OT: Upgrade from Delphi 5 ?????

[JohnFredC]

I have been using Delphi 5 for many years making utilities and a couple of "for profit" projects. All small scale and very dependent on freeware/open source controls available from the Delphi community at large (thanks to all).

I now have more time on my hands and the ability to address some larger applications that interest me.

Is an upgrade to Delphi 2005 a good idea? What are the pros/cons?

Also, I am fluent in Access VB and have downloaded the free VB 2005 beta. The VB 2005 IDE is appealing, but my understanding is that the distribution/runtime package would be large. Plus the small samples I have built seem to run more slowly than similar Delphi implementations.

Is .Net functionality needed if nothing I envision to make would use the internet?

Looking for any thoughts and comments...

[ghisler(Author)]

I'm still using Delphi 2 (!) for Total Commander, because it's the only version compatible with Delphi 1, and creates the most compact code. Personally I use Delphi 7 for some new internal projects, but I doubt that the difference to Delphi 5 is very large. The answer will be different if you need to go to .Net development - currently it's not advisable for shareware/freeware because of the requirement of the .Net framework.

[pdavit]

...it's the only version compatible with Delphi 1...

That applies just for the 16bit version of TC Christian?

[ghisler(Author)]

Yes, Delphi 1 is used for the 16-bit version. If you change a Delphi form in Delphi 3 or later, it can no longer be compiled with Delphi 1, so I have to stick with Delphi 2 for the 32-bit version.

[ctiberg]

But surely that's only a property or two of the form that gets in the way? I'd think that it'd be possible to:

1) convert the form to text (using convert)
2) run it through a text processor to remove these properties
3) convert it back to .dfm binary

Perhaps a little work, but I wouldn't hesitate for more than 10 seconds