Delphi still exists and is actively developed • Hacker News Board

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#181

Post by mhuffman » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #168

jaywalk wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSS Grid Layout would be the modern way of doing that on the web. But even old school HTML tables could easily accomplish the UI in that video.

> CSS Grid Layout would be the modern way of doing that on the web. How do you handle the transition at 2:04 where "Last Name" is moved from its own row to sharing a row with "First Name"? Keep in mind I might want to add a third element in that row afterwards. IIRC with tables you'd have to modify the column spans of all the other rows which is way too much effort. How does it work with the CSS grid layout?

>How do you handle the transition at 2:04 where "Last Name" is moved from its own row to sharing a row with "First Name"? Keep in mind I might want to add a third element in that row afterwards.

This is pretty simple with CSS grid -- literally takes a couple of seconds. I am a fan of Delphi, and used it myself in the late 90s, but I think you just might just give it more credit due to familiarity.

There are benefits to a web-app these days, due to the onerous requirements and demands of different operating systems and platforms.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#182

Post by junon » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

mikewarot wrote: post #141

jaywalk wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about Delphi, but I guarantee that I could take any UI you designed in a day in Delphi and get something equivalent on the web in the same amount of time. Sticking a bunch of inputs on a page (even with some nesting) isn't complex at all. I think you are doing your customers a great disservice by not learning about web development.

Can you guarantee it'll run on the same machine, with the same browser, in 5 years, with no changes? Win32 is bedrock, the web is quicksand. Look at "HTTPS everywhere" and "you don't need FTP any more", which did little in terms of actual security, but broke almost everything in some small way. The web doesn't value legacy. It's a petulant 22 year old, that thinks it knows everything, and does stuff deliberately agai…

I'm not a huge fan of the web in general, but your assertions here are, plainly, incorrect.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#183

Post by hasperdi » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

arghwhat wrote: post #94

jkaptur wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a little frustrated, because the web is AMAZING for this. Type this in anywhere. Anywhere! sum function sum() { result.innerText = parseFloat(foo.value) + parseFloat(bar.value); } That's full of "bad practices" but for the use case you're talking about, who cares?

Unfortunately, nobody codes web apps like that. If they did they web probably wouldn't be that bad. Instead they whip out React and because native browser elements apparently are the devil they add tailwind/material design/bootstrap/whatever on top. Once you do it that way, the web approach honestly ends up as complex or worse than many of the alternatives...

That way doesn't scale well. Things become very messy and unmaintainable really quickly. This is how people code in the past, and there are good reasons why people moved on.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#184

Post by unnouinceput » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

kaba0 wrote: post #140

unnouinceput wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean how you open Delphi IDE, create a new project (default is Windows VCL, but you can also do cross-platform FireMonkey just as easy), then when the main form is presented in IDE how you drop components from the components palette? As in same way you do it in Visual Studio when doing a WPF and or/ Winforms project as well? Or as in any visual IDE for any programming language, because they all follow the same id…

I guess? I was interested in whether it had some unique feature/paradigm, or was it loved for some other reason.

Open Notepad, yeah, that classic one from Windows. Look at it, see all its menus, features, behavior. Now ask yourself: How much time would take me to create a clone of it in my preferred IDE/programming language?

Then comeback here and tell me your answer. I will tell you in advance mine: "In Delphi it would take maximum 3 hours". That's the core definition of RAD.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#185

Post by unnouinceput » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

stuaxo wrote: post #150

unnouinceput wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delphi IDE is available for Windows only, regardless of its version. I suspect @runjake meant is that the free version only targets Windows, while the architect edition of Delphi can target all of the major OS'es out there.

That's a shame, I guess Kylix just died in the end ?

Yes, Kylix died. But current implementation of FireMonkey framework within Delphi fully took its place and some more.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#186

Post by Kaibeezy » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

Editorialized title. It really does detract from the discussion. Let us reach our own judgments. Or am I missing something?

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#187

Post by chinabot » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:02 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…

Even though I own the latest Delphi Compiler it still seems 2 steps forward and 2 steps back each release, yes it gets better but they always seem to screw some little thing up which you need to work around (high DPI Issues, tcategorypanelgroup and IDE not repainting properly etc since my update from 10.3 to 11.1) 90% of their market is Win32 so I really dont understand why they concentrate 90% their development outside of this.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#188

Post by chinabot » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

jamier1978 wrote: post #155

A significant amount of Delphi code I wrote 20+ years ago is still in the wild and still making a ton of money for a company I used to work for. I actually miss the days of Windows desktop development. Good Times.

All my future developments will be in Lazarus but I have one mega-client with a big Delphi production program I have to keep happy for the foreseeable future or until their large team of developers and advisors can decide which language/platform/infrastructure etc they want to redevelop it in.

3+ years of consultants and meetings but not one line of code so far :-)

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#189

Post by spfzero » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

Joker_vD wrote: post #86

the_only_law wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Same here. I've tried to pick up WPF but holy fatcats, what an explosion of XAML files in exchange for... pretty much nothing, really. It's a shame, really.

Same feeling about WPF. XAML just never caught on with me and I stayed with Forms for a long while after WPF came out. With XAML, it seemed like they were trying a bit too hard on declarative.

Now working in SwiftUI, which is declarative but in a more understandable way, with a View building mechanism behind it that ties things together so that you understand what you're doing a bit better. Not sure I'm explaining that well...

Not good enough at it yet to build anything fast, but I could see that being the case after a few more months with it.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#190

Post by hankman86 » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

I still have a warm spot in my heart for Delphi. When I bought a license for Delphi 1.0 running on Windows 3.1, it was like a revelation to me. Having previously used Borland Pascal on DOS, I found it unbelievable how easy developing Windows UIs can be. I developed a 16-bit business app (accounting, inventory management, customer records) on Delphi 1.0 which is still running today (you need a 32 bit version of Windows 7 though). The bundled Borland Database Engine (Paradox desktop) was decent enough for structured data management in a single-user application. The best feature was the compiler that sprinted through my source code, turning it into a statically linked executable in mere seconds (on a Pentium 60).

While I have long moved on from Pascal, many great ideas of Delphi live on in C# and Typescript.