Delphi still exists and is actively developed • Hacker News Board

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#11

Post by andsoitis » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

crypt1d wrote: post #6

I'd love to go back to Delphi and play with it again as I did back in the day, but the price tag kills the mood pretty quickly.

You can use it for free with the community edition (https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter) if your revenue is less than $5,000.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#12

Post by jollyllama » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

jsmolka wrote: post #8

vbezhenar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple low-level language, high-quality IDE. Why not.

Calling RAD Studio a high-quality IDE seems like a stretch to me. I would choose VS Code or a JetBrains product any day of the week. Unfortunately you a kinda stuck with it when developing in Delphi.

I think the .net ecosystem, as a higher level language, was probably less fit for the task.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#13

Post by giancarlostoro » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

It does still exist, and I'd love to try it out, but I'm not throwing down thousands of dollars when it costs significantly less for me to get Visual Studio Pro as a single developer ($30 a month iirc) or you know... $120 for JetBrains IDE's annually (after 3 years) it makes no sense for me to throw down a thousand dollars (per year?) same with you Qt. I'm looking to evaluate your product and prototype and maybe build small projects that need a UI but your pricing scheme is not for people like me at all.

One would likely argue that JetBrains probably isnt a RAD IDE, but Visual Studio definitely is fully capable of RAD editing capabilities, think WinForms.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#14

Post by anthk » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #11

crypt1d wrote: post #6

I'd love to go back to Delphi and play with it again as I did back in the day, but the price tag kills the mood pretty quickly.

You can use it for free with the community edition ( https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter ) if your revenue is less than $5,000.

Just get Lazarus.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#15

Post by mhd » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

...for the enterprise. Which is okay, there's plenty of mixed quality software for that sector. It's just that Delphi used to be a lot more oriented towards beginner to small-business developers.

And note that this happened before the web pillow-smothered decent desktop UIs. If it was all about a reduced audience for desktop-based applications and then supporting that, I would understand it more.

I haven't been following Delphi itself, but the parent company also manages ExtJS, which is aimed/priced similarly, yet with support/quality that doesn't justify this.

Weird that outside of the BCPL or ML families, it's Ada that seems to be the one with the most momentum these days.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#16

Post by mhd » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

jsmolka wrote: post #8

vbezhenar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple low-level language, high-quality IDE. Why not.

Calling RAD Studio a high-quality IDE seems like a stretch to me. I would choose VS Code or a JetBrains product any day of the week. Unfortunately you a kinda stuck with it when developing in Delphi.

I would assume that "as a kid", when malware was written in Delphi, those weren't really options.

(And VS of that era was rather meh...)

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#17

Post by jollyllama » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

mhd wrote: post #16

jsmolka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling RAD Studio a high-quality IDE seems like a stretch to me. I would choose VS Code or a JetBrains product any day of the week. Unfortunately you a kinda stuck with it when developing in Delphi.

I would assume that "as a kid", when malware was written in Delphi, those weren't really options. (And VS of that era was rather meh...)

Yeah, I'm referring to the late XP / early Vista era.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#18

Post by minsight » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

Embarcadero was acquired by the same jackasses that bought out a company where I used to work. The new owners had a bunch of attitude and kept crowing on about "their playbook". It turned out that the primary technology that they were buying us for was the one part of our product that we actually licensed from another vendor. I believe they spent millions and didn't get what they were looking for.

They had an offshore team that theoretically could work with the codebase, but I don't remember seeing anything of consequence added to the product in the past 7-8 years. If I ever found that they bought out a company that used technology that I depended upon, I'd migrate to a new solution.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#19

Post by behnamoh » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9

For me when Borland became Embarcadero, it seemed like it lost it’s scrappy hacker ethos. Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Delphi, C++ Builder were all very innovative products that catered to the individual developer. The Embarcadero rebrand seems like a turn towards Enterprise. For me now, JetBrains is the new Borland, a scrappy company with a strong focus on what individual developers need and consistently turning out excel…

I still remember Borland’s logo and icons. Something about the 90s and 00s was special and maybe we didn’t appreciate it enough.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#20

Post by tjr » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

crypt1d wrote: post #6

I'd love to go back to Delphi and play with it again as I did back in the day, but the price tag kills the mood pretty quickly.

I worked for about ten years on a suite of tools written, in large part, in Delphi. As far as I know, those tools are still being maintained in Delphi today.

It was a tiny software group in a large company, and paying Embarcadero whatever they wanted was just a matter of filling out paperwork. I imagine a lot of their current paying customers are in a similar situations.