late 80's. I've purchased various versions of Pascal and Delphi in my life, and I've been a HUGE fan of Delphi 7 Professional since it came out. I made the mistake of buying Delphi 2007, and I've deliberately not bought any more Delphi since XE2 came out. I refused to pay for something that would give me no actual benefit, and I've been one of those people moaning bitterly about lack of 64 bit compiler support.
Along comes Delphi XE2 and blows us all away by not only doing 64 bit compiler support, but also with Firemonkey - which gives us the ability to write apps for Mac. This was a huge surprise for me, and a very nice one since I have many apps I would like to port to Mac. Sure, the IDE is buggy as hell, but you just have to work around them and figure out what not to do, and you'll get good results.
I understand other people's reluctance to move to Delphi XE2 - especially if they do not need this 64 bit and Mac support - since Delphi 7 is stable, has a great workspace for creating forms, and creates reasonably decent sized EXE's. I would like to see Delphi claw some market share, because finding sample code to work this is tough as nails in comparison with C++.
I also have to look at the other side of the coin, and it's quite a lot to ask people to stick with old technology just because it works well. Time is one of our biggest commodities and if we need to spend it trying to ensure code works with old platforms, it could become counter-productive.
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