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Delphi's 25th Birthday

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141–150 of 199 posts

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between this and https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ ?

(Same thing. Not sure why there's two websites.)

Ok I kinda find out.

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ is made by the Free Pascal team, that's the "official" version. It has precompiled binaries to download https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=about

https://www.getlazarus.org/ is a different version (but not sure by how much), using download scripts https://www.getlazarus.org/about/

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#142
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…

Agree with 3.

1 sounds like you need to get experience on more platforms though. Maybe try to work on a memory restricted platform using a GC language and see how it fucks you over. Anyway, look beyond the javascript "ecosystem".

And while 2 can be mildly annoying, there's a reason Borland compilers are so fast, and that's the somewhat restricted syntax of the language.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#145
post #43

For those interested, Free Pascal and Lazarus, the free open source implementation of Delphi, is amazing. It has an active development community and works on most all platforms. https://www.getlazarus.org/learn/tutorials/introduction/

> Free Pascal and Lazarus […] is amazing.

No, it is less than mediocre. It has not kept up at any sufficient pace to other languages and environments. Just a small excerpt because I don't have the nerve to write an exhaustive critique: bignum, first-class functions, generators, lazy lists, lexical scope, macros, namespaces. Single window in Lazarus requires recompilation that errors out in CheckLst.pas instead of being a preference somewhere in a menu.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#146
post #93
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...although language features, 64bit, and integration with C++ were never really where my quarrels were. If we take "rapid application development" out of its trademarked context, applying just its common-sense meaning, and applying it to the year 2020, then the modern tech ecosystem that one would want to integrate with is clearly not C++, but rather maybe JavaScript & the browser ecosystem, Python, and low-overhead…

Haha. 10 minutes further into my Delphi-in-2020-exploration (60% of which was the time that the installer actually took), this was the sequence of events: * Hit the installer and switched windows, to let the installer work in the background. * Installer mysteriously gone. * Tried to run the programme, and it took some digging to understand that the product seems to be in a half-installed state. * Re-run the installer…

I’m working on yazz Pilot which is supposed to be a modern take on Delphi or Visual Basic. I will take your comment to heart and make sure we implement proper layouts and positioning for the web

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#147
post #65

Do you guys think that closed source general-purpose programming languages have any future? In the late 90s and early 2000s both Java and C# were closed source. Still, they became highly successful. Today many people wouldn't even touch a language or a framework to build a business on unless it's Open Source. It's surprising how the programming landscape has changed in the past 20 years.

Yes they do. C, C++, Ada, Pascal, Basic, Oberon compilers for embedded market, in many cases, certificed compilers. Commercial UNIX, mainframe and Windows compilers (VS Community doesn't cover everything) are still a separate product. Sony, Nintendo, MS SDKs for their game consoles. HPC compilers, yeah you can try with clang and gcc, but if you are doing top research, then IBM, Intel, CodePlay, PGI compilers is what…

I think the standard approach is to not add extra constraints.

Are you writing general purpose, portable code code? You'd rather not be locked in to a specific vendor's compiler.

Are you working in embedded systems? Your code is probably hardware-specific, at least to some degree. You probably aren't going to switch CPUs very often. You probably are never going to switch CPU families. You also probably are never going to upgrade the compiler, still less switch to a different vendor's compiler. So if you aren't going to do that anyway, you don't worry much about a one-vendor-only compiler or language.

I think it's a similar story in HPC. You're constrained by your hardware. You get the best compiler for that setup. That means it's hard to change compilers? It's even harder to change your hardware, so you didn't add much of a constraint.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#148

I started my lifelong love of coding with Turbo Pascal. At the time we coded on a Sperry Univac 1100 system at varsity and it took bloody ages to compile/debug/run programs. When I got a loaner PC and a copy of Turbo Pascal it was so amazing and fast.

When I started in college in 1989 our school had an IBM mainframe with terminals where you would type in your Pascal code and submit a compile job and if there were bugs you would get a green bar paper printout that you had to go across campus to get. Through a friend I was able to get a official IBM file upload utility (he was in IBM’s summer sales rep program) and figured out that Turbo Pascal also compiles the (UC…

What kind of insane university has the terminals in a different building from the printers?

I'm going to guess that the staff didn't have to use those terminals, only the students did.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#149
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they do. C, C++, Ada, Pascal, Basic, Oberon compilers for embedded market, in many cases, certificed compilers. Commercial UNIX, mainframe and Windows compilers (VS Community doesn't cover everything) are still a separate product. Sony, Nintendo, MS SDKs for their game consoles. HPC compilers, yeah you can try with clang and gcc, but if you are doing top research, then IBM, Intel, CodePlay, PGI compilers is what…

I think the standard approach is to not add extra constraints. Are you writing general purpose, portable code code? You'd rather not be locked in to a specific vendor's compiler. Are you working in embedded systems? Your code is probably hardware-specific, at least to some degree. You probably aren't going to switch CPUs very often. You probably are never going to switch CPU families. You also probably are never goin…

Agreed.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On the main embarcadero.com website, hover over 'Free Tools' and click 'Delphi Community Edition'. You're right, it is not very visible by going to the normal Delphi page. Not sure why - I think our website folk want to push people to the trial not Community. But here's the link: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter

Sorry, after reading about the install limits I lost all interest.
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