Paul Kimmel's Blog

I agree completely about investing in quality tools that not only save time and money, but really allow me to do things I couldn't otherwise.  I am currently working on a development team for a big company with lots of resources, but I couldn't convince IT management that it would benefit us greatly to utilize a quality suite of third party controls.  So, we've tried to reinvent the wheel and have ended up behind schedule and over budget...of course.

I ended up purchasing the DXperience Enterprise suite myself for other side projects that I do and couldn't be more thrilled!

I agree, "a developer is known his tools", that is a good quote, but just recently DevXpress have made some catastrophic errors in releases of WinForms & CR / RP , there are far too many bugs being allowed to release into production enviroments and it has made me realise i have to start staying 6 months behind DevXpress to ensure atleast some stability but even then things are not great, after these last 4 DevX releases i am starting to lose faith, i hope that DevXpress can pull things together in the next release because ComponentOne may be my next stop and that is something i Do Not want to do, but if it means im not spending hours trying to fix something that should work anyway then so be it.

Odd really and very typical of our industry - how often do you take your car in to be serviced and the first step is for the mechanics to take a look, then start fabricating some 13mm spanners?

I have to agree with Karl.  It is true that a developer is known by their tools... and I've lost jobs, and potential revenue because of mine (meaning the Dx tools)   The reporting has been horrendous, and has broken consistently.

We've since converted all possible applications that depend on the reporting suite to other reporting tools.  Unfortunately, one of our flagship products is stuck between a rock and a hard place... the Dx XtraReports suite breaks constantly, but at the same point, I can't find something as easy to use... so we're stuck supporting a bunch of issues.  The good thing is that with the lastest 8.xxx release, many of those bugs have started to subside.

We're nervous about the 9.x tools, and are skeptical to try them.  Will check in at some point.

From my experience most 3rd party controls are riddled with issues.  Whether performance bottlenecks or poor implementation, I think they are too focused on getting things out than getting them out right.  That is where support really comes into play.  Having worked with ComponentOne I can say their support is garbage.  The top two from a customer support perspective are 1) Telerik and 2) DevExpress.  These guys seem to be competing at every level.  Why don't they just buy one another or something so we can all have a clear choice of which controls to use.  

Oh and Steve, I have had someone rebuild an exhaust pipe because the manufacturer didn't build a quality product.  The pipe is still in place 5 years later.