Yep, I think it went waay downhill when they rewrote it in Java. It used to be speedy but now lags even on a 3GHz PC.
Try opening a 30MB data file sometime-- yawn.
particularly bad is the help system-- it used to be WONDERFUL, you'd press shift-F1 and up would pop the right thing, complete with a usable example, and useful links to related concepts, and links upwards to more general topics.
Now you press help and it chugs for about ten seconds (Java starting up you know), then it pops up instead of the old useful paragraph or two, a sentence at most written by some clueless mouth-breather, no examples, no useful links sideways or up. And most of the time it's talking about .NET or C++ similar concept, not the Delphi one. If I'm in Delphi, writing Delphi code, why would I ever want a .NET or C++ help page? Sheesh.
And the "back" button in Help never does what you expect.
And the code-completion "feature" never seems to do anything correctly-- it inserts bogus zero-based for loops, which I never want. It inserts extra ends when I've explicitly already put one in. And it doesnt diagnose the most common syntax error-- missing begins or ends.
*And* Delphi now comes bundled with tons of really poorly working, poorly conceived, and poorly documented add-ons. Perhaps they should ask some programmers what they need-- it's rarely another shaky and pointless UML tool. And what's the point of all the unhelpful names? How am I suppsed to remember that "Refulgence Gold" is a database designer, "Bootylicious Extreme" is a useless rectangle and line drawer, and "Picadilly Ultra III" is a slow, limited, and buggy CVS? Sheesh!
Obviously, the marketers are in full charge.
How's about giving us things we really need like:
* A code profiler.
* A memory leak catcher.
* A code formatter.
* A IDE that understands "with" statements.
* A API parameter lookup tool that doesnt get tripped up by an undeclared variable.
Delphi is a wonderful tool overall, but sheesh, why all the obvious bugs and misfeatures?