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

Delphi's 25th Birthday

community.idera.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 199 posts

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#151

Post by zerr »

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…

Do you plan to open source it and adopt e.g. Qt-like business model? e.g. charge for service, not tools (except probably some enterprise chart or reporting components).

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#154

Post by zerr »

pjmlp wrote: post #119
chrisseaton wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's just the one particular language, and the reasons were political :)

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#155

Post by gfody »

nottorp wrote: post #6
mickeyp wrote: post #3

I 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#…

My first paid programming job was Delphi. Worked with 1, 2, 4 and 6 I think. Then it went extremely enterprise. And I'm saying that even though it was used for an accounting application. RIP. You were great once.

I had the same experience and I often wonder about the tendency to "go enterprise" - it seems more like sabotage than idiocy after enough coffee. Probably just the consequence of excessive profiteering /shrug.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#157

Post by kstrauser »

weavie wrote: post #30
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...

Interbase was a proper client server db. If you wanted embedded you needed Paradox. Ah, I have many happy memories of pulling all nighters repairing corrupted Paradox files...

Heh, good memories of hitting ^Z in the Interbase command line client app to suspend it, and it pausing the entire server until the client was unpaused or killed. I'm not even sure how that could possibly happen (unless there was some blocking heartbeat thing), but it was 100% reproducible.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#158

Post by MrMorden »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #137
tsss wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wouldn't call it modern, unless you consider C++ modern.

C++ is modern.

C++14 and later are modern. What people commonly refer to as “C++” also includes C++03, which needs to be put out of its misery.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#160

Post by justin66 »

mickeyp wrote: post #3

I 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#…

> 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.

It's worth noting that Kylix's failure to take off had a lot more to do with Borland's variously stupid, obnoxious and immoral business decisions than it had to do with the upheaval in the Linux desktop world. It was a strong enough concept for a product, and the base technology was implemented well enough, that all they had to do was not screw it up... and guess what they did?

All these years later I remember saying "fuck it" when Borland decided to wrap up some important bug fixes into the (full price) upgrade for Kylix, rather than just giving them to existing users. The smug uselessness of the one or two Borland employees who liaised with the community online has kind of stuck in my memory as well. The technology deserved to survive but the company sure didn't.

Post reply on HN