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Why I Choose Delphi

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Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#201

Post by wambotron »

IshKebab wrote: post #188
wambotron wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is about community strength? If he's creating applications and enjoys doing it, why does it matter who else is using the same language? Worst case scenario, he can translate libraries from other languages into Object Pascal, but realistically it has a decent-sized community. I don't see the modernity point, either. Object Pascal has modern features.

It matters because it affects how many third party libraries are available and the number of other people that can understand and work on your code. Object Pascal may have modern features, but that doesn't mean it is a modern language - nobody is going to start learning it now. Only people that have known it for years already will use it.

It _is_ a modern language, and people do start learning it when they get jobs that use it. It's just syntax, and it's a really good tool for certain jobs. You should give it a go with Lazarus IDE and see if you still feel that way.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#202

Post by computerex »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #192
gbersac wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True, but we've solved that reasonably well enough when hand-coding that slapping a GUI code generator on top of it should be workable.

A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist. The difference between the web and traditional desktop based programs is that you have a lot more freedom in constructing the experience on the web. Whereas a typical WinForms app is made up of a bunch of drag and drop common controls like the button or text edit, simple text editing and buttons can take many different creative forms to best suit the intended experience.

So I guess another way of saying it is that older desktop based technologies like WinForms are more geared towards purely functional experiences. The web can go above and beyond providing merely functional experiences. The aesthetic and the experience as a whole is important.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#203

Post by arc776 »

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...).

However Delphi has more modern language features than Go, such as generics, full object orientation and reflection.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#204

Post by theamk »

wambotron wrote: post #183
lasermike026 wrote: post #181

Why do people do this to themselves? You can't code in a vacuum. It's about community strength and modernity. If you don't have both you are wasting you time. It's like talking to a island cast away.

What is about community strength? If he's creating applications and enjoys doing it, why does it matter who else is using the same language? Worst case scenario, he can translate libraries from other languages into Object Pascal, but realistically it has a decent-sized community. I don't see the modernity point, either. Object Pascal has modern features.

Re modernity: is is true that Delphi/Object Pascal has no automatic memory management support, and it is up to the programmer to add lots of "try" blocks and manually code up destructors to release the resources?

For example, this tutorial (from 2017) recommends doing "try .. finally: f.Release" block. https://www.thoughtco.com/communicating-between-forms-409254...

This tutorial, which is also from 2017, says that that you need to either explicitly add each member to an owned list, or to explicitly free every class member in destructor: http://newpascal.org/assets/modern_pascal_introduction.html#...

Is this a recommended best practice? I hope not -- most (all?) of the modern languages either have GC, or offer automatic refcounted pointers, and Object Pascal claims to be modern.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#205

Post by JohnTHaller »

Fun Fact: The PortableApps.com Platform's menu is written in Delphi. We're debating whether to stay with it or not, mainly due to the buy-in costs for developers. We can either use no external bits and let people work with Delphi Starter Edition (free, only for use with free/open source, 32-bit only, no add-on support), convert to Lazarus (open source equivalent of much older Delphi version with many newer bits added), come up with the money to pay for a lot of licenses (unlikely), or rewrite in another language. It's a bit under 10k lines of code, so even a rewrite wouldn't be too painful.

It's also worth noting that while the linked article mentions Windows 7 and up, the current version of Delphi 10.2 produces apps that also work under Windows XP and Vista as well.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#206

Post by phatbyte »

jimbokun wrote: post #187
phatbyte wrote: post #176

I've always hated the Delphi ecosystem, awesome IDE, good-enough language, but everything else sucked, specially if you are a young programmer with limited money, you couldn't learn it unless you pirated it, even .NET had a free version. Everything there had a price-tag, from the IDE to the third-party libraries. So yeah, everyone moved on from Delphi, it's currently on palliative care, probably won't die any time so…

Was a different business model from a different time, making money directly off of selling good developer tools. Even Apple and Microsoft charged for their development tools until relatively recently, I believe. Now open source and vendor tools have completely won that space, and its only possible to profit from developer tools indirectly. So not just Delphi, but the entire associated business model has become irrele…

It comes to my mind Unity (game engine), they have a very good business model. Their offer a free version to anyone willing to try, and premium tiers for more serious developers or companies.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#207

Post by oblio »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #205

Fun Fact: The PortableApps.com Platform's menu is written in Delphi. We're debating whether to stay with it or not, mainly due to the buy-in costs for developers. We can either use no external bits and let people work with Delphi Starter Edition (free, only for use with free/open source, 32-bit only, no add-on support), convert to Lazarus (open source equivalent of much older Delphi version with many newer bits added…

Ghisler rewrote Total Commander with Lazarus. That's pretty solid backing, IMO.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#208

Post by ComodoHacker »

rodorgas wrote: post #194
jorgeleo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Web is much more advanced (and complex), and that's why you can't just drag and drop. Or can you? Remember Wix.

Do you really know how complex Win32 GUI is on low level? Yet Delphi manages it nicely and wraps it up into handy abstractions.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#209

Post by unclebucknasty »

computerex wrote: post #202
unclebucknasty wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but we've solved that reasonably well enough when hand-coding that slapping a GUI code generator on top of it should be workable.

A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist. The difference between the web and traditional desktop based programs is that you have a lot more freedom in constructing the experience on the web. Whereas a typical WinForms app is made up of a bunch of drag and drop common controls like the button or text edit, simple text editing and buttons can take many different creative forms to best suit the intende…

>A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist.

>older desktop based technologies like WinForms are more geared towards purely functional experiences. The web can go above and beyond providing merely functional experiences.

Not talking about web sites here, but web apps, which in the modern sense are much more aligned with desktop apps than websites of old.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#210

Post by vram22 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #205

Fun Fact: The PortableApps.com Platform's menu is written in Delphi. We're debating whether to stay with it or not, mainly due to the buy-in costs for developers. We can either use no external bits and let people work with Delphi Starter Edition (free, only for use with free/open source, 32-bit only, no add-on support), convert to Lazarus (open source equivalent of much older Delphi version with many newer bits added…

I've tried out PortablApps some time earlier, but only briefly, and did not look into the infrastructure aspects. Are you saying that developers who create portable apps need to use Delphi in order to be part of your platform? And if so, why is that?
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