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Why I Choose Delphi

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Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#161

Post by bruno2223 »

maga wrote: post #145
bruno2223 wrote: post #47

I still compile a old project in Delphi 7 once every 3 months just to add 5 lines of code, and they pay me monthly for it. It's cheaper than porting the whole system to any other language. It is a project that I've built 8 years ago. Delphi was already a "strange think" on that time, it was declining fast. I think Java killed Delphi - "One codebase for all platforms, even your freezer will have Java!" - this was the…

> Since I started with Delphi when I was 14 (I am now 33) Almost the exact same experience: started at 14 and now close to 30. Back in the day, we used to exchange game CDs in my small town, and by a mistake I got one with Delphi 5. I knew nothing about programming, just installed it, clicked around, somehow managed to run the default app, and got an empty window. We didn't have internet, so I had to ask around what…

> Delphi 5 instead of Games CDs

LOL!!!!

> 20 consecutive lines

Haha that's nice think about trial and error.

Cool history!

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#162

Post by pjmlp »

systems wrote: post #157
oceanswave wrote: post #127

Wait, is this a recent article? If so, this is a really great attempt at humor: "My colleague told me to abandon Delphi, it’s obsolete, Silverlight is the future.”

Not at all, the article is recent, but this interaction with his colleagues is obviously old, and proves his point delphi outlasted silverlight honestly myself i was surprised by how easily and relatively fast microsoft abandoned silverlight, i really liked their rad tool, lightswitch , but it seems it was strongly coupled to silverlight, and got abandoned soon after it was announced that silverlight will not be furt…

Silverlight, like XNA, were victims of the usual WinDev vs DevTools issues.

Although that is a proper conclusion, the majority of successful programming languages always had a corporate sponsor driving their adoption and development, even the ANSI/ISO ones.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#163

Post by pjmlp »

nnq wrote: post #41

Does anyone else have the impression the most of the advantages OP lauds Delphy/ObjectPascal for are also present in Go? ...is there any nice cross platform desktop UI system for golang? (with an actual user base... because these things have bugs that can only be find through extensive real world usage unfortunately...).

> Does anyone else have the impression the most of the advantages OP lauds Delphy/ObjectPascal for are also present in Go

Just kind of, because sadly Go still has a lot to catch up with Object Pascal features and compiler toolchain.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#165

Post by TimJYoung »

bsder wrote: post #10
taberiand wrote: post #5

Does Delphi justify its cost? As far as I can tell, there are no free compilers - seems like a pretty high hurdle when most languages can be used for free.

> Does Delphi justify its cost? As far as I can tell, there are no free compilers - seems like a pretty high hurdle when most languages can be used for free. The bigger problem is that you are stuck with whatever features Embarcadero thinks are important. For example, Delphi didn't have a 64-bit version for an excruciatingly long time. How many companies using Delphi got run over by a competitor during that window? A…

Unless one was creating a library or had an application that used an enormous amount of memory, 32-bit or 64-bit really didn't matter. IOW, for most desktop applications, it was a non-issue.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#166

Post by gbersac »

jorgeleo wrote: post #150
bruno2223 wrote: post #47

I still compile a old project in Delphi 7 once every 3 months just to add 5 lines of code, and they pay me monthly for it. It's cheaper than porting the whole system to any other language. It is a project that I've built 8 years ago. Delphi was already a "strange think" on that time, it was declining fast. I think Java killed Delphi - "One codebase for all platforms, even your freezer will have Java!" - this was the…

"But I still miss the old days of drag-N-drop GUI of Delphi, really easy." How many years later and the web still does not catch up.

I think this is because of the unpredictiveness of html/css. The css api is not intuitive and there is difference between browsers.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#167

Post by Spearchucker »

Pascal is still my favourite language (being the 3rd I ever learned), and its syntax similarities with BASIC are why I prefer programming in VB.NET rather than C#. Curiosity's been piqued though, might just have a look at Delphi...

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#168

Post by vintagedave »

oceanswave wrote: post #127

Wait, is this a recent article? If so, this is a really great attempt at humor: "My colleague told me to abandon Delphi, it’s obsolete, Silverlight is the future.”

That's the point - something like Delphi stays, is reliable, is not deprecated, while relying on Microsoft tools ends up with tool and library turnover at a high rate. (Consider the past ten years of MS libraries...)

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#169

Post by _euac »

epx wrote: post #3

I liked Delphi a lot, as I liked Clipper a lot, but technology moved on.

I had a pretty good chuckle at this comment. I couldn't agree more. While I loved Delphi, VB, TurboPascal, ASIC and DJCPP back when they were in vogue, I feel like starting new projects in a decaying ecosystem is a bad idea. Soon enough you'll find stuff there aren't any libraries for, outdated database drivers, or hit a wall when trying to do something most modern runtimes make incredibly easy (something as simple as making an HTTPS request.) At that point you hit a diminishing ROI from using the language you love and it becomes a matter of productivity.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#170

Post by JohnStrange »

analognoise wrote: post #34

I'm going to make the same comment that comes up every time I see Delphi and Lazarus/FreePascal: If you haven't tried Lazarus/FreePascal, you're missing out. It's really amazing, and it's truly free.

I currently consider using it instead of C++/Qt for a major desktop application, but I'm still undecided. Lack of good Emacs support is a major downside but the same is probably true for Qt (haven't checked yet).

Still I feel that going with Qt is more future proof.

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