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22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

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Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#91

Post by alex_duf »

I remember using Delphi 2 when I was younger, that's how I learned programming. If you don't mind hearing my personal story, keep reading, otherwise move on to another comment.

By an interesting coincidence I was given a CD with tons of software on it, including Delphi 2. I started playing with it and quickly realised I could create my own programs using that tool.

Later I went to the book store and found a book about it that I couldn't afford. So I came back every week to read as much as I could, then heading back home to try it on my illegal copy of Delphi. (I was 11)

Then I realised there was a help manual embedded in the distribution, so I learned as much English as I could so I could understand that manual.

Little by little I learned about conditions, loops, object programming and made a bunch of terribly crappy yet working games.

No amount of studies could have taught me as much as I learned through using that software. No manual work could have given me the fun I had when programming my very own games. Reading "Delphi" as a headline on hacker news made me feel nostalgic and I figured I'd share my story here.

So thanks Borland, the 11 year old me may not have paid to use that software, but it was enough of a revelation to make me the programmer I am today.

Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#92

Post by spiralx »

silveira wrote: post #24

The documentation and help pages that came with Delphi were absolutely the best documentation I ever had. Every topic came with examples that you could copy and reuse. Not just snippets but fully functional blocks of code. It was brilliant.

Yes, I learnt Pascal from the Turbo Pascal docs and then moved onto Delphi from there.

Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#94

Post by wtbob »

metachris wrote: post #59
yoodenvranx wrote: post #43

Delphi is still unrivaled when it comes to rapid GUI prototyping in combination with easy deployment. It's much easier than QT/GTK and you usually get a standalone .exe with no external dependencies. I really want to cry when I see the current alternatives... Node/Electron with dozens of MB of runtime and all that Javascript stuff? What went wrong that we end up with this?

The strong point of Electron is easy _cross-platform_ application development and packaging (spits out .exe, .app and Linux binary), with no further dependencies. Ever tried packaging a QT application for Mac, Windows and Linux? I can tell you it's a painful experience, one I don't want to repeat. Also HTML+CSS allows for extremely versatile styling and fine-grained control of appearance.

A weak point, though, is JavaScript — quite possibly the worst popular computer language in history. I honestly think I'd rather starve than write another line of JavaScript again. Even reading JavaScript diffs from other guys on my team is a horrible, terrible experience. It's just a sad, awful, miserable, verbose, broken language.

As a compilation target from a better language, I suppose it's mostly acceptable. But on its own? Never again.

Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#95

Post by vintagedave »

bdavisx wrote: post #61
ahacker15 wrote: post #23

Delphi is still popular in the south of Brazil. It's dying, but slowly. There's a lot a legacy application written in Delphi here. Some old programmers, that only know to program in Delphi, may even build new apps with it. It may not be that modern today, but there's the "pay the bills" mindset. I think Delphi will die, but only because it costs a fortune today. If it had a resonable price, many people would continue…

Just so no one else has to try to find the price (you have to search for it a little). The cheapest new user price for Delphi is USD $1,405.

Or $0, if you use the Starter edition. It's free for hobbyists, students, startups etc, with the clause that if you start making over a certain amount of revenue you're asked to buy it.

Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#97

Post by mateuszf »

alex_duf wrote: post #91

I remember using Delphi 2 when I was younger, that's how I learned programming. If you don't mind hearing my personal story, keep reading, otherwise move on to another comment. By an interesting coincidence I was given a CD with tons of software on it, including Delphi 2. I started playing with it and quickly realised I could create my own programs using that tool. Later I went to the book store and found a book abou…

Hey, it sounds very similar to how I learned programming. That's how I started too, apart from the fact that I had a simple Turbo Pascal book from the beginning, but I also learned writing programs using an illegal Delphi 2 CD.

Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#98

Post by agentgt »

pjmlp wrote: post #87

Delphi was a great environment, but Anders and other key persons leaving Borland, while the company lost track which customers they should target, besides the "clever" idea to change the company's name, killed it. I know of a few companies in Germany and Netherlands that still use it, but it is hard to get offers. And we had to wait 15 years until .NET started to offer a compilation model similar to Delphi (only for…

> While Java kind of outsourced it to third party JDK vendors due to Sun's attitude against AOT compilation, oh well at least Java 9 will bring the first steps towards support it.

I'm just curious. How would AOT improve Java's ability to have better RAD. I guess I'm just missing the association. Is it bundling/distribution? Startup time? Integration with native libraries?

I would imagine hot code swap probably doesn't work with AOT (aka JRebel) so that would hurt RAD.

Re: 22 Years of Delphi and It Still Rocks

#99

Post by jk4930 »

segmondy wrote: post #73
jk4930 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first Hello World in Ada was 2.3 MB, but I'm sure it was the most safe and reliable Hello World in existence.

I have no idea what you did, but I find that hard to believe, and this is with GNAT. I have a hello.adb program, 99bytes, compiled 25k -rwxrwxr-x 1 seg seg 25352 Nov 2 01:26 hello -rw-rw-r-- 1 seg seg 99 Nov 2 01:23 hello.adb -rw-rw-r-- 1 seg seg 1409 Nov 2 01:26 hello.ali -rw-rw-r-- 1 seg seg 1576 Nov 2 01:26 hello.o

End of the 1990s with GNAT 3.1xx on Windows. IIRC there were several libraries and runtime elements included "just in case" and I didn't know that I had to deselect them. Perhaps it was the default setting in the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) that I used at this time. Didn't experience that with later GNATs (without GPS) on Linux.

I still laugh about my first Hello World. My friends mocked me for my megabyte-sized beginner programs. It totally was in line with the image of Ada being a bloated, bureaucratic DoD monster. GPS made things feel extra complicated and ugly.

That said, I'm considering to use Ada 2012 for several of my upcoming works.

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