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Why I Choose Delphi

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Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#221

Post by yumaikas »

int_19h wrote: post #63
epx wrote: post #3

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

dBase-derived languages in general were a lot of fun. And incredibly productive, basically taylor-made for cranking out CRUD apps. I do ponder sometimes why we don't have something quite like that these days. Oh, people do try, but it's never that simple, and there are always a lot of moving bits with plenty of friction between them. The ease with which I could collect a bunch of data from a form and shove it into a…

What would it take to make a good dBase style environment? Would PicoLisp be an example? (granted it's a LISP, but it seems to have a focus on simplicity and CRUD style things)

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#222

Post by yumaikas »

mamcx wrote: post #179
int_19h wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dBase-derived languages in general were a lot of fun. And incredibly productive, basically taylor-made for cranking out CRUD apps. I do ponder sometimes why we don't have something quite like that these days. Oh, people do try, but it's never that simple, and there are always a lot of moving bits with plenty of friction between them. The ease with which I could collect a bunch of data from a form and shove it into a…

I totally agree. I'm pondering about build a Fox-in-spirit. I still mantain that NO programming tool today is good for database-development, and we need a modern take on the dbase. My idea is build a relational language with a lot of the ideas of fox but with a modern syntax. If somebody wanna to talk about this, and maybe help, I'm open!

Why don't you make a small github organization and drop a link here? I've done some programming language work on the side, and I've been wondering a little about stuff like this.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#223

Post by vram22 »

int_19h wrote: post #63
epx wrote: post #3

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

dBase-derived languages in general were a lot of fun. And incredibly productive, basically taylor-made for cranking out CRUD apps. I do ponder sometimes why we don't have something quite like that these days. Oh, people do try, but it's never that simple, and there are always a lot of moving bits with plenty of friction between them. The ease with which I could collect a bunch of data from a form and shove it into a…

>dBase-derived languages in general were a lot of fun. And incredibly productive, basically taylor-made for cranking out CRUD apps.

Yes, true. I did a good amount of XBASE (which is the generic term for dBASE, Foxpro, Clipper, etc., and I worked on all 3 of those) in my early programming days (along with Turbo Pascal and Turbo C) - including a very interesting line-of-business app for a switchgear manufacturer's factory - that one was in Visual Foxpro and using a Novell Netware LAN and Windows. Was on site there for around 10 months for the project. Turned out to be ~180 KLOC in size and had a lot of features, from CRUD to parameterized SQL reports of all sorts to somewhat advanced (for the time at least) decision-support sort of stuff, plus production planning.

>I do ponder sometimes why we don't have something quite like that these days.

There actually are a few options (maybe you are aware of them). Harbour project, Flagship (both names are probably plays on Clipper), and a few others. There are also both paid and free libraries that can read and write XBASE formats. My own xtopdf toolkit includes DBFReader, a class that can read dBASE files, both the metadata and data.

http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf

https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#224

Post by vram22 »

int_19h wrote: post #63
epx wrote: post #3

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

dBase-derived languages in general were a lot of fun. And incredibly productive, basically taylor-made for cranking out CRUD apps. I do ponder sometimes why we don't have something quite like that these days. Oh, people do try, but it's never that simple, and there are always a lot of moving bits with plenty of friction between them. The ease with which I could collect a bunch of data from a form and shove it into a…

On a different note, there is also Dabo, a framework for writing database-backed apps in wxPython that can use XBASE data formats, IIRC.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#225

Post by vram22 »

heywire wrote: post #6
epx wrote: post #3

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

Funny that you mentioned Clipper. It's a language that you don't hear about a lot anymore, but it was the first language I learned as a kid (my Dad built point of sale and inventory applications in it for local companies as side work), so it holds a special place in my heart.

Mine too. The fact that it had both dBASE-like functionality (was a superset, in fact) plus could generate EXEs was just a great combo. Like in other countries (I'm sure), plenty of small businesses in India relied (and some probably still do) on small custom Clipper apps (such as POS, inventory, etc.) created by small software consultancies or freelancers. You could tell it was written in Clipper by the typical color scheme and look of the form and by the status bar, when you were at such a shop to buy something. And the speed of data entry by the operators, in those apps (without any GUI clutter to slow things down), was phenomenal.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#226

Post by interfixus »

jhoechtl wrote: post #217
jimbokun wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never stopped to consider how much of the world's software is written in a Dane-designed language.

Isn't Pascal from Nicolaus Wirth, a Swiss?

Absolutely. But Turbo Pascal was a somewhat different kettle of fish, and very much a unique implementation.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#227

Post by dom96 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #213
vram22 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The main platform's menu is written in Delphi. The tools to package apps (both the AppNamePortable.exe launcher and the installer they are then packaged in) are written using NSIS. Developers packaging most apps can do so just by filling in INI files without writing a single line of code. The utilities include NSIS itself, auto-generate the code needed for the installers and launchers, and automatically compile them.

Have you evaluated any other languages apart from Pascal/Lazarus? If Windows XP+ support is the driving feature and you would consider a modern language then please take a look at Nim[1], it features some Delphi/Pascal-isms so you and your team may find it familiar.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about it.

1 - https://nim-lang.org/

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#228

Post by vram22 »

TimJYoung wrote: post #152
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if someone saw the opportunity and decided to fill in that niche, I'd be the first to spend my money on it. Make it cost $1000, it doesn't matter - a modern language plus and excellent IDE it's something really worth spending my money on.

You're not going to be able to do it, at least not in the same way as Delphi. Go lacks the complete OO and component functionality that allows Delphi to provide its level of integration between the IDE and the code/components. It's not just a language that was popped into an IDE, rather the IDE and the language were created to work together as one, and it all revolves around proper class support/RTTI. Chuck Jazdzewsk…

Thanks for sharing Chuck's blog. Just read a few posts now and one of them:

The Biggest Bang:

http://removingalldoubt.com/programming/2015/07/17/the-bigge...

reminded me of the point that Delphi 1 was itself written in Delphi:

"It seemed that after every feature Anders showed people cheered and when Anders showed that Delphi itself was a Delphi app we received a standing ovation. I knew we had done something remarkable; something I will always be proud of."

Looks like the other posts will be interesting too.

Re: Why I Choose Delphi

#230

Post by flavio81 »

Johnny_Brahms wrote: post #90

As someone who maintains an unknown but very large(several MLOC) free Pascal code base, I must say that I can't see much reason in the Pascal hate. Sure, I would love to rewrite the whole thing in Lisp (which is the language that lets me keep my soul), but we are all in all still very happy with the current code base. A complete recompile is less than 20 minutes, and then about half that time is spent in guile for ma…

> Sure, I would love to rewrite the whole thing in Lisp (which is the language that lets me keep my soul)

A kind salute to you, fellow Lisper!!

However i've used Delphi in the past and found it a remarkably good language, i wouldn't think to port something from Delphi to Lisp.

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