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Delphi's 25th Birthday

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Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#101

Post by chrisseaton »

vintagedave wrote: post #61
gyulai wrote: post #28

I used to love Delphi in the late 90s, and if someone could do a late-90s-Delphi-like experience for programming UI-heavy software today, and do it right, and in a way that properly integrates with the anno 2020 tech landscape, then I would love to use such a thing. In a bout of late 90s nostalgia, I convinced my then-employer in 2011 to buy a license for the professional version of Delphi for a software project I wa…

> I sincerely hope that someone will get it back on the right track (or has already done so ... 2020 Delphi supports five platforms, has 64-bit compilers everywhere, has modern language features, interoperates with C++ through C++Builder, and more. In the past few years especially, we've* seen both a lot of work on it, and increasing interest in using it. It's modern, and used more widely than one might realise. * "W…

> has modern language features

What kind of modern language features has it gained?

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#102

Post by imagine99 »

nottorp wrote: post #19
pjmlp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is my daily driver nowadays, however .NET AOT experience still misses a bit compared with Delphi. And Delphi is still around, no need to talk as if it was dead. In Germany, it has a regular section on the .NET developers magazine and an yearly conference.

Does anyone do something non legacy in it? Their pricing is a bit of a barrier to entry for new apps now.

I actually did some scant research on this recently and found out that they have a free Delphi Community edition which seems almost identical to the Professional Edition, has full cross-plattform capability incl. iOS and Android, and you can even use it commercially until you made a profit of $5000 off of your apps (if I'm not mistaken).

That'll probably allow 99.99% of students and hobby programmers and a good chunk of small businesses to use it free forever without ever hitting this mark and seems to me like one of the fairest schemes to use expensive software out there. It's what we always wanted 15, 20 years ago.

Imagine Microsoft or SAP or whoever offered you to use their Windows Server Datacenter or ERP or even Office suite for free until you made a $5000 profit off of using their programs...

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#103

Post by nurettin »

sysrpl wrote: post #55
imagine99 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages / pros of this vs. the free Delphi Community Edition? Seriously asking, as I've been out of the "Delphi sphere" too long and not really familiar with the latest developments but looking to get back into it.

The advantages? The compile works on must every CPU and platform, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Gameboy Advanced, Amiga, and on and on. Also it's open source, so when you are writing code you can actually navigate to the underlying sources and step into everything with the debugger if you want. Finally, it comes with library support for so much more than Delphi, including Google APIs, FreeType, Cairo,…

But does it have devexpress widgets? A pivot grid is a really nice thing to have.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#104

Post by tonyedgecombe »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
zerr wrote: post #59

Lets also don't forget C++Builder :)

That was my tool of choice for years and I still think that if someone manages to duplicate that experience for the web that they'll make bank.

Borland once did a version of Delphi for the web, it compiled to PHP and was a bit of a turd.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#105

Post by weavie »

sharken wrote: post #63

From a developer viewpoint i can name three things that have stopped Delphi from competing with languages such as C# and JAVA. 1. No Garbage Collector. While some understanding of object lifetime is required, the constant need to manage allocation and de-allocation of objects takes a lot of energy away from the writing code. 2. Naming variables in a separate Var block. This is really cumbersome and detracts from the…

I've probably spent a similar amount of time tracking down memory leaks in C# as I have with Delphi. Garbage collector or not - desktop gui app, with lots of event handlers can cause things to hold on to memory a lot longer than they should. Having a garbage collector in these cases just seems to give a false sense of security.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#106

Post by jp_sc »

0-_-0 wrote: post #73
wolfgke wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebird is still actively developed as open source software: http://firebirdsql.org/

Firefox was originally to be named Firebird, but they had to rename it because the name was already taken.

An it was called Phoenix before that because, you know, "Netscape, reborn", but they had to rename it because of a trademark complain. And that's why Firebird was choosen.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#107

Post by thijsvandien »

Xelbair wrote: post #24
altmind wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember interbase, now called firebird. Of course, sqlite is much more prominent today for an embeded database, but for the times without sqlite...

Sadly i have to use that piece of shit called firebird. It has all the downsides of service based DB without all the advantages of file based DB. And the documentation is way below average, backwards compatibility is a joke. Not to mention the 3rd party software had to design their own(horribly bad) way to handle geometry in firebird... and they keep transactions open forever - and bloody firebird prior to 2.5 had no…

I’m genuinely interested in your frustrations, because I’ve been using Firebird to great satisfaction for about a decade. Some more substance would be required, however...

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#108

Post by wila »

chungy wrote: post #79
pjmlp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, if one wants to try out Delphi, https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter Lazarus and FreePascal are great, but they aren't 100% Delphi.

They also have a significantly lower barrier to entry. Just by scanning the Delphi page, I'm guessing the free one doesn't include the Linux version as advertised for the big for-pay editions. And the download is hidden behind a registration form. blah.

Professional doesn't even include the Linux version. You need to buy enterprise for that...

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#109

Post by frenchy »

pjmlp wrote: post #13
wiz21c wrote: post #5

In case you still want to work with it : https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Actually, if one wants to try out Delphi, https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter Lazarus and FreePascal are great, but they aren't 100% Delphi.

I went there and got a registration form. I field some garbage data in the first few fields and then the form just went bonkers.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#110

Post by wila »

imagine99 wrote: post #92
notriskfree wrote: post #51

Delphi is great; just ensure you always stay subscribed. Their tech support team regard properly managing their own strict license system as 'a courtesy' and will prevent you from installing the licensed software that you purchased. For that reason alone; I am out.

> will prevent you from installing the licensed software that you purchased Could you elaborate on that? I'm actually interested in procuring Delphi commercially after getting to know the free Community edition recently and I'd like to avoid any licensing pitfalls if possible. I can't really imagine how they would stop you from installing a properly licensed and purchased software but if they do, I'd be curious to kn…

You have a max. number of times you can install and after that you can only get it re-activated by buying a new version..

This was a hot topic at their forums. Sorry, can't locate that now, but here is a post of somebody who bumped into this:

https://community.idera.com/developer-tools/general-developm...

It's pretty customer hostile if you ask me.

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