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Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

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

#341

Post by mirekrusin »

madhadron wrote: post #294
mirekrusin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may love or hate js but it makes great language to start with, runs in your browser and has infinite labyrinths of complexity in every direction - perfect for students to play with. Why nobody is using it to teach?

Because it's a nightmare with ridiculous missing hunks, like the fact that you can't put anything but primitive types in a Set usefully. Why would you use it to teach?

Yes, I'd have lesson explaining it's behavior, how it works any why it works this way and maybe assign homework to extend it to support uniqueness based on structural equality.

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

#342

Post by beamatronic »

planteen wrote: post #299
beamatronic wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that matters to someone learning how to implement a stack, a linked list, quick sort, etc.

It does though, if you mix near and far pointers, you are going to be getting crashes. Pointer equality and comparison are non-trivial. Whereas on a modern 32-bit CPU you don't have any such distinction.

Wow, how did you learn all this stuff?

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

#343

Post by peter_d_sherman »

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #227
neves wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also were quick compilers and fit in a floppy.

If the old harware aphorism is "Never trust a computer larger than you can lift", then the software counterpart to that must be "Never trust a compiler that doesn't fit on a single floppy". "Never trust a compiler that doesn't fit on a single floppy" I'm coining that second expression right here on Hacker News, today, 1/22/2020! I'm fairly certain no one has said it prior... But if they have, then my humble apologies…

Sorry, meant to say 'hardware'... Somehow my text got munged...

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

#344

Post by kragen »

blub wrote: post #109
kragen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Professional programmers scoff at "old" languages like this Old languages? Delphi is a lot newer than C. C in a mostly modern form dates from about 1977; Delphi is from 1995. If you want to just write code in a box and have it run, maybe you should use http://sketchpad.cc/ or https://jsfiddle.net/ . Or code.labstack.com, intervue.io, codepad, codiva.io, paiza.io, compilr, ideone, onlinegdb, repl.it, rextester, myco…

Or you could use Delphi, install once, deploy on any platform you want, keep your sanity and you not have to worry about anything, including WTF codiva, sequential or leftpad.js are.

You seem to be suggesting that cross-compiling a Delphi app for Android is easier than clicking on a link. As it happens, that is not actually true.

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

#345

Post by kragen »

astura wrote: post #145
kragen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to build a restaurant accounting/billing app as a desktop app instead of a browser app?

Because that's what the jobs that are hiring are for in the place the GP lives? I mean, I'd rather browse HN than do work all day, but nobody's going to pay me for that. I was an early web developer who transitioned into a modern one as time passed but I've moved back to desktop application development as of late because that's what was hiring in my area at the time I was looking for a job and I simply am not married…

Obviously there are people involved in the process of building these desktop apps who aren't the ones who decide they'll be desktop apps. But somebody is making that decision. I'm asking what leads that person to make that choice. Is it beneficial to the restaurant as a business? How?

I'm not asking about why people are willing to do what their boss asks for or their customers offer to pay for.

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

#346

Post by aortega »

pjc50 wrote: post #82
aortega wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> python is probably a more relevant choice. Python doesn't have any standard graphical IDE or even GUI widgets. No modern language can create GUI applications with the ease of use of Delphi, except maybe .NET (which is based on Delphi).

.NET is definitely the easiest possible way to do a widget UI, but it's not based on Delphi in any meaningful sense. Its closest ancestor is Java, via the short lived "J++" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B (Android later did basically the same thing with Dalvik)

Most Delphi devs were hired by Microsoft to build .net. Thats why .NET libs and the Delphi VCL are very very similar.

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

#348

Post by mapcars »

Koshkin wrote: post #27
mapcars wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Can it compete with c# or swift for desktop applications?

Yes. In the sense that neither C# nor, especially, Swift are suitable as teaching languages. (Nor is Python, BTW.)

I remember studying with Delphi, don't remember any specific advantage for studying compared to let's say Java. On the other hand I remember many things seemed illogical.

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

#349

Post by madhadron »

mirekrusin wrote: post #341
madhadron wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a nightmare with ridiculous missing hunks, like the fact that you can't put anything but primitive types in a Set usefully. Why would you use it to teach?

Yes, I'd have lesson explaining it's behavior, how it works any why it works this way and maybe assign homework to extend it to support uniqueness based on structural equality.

You can't extend it to support uniqueness based on structural equality, because the Set type uses == to test, and there is no means in the language of overriding that.

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

#350

Post by mirekrusin »

madhadron wrote: post #349
mirekrusin wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'd have lesson explaining it's behavior, how it works any why it works this way and maybe assign homework to extend it to support uniqueness based on structural equality.

You can't extend it to support uniqueness based on structural equality, because the Set type uses == to test, and there is no means in the language of overriding that.

You can extend it, trivial one would be by subclassing and overriding methods to iterate over all entries doing deep-equal. Better complexity can be achieved by hashing (doesn't need to be collision free) and scanning subsets per hash etc.
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