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

Delphi still exists and is actively developed

embarcadero.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 250 posts

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#71

Post by GnarfGnarf »

shimonabi wrote: post #34

I'm working with the Delphi libraries every day in C++ Builder, bucause my company bet on Turbo C++ and Builder in the 90s, when Microsoft technologies seemed primitive compared to it. At a recent meetup in my country, 90% of Delphi developers were over 60 years old. Also, Embarcadero licenses aren't cheap.

We also started with Borland C++ 3.1 in the 90s. The GUI IDE was mind-blowing at the time. It was superior to MS' Workbench. However, Borland really dropped the ball with C++ 4.5, and we had to switch to Visual Studio.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#72

Post by the_only_law »

hengheng wrote: post #70
panki27 wrote: post #60

One of the best aspects of Delphi is how quickly you can whip together simple GUI applications. The main issue nowadays is finding helpful resources on the internet, as hardly anybody writes Delphi anymore. For the interested, a free Delphi IDE exists (comes with FreePascal compiler): https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Asking as someone who last saw Delphi in computer class at school, what would be the modern equivalent? Something that lets me draw a window with two number fields and a button that says "return sum", but it's two minutes of work and self-explanatory.

> As someone who last saw Delphi in computer class at school, what would be the modern equivalent?

Maybe hard pressed to call it modern, but WinForms is still my go to for quickly making a UI, at least in Windows.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#73

Post by copperx »

KindOne wrote: post #23
kerblang wrote: post #5

I used Delphi years and years ago and it was great for building GUI applications quickly and easily. Much nicer than Visual Basic. I probably wouldn't recognize it now, other than I suppose it's still Object Pascal, which is a very good programming language, all things considered; straightforward, not too fancy, not too dumbed down. Free edition: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter

Be warned: You need to enter a valid phone number. They will call you asking on what you plan on building with the software. I've had that happen to me within a few days of downloading the software. Another person had the same experience. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24582890

I hang up on people all the time. I don't want to spend minutes of my life answering probing questions. Just hang up as they speak.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#77

Post by LeonB »

cowmix wrote: post #59

I remember going to a convention in 2005 for retail store software and I was amazed that Delphi dominated as the platform for POS systems.

I knew a pharmacist who wrote his own POS software in Delphi. It (and Visual Basic) had that position where they were so usable that even someone whose fulltime job was something else would be able to single handedly make a line of business app for that business.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#78

Post by bluedino »

marcodiego wrote: post #42

I have to repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491963 : My main problem with delphi: it is "too proprietary". It was a very productive ide in the 90's or early 2000's but lost their path and never recovered. Some new versions broke compatibility with previous version's components. There was the case where you paid a good amount of money on some proprietary components and they simply wouldn't work in the next…

Same could be said for Access

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#79

Post by badsectoracula »

hengheng wrote: post #70
panki27 wrote: post #60

One of the best aspects of Delphi is how quickly you can whip together simple GUI applications. The main issue nowadays is finding helpful resources on the internet, as hardly anybody writes Delphi anymore. For the interested, a free Delphi IDE exists (comes with FreePascal compiler): https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Asking as someone who last saw Delphi in computer class at school, what would be the modern equivalent? Something that lets me draw a window with two number fields and a button that says "return sum", but it's two minutes of work and self-explanatory.

The linked Lazarus. Here is a quick screencast making a window with two fields and a button that sums them (though i forgot the "return sum" caption :-P) in ~45 seconds:

https://i.imgur.com/cATdmhY.mp4

Post reply on HN