Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

jonlennartaasenden.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 352 posts

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#171

Post by mrweasel »

h4l0 wrote: post #9

I really don't want to sound cynical about this great initiative(!) but it saddens me that among many open modern languages and tools, they instead opted for Delphi. I cannot think of a single positive reason behind this decision in 2020. All I can think of is that the people that came to this conclusion are the ones who graduated from Computer Science related studies in ~1998-2004~ and immediately got themselves in…

One reason I could see, based on teaching teenagers programming. They want to build GUI applications and Delphi allows that very easily.

Sure C# and Visual Studio makes more sense and they could get everything for free, but maybe Turkey doesn't like/trust Microsoft.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#172

Post by adriantam »

arghwhat wrote: post #14

This reminds me of a few ( I then found out that they were being taught to use Borland Turbo C . I suspect the case for this is similar: Some person who once upon a time learnt to program and then never practiced nor developed their skills somehow got a job teaching programming, and is now trying to apply the ancient tools they were taught somewhere around the time when some fish decided to walk on land because its a…

You missed one important point about Turbo C: The debugger. It has an amazing UI even at today's standard. If you need an all-in-one tool to teach programming (esp focus on the concepts), Turbo C is still a good choice.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#173

Post by pbourke »

zozbot234 wrote: post #107
levosmetalo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that somehow wrong? What was so fundamentally changed in CS that makes teaching C obsolete?

We have Rust now which is a type-safe and memory-safe language. C is totally obsolete.

What’s the difference between Rustaceans and meth addicts?

Meth addicts don’t make _everything_ about meth.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#175

Post by narag »

0-_-0 wrote: post #41
taneq wrote: post #19

I was curious a little while ago whether Delphi or something similar was still available for modern computers (I think it followed from the same question about MS Access and VB6). Turns out there's a free Delphi-compatible IDE called Lazarus: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Has anyone here used Lazarus? It looks great from its description but I'd be interested in an independent opinion.

Lazarus gives you rich, visual, native, multiplatform (OSX, Linux, Windows) GUI applications for free. I think also Android (and iOS?), but haven't checked.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#176

Post by SEJeff »

randomblast wrote: post #155
zozbot234 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you name a better format for programming language documentation that's also ubiquitously supported? Info format. It's supported by Emacs, and Emacs is the most ubiquitous of IDE's.

> Emacs is the most ubiquitous of IDE's. Sorry, have you been in a coma for 30 years?

Your question is rhetorical here, right?

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#177

Post by pbourke »

MrGilbert wrote: post #8

I had to giggle recently when I heard "Delphi is dead". It's not. And I don't think it ever will, because, both as a language and work environment, it is quite powerful. It has pretty low entry barriers, and is pretty capable. When I used it (as a hobbiest, during Delphi 5 and Delphi 7 times), it had a superb tooling, and a really efficient compiler. Everything "just worked". It's now 15 - 20 years ago, when we creat…

> It has pretty low entry barriers

Cost being the obvious large one.

Every time I’ve had an inkling of interest in Delphi, I pop by the website and nope out within a few minutes after finding the pricing page.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#178

Post by gibatronic »

YAFZ wrote: post #166
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Borland C and Pascal were great for learning programming in mid-90s, because of one crucial feature: an immensely good built in help reference. Whenever you wanted to know syntax of some command, you print this command, press ctrl-f1 and is presented with docs, complete with a working example . It was insanely great. Remember, stack overflow didn't exist then.

Turbo C++ documentation was legendary, with a healthy dose of humor! https://everything2.com/title/7+hertz+-+the+resonant+frequen...

This brought memories from when the whole class turned to beep inferno. Good times.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#179

Post by canistel »

0-_-0 wrote: post #41
taneq wrote: post #19

I was curious a little while ago whether Delphi or something similar was still available for modern computers (I think it followed from the same question about MS Access and VB6). Turns out there's a free Delphi-compatible IDE called Lazarus: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Has anyone here used Lazarus? It looks great from its description but I'd be interested in an independent opinion.

I am currently using Lazarus for an open source project. I develop and test in Windows and Linux. Lazarus is feature rich and quite stable (barring a few minor exceptions). Package installation can be quirky, but you can live with that. The IDE is reasonably capable in code traversal and refactoring. If you are comfortable with Object Pascal and if you are targetting the desktop platform, definitely worth a go.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#180

Post by gfs78 »

oefrha wrote: post #160
gfs78 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The move from Pascal to Java made a transition from learning how to program a computer to learning how to build apps using java-like OOP and libraries. Most places where Java is taught don´t teach about computer registers, stack frames, pointers, memory management, etc, and how they work together. Or if they do it they do it superficially.

Last I checked C is still taught in any serious CS curriculum.

Agree. But in the past it was also taught in no so serious places. Today it does not.
Post reply on HN