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Delphi still exists and is actively developed

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Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#191

Post by hankman86 »

alyandon wrote: post #82
mhd wrote: post #15

...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 follo…

the web pillow-smothered decent desktop UIs Application development has gone backwards so much compared to the RAD tooling from the 90s. I really can't even properly describe it to the younger generation. :(

This. How easy was it to put together a well-functioning Windows desktop app in Delphi, compared with the complexity of developing a Web app these days?

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#192

Post by hankman86 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #151
saiya-jin wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah the GUI designers from Borland, light years ahead of everything else... it just worked and looked nice (compared to Microsoft shitshow that was Visual Studio back then), was very easy to learn and its the only thing in software I've seen in 20 years which deserved the title RAD.

Delphi cut the corners with their fixed positioning. It will not work for web and it works very poorly for localization (labels change their lengths and can overlap over each other). As soon as you introduce layouts to your UI, all the Delphi simplicity goes out of the window. This is an interesting challenge to invent a way for UI to be pixel-fixed, yet work in web and with localization. If someone would do that, yo…

So? Many apps don’t need localisation. Responsive UIs weren’t all that important in the mid 1990s when monitors and their resolutions were all in a relatively small corridor. I remember 20 inch CRTs to be the absolute high-end that few could afford. Most PCs came with 14 or 15 inch monitors, 17 inch later.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#193

Post by tdeck »

hankman86 wrote: post #191
alyandon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the web pillow-smothered decent desktop UIs Application development has gone backwards so much compared to the RAD tooling from the 90s. I really can't even properly describe it to the younger generation. :(

This. How easy was it to put together a well-functioning Windows desktop app in Delphi, compared with the complexity of developing a Web app these days?

I love using these RAD tools but I think part of what we're forgetting is how much lower the standards were (both visual and functional) for UIs back then. Sure you could throw together a professional UI in a lot less time, but part of that was that the definition of "professional" was "looks exactly the same as every other Windows application and uses the same 5 form elements". We've just come to expect more variety so the RAD approach doesn't take you as far these days.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#194

Post by tdeck »

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.

Folks mentioned a few good options already, but another one is using C# and visual studio's built in form designer. It's very easy to get started with if you've seen a similar language before (e.g. Java).

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#195

Post by RachelF »

hankman86 wrote: post #190

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 Window…

Except the small statically linked executable.

C# needs .NET which has its very own circle of dll hell with compatibility and confusion version numbers for your users.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#196

Post by api »

shrubble wrote: post #172
api wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should break off and commercialize just the cross-platform GUI and rapid development IDE for that and put a language like Go under it. Go with a good RAD IDE would be so amazing, like yank out my wallet and throw money at you while shaking amazing. Give me a good cross platform GUI. Give me a good IDE for it. Don't make me learn yet another fucking programming language that exists nowhere else to use it. The las…

Have you seen this, and do you have a perspective on it? https://www.remobjects.com/elements/gold/

I can't quite figure out what problem it solves. Go already compiles everywhere, and I see nothing about cross platform GUI. Is it just an IDE?

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#197

Post by nomel »

jaywalk wrote: post #163
magicalhippo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you are doing your customers a great disservice by not learning about web development. Sticking a bunch of inputs in a HTML page is indeed not complex, but it has to look decent (labels and corresponding inputs line up vertically etc) and be functional (ie with sensible tab order etc). To get a sense of what we've got in Delphi, here's a demo video[1] illustrating making a simple input box. This is a "entry…

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.

I can quickly draw them with my mouse!?

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#199

Post by fomine3 »

tdeck wrote: post #193
hankman86 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. How easy was it to put together a well-functioning Windows desktop app in Delphi, compared with the complexity of developing a Web app these days?

I love using these RAD tools but I think part of what we're forgetting is how much lower the standards were (both visual and functional) for UIs back then. Sure you could throw together a professional UI in a lot less time, but part of that was that the definition of "professional" was "looks exactly the same as every other Windows application and uses the same 5 form elements". We've just come to expect more variety…

Yeah they tend to have no variable window size support.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#200

Post by fomine3 »

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.

You can ignore XAML if you make WPF app as like WinForms, just use GUI designer and absolute layout. It's not considered to good but it should work.
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