I basically learned how to program using Delphi 2, as a 16 year old who somehow ended up writing the LOB software for a small business owned by a family friend. Lots of good memories of that. My career would probably be farther behind if Delphi didn't provide all the pieces to write a reasonable client-server application out of the box.
Delphi's 25th Birthday
111–120 of 199 posts
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's about ALL profit you make, not just the profit of your delphi apps. IOW, it excludes all small businesses.
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's about ALL profit you make, not just the profit of your delphi apps. IOW, it excludes all small businesses.
And it's very well hidden. I checked their site a couple weeks ago and I didn't see it.
Besides it's funny. 5000 income - 3000 delphi license leaves... not much?
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you can (dynamically) link Interbase into your app, so the server runs in-process. You can also do it with Firebird: https://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/html/ufb-cs-embedded.h...
Was it always that way? My memory is failing me.. I'd hate to think those nights in the 90's were completely wasted!
I vaguely remember that Interbase was a proper client/server thing at first. I'm pretty sure we were using Paradox databases with all their quirks in 1998-2000, including support people fixing broken db files for customers.
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Exactly. Phoenix bios company made the complain. That said, I think Firefox is the better name.
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure there was management issues in the 90's. But I'm of the opinion Borland's fate had a lot to do with Microsoft's embrace, extend, and extinguish strategies of the era.
If you ever listed or read Anders interviews, those management issues are also one of the reasons he ended up leaving Borland. Most university students in Portugal during the 90's would also gladly accept Microsoft job offers. I always find ironic that the companies that sold out to Microsoft are always the victims, the poor souls never did anything wrong.
I think there was a news/gossip item back in the day that MS offered him 1M/year and Borland/Inprise refused to even come close to matching that. Their loss.
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#117Someone wrote a full audio tracker with ASIO, VST etc. in delphi in the 90s; a pretty impressive feat. Its still avaliable: http://www.madtracker.org/main.php Thread talking about it: https://www.madtracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=180&sid=7df...
Well, as opposed to your average RAD medium, in Delphi you could even sprinkle pieces of assembly in the middle of your Pascal code.
So you could basically do anything with it, all the time not worrying about aligning buttons on a form because it was piss easy.
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The fuck ?!?
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
One of them would be generics, some languages are still having issues implementing them.
Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday
#120I loved Delphi. It was amazing. But then they ate their own future by going to the stratosphere with enterprisey tool acquisitions nobody remembers the names of any more; then they fell back down to earth, and flirted with Kylix -- Delphi for linux -- but at a time of great upheaval in the linux desktop world, and it never really took off either. Meanwhile, the former creator of Delphi had left for MS and created C#…
I organized the Borland developer conference in my country as a marketing intern in 2004 and it was still quite popular, but it's true the web was just around the corner to eat desktop apps.
I also remember a coworker had been approached by MS to work on the DotNet marketing campaign and he declined, as it was seen as kind of a failure with a very uncertain future. Hindsight is 20/20.
edit: personally I have found memories of Delphi3.