24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today • Hacker News Board

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#71

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 7:43 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #62

pjmlp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then Borland decided to change business forcing us to deal with MFC. That whole Inprise adventure was pretty bad.

And then Hejlsberg left for MS and took his toys with him. WinForms bore more than a passing resemblance to VCL, and C# more than a passing resemblance to Delphi/C++ Builder. Good for MS to recognize true talent when they see it. Though their current API situation is still a mess: they can't stop screwing with it. But their .NET situation is as good as it's ever been.

Actually the way he went took a bit of talking with former work colleges then working at Microsoft.

"Anders Hejlsberg: A craftsman of computer language" - interview

https://behindthetech.libsynpro.com/001-anders-hejlsberg-a-c...

WinForms was based on J++'s Windows Foundation Classes (WFC), Hejlsberg's first project at Microsoft. Which of course, was based on VCL.

That mess is the usual DevDiv vs WinDev, for example I read somewhere that WinRT was pushed by WinDev, so naturally it is basically COM Runtime reborn.

My major complain was that we only got NGEN for AOT compilation and not something C++ Builder/Delphi like,

Now there are a few ways of doing AOT in .NET, but it is still not like Delphi.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#72

Post by ak39 » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 7:46 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #60

romwell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Delphi back in the day was like VS/C# now... or, rather, the other way around, given that MS snatched Delphi's lead dev* to make C#. *Anders Hejlsberg -- who also worked to bring us TypeScript.

C# and Windows Forms was a spiritual successor to Delphi in many ways, IMO. E.g. VCL had TObject <- TComponent <- TControl, WinForms had Object <- Component <- Control ...

Event(Sender: TObject) type of thing is everywhere in C# now.

Also, to add to your point: The TDataset MVC architecture was light years ahead of its time:

TVisualControl -> TDataSource -> TDatasetDescendant

Everything just fits in snugly.

Whoever thought of that architecture at Borland in the early days (1990s) deserves a legacy trophy truly!

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#73

Post by mhd » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 7:56 AM UTC

systems wrote: post #6

Embarcadero tools and ides, are super expensive considering that most developer tools are either free (visual studio developer is free for individuals), or way cheaper (jetbrains) I really dont know who their target customer is, but then again, when I look around, I find tools like windev (PC-Soft) and Clarion (softvelocity) have a loyal following Except of course that embarcadero, is way more expensive Free-pascal i…

Isn't this more an Idera issue? Buying up somewhat entrenched properties, outsourcing development, the squeezing for what it's worth.

Same happened to ExtJs.

Kinda weird for Delphi, as it wasn't really enterprise software during its heyday, but very popular for mid-sided businesses.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#74

Post by mhd » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:01 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #45

systems wrote: post #6

Embarcadero tools and ides, are super expensive considering that most developer tools are either free (visual studio developer is free for individuals), or way cheaper (jetbrains) I really dont know who their target customer is, but then again, when I look around, I find tools like windev (PC-Soft) and Clarion (softvelocity) have a loyal following Except of course that embarcadero, is way more expensive Free-pascal i…

Their target customers are enterprises, the ones that pay for their tools. Embarcadero prices aren't much different from DB2, Oracle, Visual Studio Ultimate.

Most Delphi software I've seen was more a replacement for Clipper than IBM/Oracle-grade Fortune 500 stuff. One step above Access. Heck, it seems to have kept Firebird alive.

And in turn, you get a lot of job offers rewriting Delphi software in C#.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#75

Post by martin_a » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:27 AM UTC

Wow. Delphi.

It was probably the first tool/language I got in contact with while in school. I didn't had any idea what I was doing, playing around with the parallel port trying to read sensor data for a school project.

I think I ended with Delphi 7, most probably some pirated copy of the Professional version, to have all those fancy libraries where I had no idea what to do with.

Wondering whether I should get into it for the sake of the old times. :-)

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#76

Post by andrewwharton » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:33 AM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #43

systems wrote: post #6

Embarcadero tools and ides, are super expensive considering that most developer tools are either free (visual studio developer is free for individuals), or way cheaper (jetbrains) I really dont know who their target customer is, but then again, when I look around, I find tools like windev (PC-Soft) and Clarion (softvelocity) have a loyal following Except of course that embarcadero, is way more expensive Free-pascal i…

Most of their target audience is stuck maintaining a legacy system developed decades ago and will happily pay the premium as long as it's cheaper than rewriting everything using a modern stack.

We're in the process of migrating off a 4+ million line Delphi application that basically runs the whole business, but it's a 10+ year project to "grind the monolith", so who knows when we'll actually be done. In the meantime, we don't have much choice but to keep paying the licensing costs...

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#77

Post by eps » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:44 AM UTC

lonk wrote: post #48

teilo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at their price / feature matrix, they are running this platform like it's still 1999. The cheapest option is outrageous, and has no client/server DB support. So that means spending at least $3,600 (on sale!) for a usable development platform. Batshit crazy.

I suggest you to have a look visual studio pricing: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing/ $5999 first year, $2569/yr renewal

That's for the Enterprise edition, which is very rarely needed outside of very large projects that will normally have a budget for it.

Even with a Pro it's also not just VS itself, but a bunch of other MS products. The exact list depends on how you arrive at getting a subscription, but if you are to take the BizSpark (?) route, it will get you Windows, Windows Server, Office licenses and a handful of Azure credits.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#78

Post by berkut » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:54 AM UTC

ido wrote: post #64

int_19h wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

300 Kb was basically the fixed-size overhead for any VCL app. But by late 90s, it was "good enough", and that's when Delphi was at peak popularity.

I may be misremembering but the early visual basics exported even heavier results.

I think you were - I remember the .exes were much smaller, but they weren't self-contained/stand-alone, so you needed to make sure msvb*4.dll (can't remember what it was exactly) was on the system you wanted to run it on, and it was > 1.4 MB, so you couldn't fit both the small .exe and the runtime .dll on a floppy disk...

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#79

Post by james_s_tayler » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

andrewwharton wrote: post #76

john_moscow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of their target audience is stuck maintaining a legacy system developed decades ago and will happily pay the premium as long as it's cheaper than rewriting everything using a modern stack.

We're in the process of migrating off a 4+ million line Delphi application that basically runs the whole business, but it's a 10+ year project to "grind the monolith", so who knows when we'll actually be done. In the meantime, we don't have much choice but to keep paying the licensing costs...

What do you migrate to over a period of 10 years that won't be obsolete 1/3 the way through that effort??

As much as I love making old code new I'm not sure I could stomach a 10 year project.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#80

Post by SteveMoody73 » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

gumbi_nz wrote: post #25

Anyone remember Borland C++ Builder? I migrated away from Delphi to C++ Builder as soon as it came out. It still used DCUs tho from memory. Thems were the days

I remember the painfully long compile times. Delphi compiled in seconds where a medium sized C++ app we developed would take about 20 minutes for a build.