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I miss Delphi

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Re: I miss Delphi

#51

Post by Svip »

clouddrover wrote: post #38
Svip wrote: post #30

I work with Delphi professionally. And we maintain a code base of about 150,000 lines of Pascal and about 300,000 lines of T-SQL (written to work in both Sybase and Microsoft SQL). Delphi may be easy, but it's not simple. Once you get into the meat of things, Delphi's ecosystem truly becomes a limitation. Delphi's main drawback is its lack of library availability. If you are in the marked for modern technology, using…

> I've written a web server - and maintain a web server - in Delphi Are you using a framework for that or is it your own implementation? I've found mORMot to be useful: https://synopse.info/fossil/wiki?name=SQLite3+Framework

To truly understand and appreciate a language, I believe one must write these features first without a framework (that at least let's someone appreciate the point of a framework more).

However, in this case, this is our own implementation. And unfortunately, this is due to a large number of corner cases we need to handle (such as Sybase support, own SQL driver support, because of multiple result sets, etc.), I don't believe a framework could replace our implementation.

Trust me, though, if we were to rewrite this all from scratch, a completely new approach would be taken.

But generally speaking, if a company is still using Delphi, it's probably because they don't have the liquidity to actually re-write their code base.

Re: I miss Delphi

#52

Post by Svip »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #49
Svip wrote: post #30

I work with Delphi professionally. And we maintain a code base of about 150,000 lines of Pascal and about 300,000 lines of T-SQL (written to work in both Sybase and Microsoft SQL). Delphi may be easy, but it's not simple. Once you get into the meat of things, Delphi's ecosystem truly becomes a limitation. Delphi's main drawback is its lack of library availability. If you are in the marked for modern technology, using…

Indy is problematic there are other (commercial quality) http libraries around. Indy works and has source available and has a great set of maintainers but it's quality is variable. There are some great sets of component libraries around though - tmssoftware and devexpress are very good, and of course you can always use c.

Thank you for the information, as we do use some TMS components. I suppose it was just natural for us to simply pick Indy, but perhaps looking into commercial ones might be something to consider. Although, at this point, we have worked around most of Indy's quirks, so it may not be viable later.

Re: I miss Delphi

#53

Post by chadcmulligan »

Svip wrote: post #52
chadcmulligan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indy is problematic there are other (commercial quality) http libraries around. Indy works and has source available and has a great set of maintainers but it's quality is variable. There are some great sets of component libraries around though - tmssoftware and devexpress are very good, and of course you can always use c.

Thank you for the information, as we do use some TMS components. I suppose it was just natural for us to simply pick Indy, but perhaps looking into commercial ones might be something to consider. Although, at this point, we have worked around most of Indy's quirks, so it may not be viable later.

This is the one that I'd probably investigate seriously apart from indy for any comms http://www.nsoftware.com/platforms/delphi/. I looked at it many years ago and it seems the best supported.

Re: I miss Delphi

#55

Post by eb0la »

jlebrech wrote: post #4
dvh wrote: post #2

- empty form will have 24+16 lines of code in 2 files - you will have to pay 3000 per seat per 6 months to make a website - it only works on windows - hello world have full access to all user's data - you paid 3000 and it still cannot reliably add main icon to your app (XE6) - you cannot increment build number from command line - no job posting in last 12 months - nobody is using it

fair point, still no one is in the RAD market anymore.

I guess the RAD market vanished with Rails and its competitors.

Back in 1998 - suddenly - it was possible to develop quickly a web application with a CRUD web scaffold behind to start feeding data.

The problem we have now we is the need to maintain loads of dependencies and libraries nobody knows who's in charge its development: they're just "popular" and have some documentation.

That's the bad part.

Re: I miss Delphi

#56

Post by paulajohnson »

The problem with Delphi and its relatives is that they are walled gardens. As long as you are working on the kind of application envisaged by the designers (roughly, CRUD with a SQL backend) everything is easy. As soon as you step outside that domain your foot disappears into a sucking quagmire.

Re: I miss Delphi

#57

Post by anotherevan »

Twenty years ago, I wrote an application for the taxation office to help businesses calculate payroll tax. It was written in Delphi for maximum portability, because it had to run on Windows 3.1x, 95 and NT and was distributed to 16,000 businesses on 3.5" diskettes. Talk about old school.

Re: I miss Delphi

#58

Post by mindcrash »

badminton1 wrote: post #9

You have major open source libraries like GTK, wxWidgets, Qt. Also .NET, Java which offer multiple ways of doing forms that are tied to the target platform. In addition, RealBasic (now Xojo) and... Delphi. After Borland, other companies continued working with Delphi, namely, Embarcadero: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi Now, the prices can be a bit prohibitive. I would try one of the open source ones.

After Borland, other companies continued working with Delphi, namely, Embarcadero

You mean after Borland destroyed themselves with a over-the-top business strategy Embarcadero could swoop in and buy several Borland assets and trademarks (Delphi, C++ Builder, Interbase) rather cheaply.

Most of the people I knew who worked with Delphi moved on to .NET and Visual Studio. Main reason being that working with Windows Forms or WPF and the .NET BCL in combination with C# is pretty similar to working with the VCL and Object Pascal. Common factor being Anders Hejlsberg [0]; one of the biggest drivers behind both the Delphi and .NET ecosystem.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

Re: I miss Delphi

#59

Post by lj3 »

baq wrote: post #40
hueving wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I strongly suspect the generation after this will rediscover the power of desktop apps and some of the dev tools that were around at that time. The biggest thing desktop apps are missing was the delivery mechanism. With web apps: * a new user is just a hyperlink away * pushing app updates is a page reload * server-side state eliminates all of the migration headaches for client-based state People are fickle and they…

webassembly + full page canvas. games already work like that. hopefully sanity is just around the corner.

Wouldn't Canvas need more advanced text handling for that to be practical? I know that's a big reason canvas based frameworks never took off.

Re: I miss Delphi

#60

Post by jlebrech »

eb0la wrote: post #55
jlebrech wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fair point, still no one is in the RAD market anymore.

I guess the RAD market vanished with Rails and its competitors. Back in 1998 - suddenly - it was possible to develop quickly a web application with a CRUD web scaffold behind to start feeding data. The problem we have now we is the need to maintain loads of dependencies and libraries nobody knows who's in charge its development: they're just "popular" and have some documentation. That's the bad part.

the quick web development totally was bait and switch.
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