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24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

blog.marcocantu.com

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

#151

Post by mises »

SyneRyder wrote: post #58
mises wrote: post #28

What's today's equivalent? Something that can produce native binaries for at least windows, mac, linux? The one I see pushed a lot is electron, and there are some cool ideas, but nothing stable that I know of.

Xojo is worth a look. It has the RAD visual form designer approach of Delphi, is a Basic-like language (it used to be called REALbasic & pitched itself as cross-platform Visual Basic), and makes Windows, Mac, Linux & Raspberry Pi binaries. It can also build for iOS, some weird Web deployment that I've never tried, and Android is in the works. There's a plugin architecture like Delphi had & ways to drop down to native…

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks like it has a similar pricing model to Delphi, too.

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

#152

Post by TheJimMcKeeth »

wila wrote: post #119
Svip wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, saying 'large portion of the library' was a mistake. But as I remember, you don't have access to the VCL source code with the Community Edition. The feature matrix says that this is 'limited in Community', whatever that means. We wanted to do MongoDB connections, which comes with FireDAC. But that's only available in the Enterprise Edition. So we ended up rewriting TMongoWire[0] to fit our needs. I a…

Oh FireDAC is no longer available for Professional version either? Geez.. really not going to lay down $3k for an EE. How is that "professional" if you cannot even read/write to sqlite.

Both Professional and Community Edition include FireDAC.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/product-editions

"Build database apps with local/embedded connectivity" is in every edition.

The only difference is you need Enterprise or Architect to connect to "Enterprise class" databases like a remote Oracle server.

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

#153

Post by TheJimMcKeeth »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #126
amenod wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the $1000 price tag is totally wrong. I would never pay that kind of money for an IDE unless it was _really_ better than anything else. But this means: - the language has huge community (so I'm not stuck with a dying language) - it allows me to do anything (huge extensibility) Unfortunately it is difficult to change the pricing model once you have existing clients. On one hand they are the only ones paying fo…

I mean companies pay that and more to become Microsoft shops, at least before .NET Core and Visual Studio Code, and this isn'. I agree entirely with you. I would love to learn Delphi from a hobbyist perspective, can I get a license for like $299 or around that range? No? Hell why isn't there a freebie edition anymore. Except, I can get all of Visual Studio for free for Community use, and yet I can't get a completely…

Delphi community edition includes Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, with FireDAC database access and full access to the source for the VCL, FMX & RTL. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter

Basically everything in Professional, but free for hobbyists.

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

#154

Post by SyneRyder »

mises wrote: post #151
SyneRyder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xojo is worth a look. It has the RAD visual form designer approach of Delphi, is a Basic-like language (it used to be called REALbasic & pitched itself as cross-platform Visual Basic), and makes Windows, Mac, Linux & Raspberry Pi binaries. It can also build for iOS, some weird Web deployment that I've never tried, and Android is in the works. There's a plugin architecture like Delphi had & ways to drop down to native…

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks like it has a similar pricing model to Delphi, too.

Pricing should be much more sane than Delphi's current model - Xojo is $99 for one desktop platform (without SQL plugins), or $299 for cross-compiling to all desktop platforms.

Ignore the "per year" pricing - you can choose not to auto renew & keep using the version you've purchased. You only need to renew if you want IDE / compiler updates (they typically release 4 updates a year).

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

#155

Post by wila »

TheJimMcKeeth wrote: post #152
wila wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh FireDAC is no longer available for Professional version either? Geez.. really not going to lay down $3k for an EE. How is that "professional" if you cannot even read/write to sqlite.

Both Professional and Community Edition include FireDAC. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/product-editions "Build database apps with local/embedded connectivity" is in every edition. The only difference is you need Enterprise or Architect to connect to "Enterprise class" databases like a remote Oracle server.

Ah ok, it doesn't mention FireDAC, fair enough. At least you can save data in a database.

Thanks for the correction.

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

#156

Post by nenadst »

TheJimMcKeeth wrote: post #152
wila wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh FireDAC is no longer available for Professional version either? Geez.. really not going to lay down $3k for an EE. How is that "professional" if you cannot even read/write to sqlite.

Both Professional and Community Edition include FireDAC. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/product-editions "Build database apps with local/embedded connectivity" is in every edition. The only difference is you need Enterprise or Architect to connect to "Enterprise class" databases like a remote Oracle server.

unfortunately "Enterprise DBs" means also Postgresql, Mysql, SQL Server etc. (anything Client/Server)

you can probably just use another Framework like (free) ZeosDB (http://zeoslib.sourceforge.net/)

or some paid ones e.g. from Devart (https://www.devart.com/dac.html)

but still, its frustrating to have to use something else for such basic functionality ...

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

#157

Post by cmroanirgo »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #82

I've been a Delphi developer off and on for 20+ years (since 2, though dabbled with 1). A lot of people focus on the object pascal and it is dated as a language, though the latest is catching up. The IDE has problems now and then with code completion - it pauses a lot and sometimes just stops working, if you come from Visual Studio or XCode this is incomprehensible and annoying. Where Delphi shines is the VCL - the V…

An update to the 'free community edition':

You absolutely MUST click on "I agree to receive Embarcadero marketing communications via email and phone call" before being able to download it. How is this compliant with GDPR? I also notice that if you change countries, the whole form to be filled out also changes (but the above stipulation remains).

Then there's also:

> Licenses are valid for a one-year term subject to the revenue restrictions.

This is definitely the least 'community oriented' product Ive ever encountered!

I'm sorry, but companies doing stunts like this simply cannot be trusted. It's a shame, because I really did want to consider rekindling my love of development in Pascal, but dealing with a company like this is an utter deal breaker. The sad thing is that it's most likely the marketing people in that company that are pushing for this... and I'm sure the developers there would love to have an open community edition, unlike what is actually being presented.

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

#158

Post by int_19h »

coldtea wrote: post #83
int_19h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme skeumorphism a la Mac sometime ago is also undesirable, though. You want them to look just close enough to trigger recognition, everything above that is cognitive overhead.

> Extreme skeumorphism a la Mac sometime ago is also undesirable, though Mac never had extreme skeumorphism. Extreme skeumorphism would be like the common case of DVD player apps made to look real-life DVD players (with all the frustrating LCD-like text displays and tiny cryptic buttons). It's not about having 3d looking buttons, or having faux-leather on your Notes app, which are the kinds of things Apple did.

I'm probably using the word wrong, then. But those 3D-looking buttons with glare, or faux leather, is exactly what I'm talking about - it is unnecessary cognitive overhead.

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

#159

Post by int_19h »

berkut wrote: post #78
ido wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yep, it was msvbvm??.dll. However, it just about fits on a floppy.

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

#160

Post by surlyville »

Svip wrote: post #67

For almost 11 years now, I've been working professionally with Delphi. And it would be wrong to say it's been a smooth ride. There's nothing wrong - per say - with Object Pascal. Or rather, it's not worse than C++, but Delphi - i.e. the library and IDE - is what's lacking behind. It was definitely cutting edge in the mid-90s, but it has not managed to keep with the times. Most Delphi developers rely on Indy, a third…

For almost 11 years I worked professionally with Delphi (2-6) before retiring from programming completely in 2006. Then in 2019 I'm back modifying some Delphi programs (microservices against Oracle DB) that I wrote over 15 years ago...and using Delphi 6! Of course, the long term plan is to rewrite in .NET but luckily domain knowledge is worth more.
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