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Delphi still exists and is actively developed

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Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#201

Post by mycall »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #139
magicalhippo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure this cant be easily done? No, I'm no web expert. We've not found a way so far, and I've not seen something like this on the web, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. edit: to clarify, I don't doubt one can get 150 fields in a view on the web. But can one dev do it in one day and have it look great?

Depends on what "look great" means. And I've seen Delphi apps; I recently worked on one. In my experience they don't look great. Maybe you've done a lot of work to theme the controls; if so, wonderful. But what I'm familiar with just brought up Windows dialogs, and ... well, that's functional but I wouldn't say it looks great. But here are a few examples of ways you could create 150 fields in a day on a web app and h…

Beyond Compare is a lovely Delphi application.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#202

Post by SCLeo »

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...

Actually I do. Whenever I need a small tool like a calculator for a video game or a simple GUI program for processing images, I always go for a barebones single html file web application.

For example, this is a simple visualizer for different numerical integrators that I wrote in a day or two for a college course: https://scleox.github.io/integrator-visualizer/index.html. The the source code is just one single html file: https://github.com/SCLeoX/integrator-visualizer/blob/master/...

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#204

Post by SCLeo »

jkaptur wrote: post #84
hengheng wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Just one more quick tip, you should probably use the unary operator "+" to convert strings to float. `parseFloat('2,000')` gives 2, which is probably not expected, while `+'2,000'` gives NaN indicating the input format is not recognized.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#205

Post by watwut »

junon wrote: post #180
magicalhippo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure this cant be easily done? No, I'm no web expert. We've not found a way so far, and I've not seen something like this on the web, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. edit: to clarify, I don't doubt one can get 150 fields in a view on the web. But can one dev do it in one day and have it look great?

Err... Yeah, depending on what you mean by "field", the answer is yes. In one day it is possible to stick 150 fields in an HTML document and apply some CSS to make it look nice.

Including functionality? Like including making them do what they are supposed to do? From what I recall about Delphi from years ago there is massive difference in amount of boilerplate and wiring to make stuff work.

Delphi has almost none, while most tech I have seen on web has a lot of it.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#206

Post by rightbyte »

shrubble wrote: post #170
magicalhippo wrote: post #108

We use Delphi at work. We've gotten a lot of pressure from customers to move to the web. However the lack of ways to design non-trivial UIs quickly does not make it seen feasible at the moment. Then there's the fact that Win32 is like bedrock in terms of stability. We've got forms that's been designed and coded over 15 years ago which still works just as fine as they did back then. We've got input-heavy UIs, the one…

What no one in the responses is talking about ...is speed of using the UI during day to day operations. Web interfaces are extremely clunky to use when trying to do things via only-keyboard (which is the only way to have muscle-memory help you zip through forms) methods. They are slow to update and in some cases, the Web browser's UI is fighting with you, such as offering to replace your input with the previous data…

5% is way to low number.

You surely have noticed how employees speed hack away on the keyboard with those old terminal style TUI apps.

Modern UX is almost all about looking sleek to the procurer, not usable for the end luser.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#207

Post by Desti314 »

shrubble wrote: post #170
magicalhippo wrote: post #108

We use Delphi at work. We've gotten a lot of pressure from customers to move to the web. However the lack of ways to design non-trivial UIs quickly does not make it seen feasible at the moment. Then there's the fact that Win32 is like bedrock in terms of stability. We've got forms that's been designed and coded over 15 years ago which still works just as fine as they did back then. We've got input-heavy UIs, the one…

What no one in the responses is talking about ...is speed of using the UI during day to day operations. Web interfaces are extremely clunky to use when trying to do things via only-keyboard (which is the only way to have muscle-memory help you zip through forms) methods. They are slow to update and in some cases, the Web browser's UI is fighting with you, such as offering to replace your input with the previous data…

No clue how much experience you have with normal webuis but they do not match mine at all.

You can use tab and hotkeys, add hints for auto fill (or just straight disabling them for a page).

Normal UIs are fast enough.

I'm not necessarily advocating for only web but I don't think your arguments holding up with reality

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#208

Post by yrgulation »

liveoneggs wrote: post #138
yrgulation wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ >150 input fields including multiple child tables up to levels 3 deep with their own grids” Yeah i’ve built single page apps with more input fields than this and grid tables all in a single view. Are you sure this cant be easily done? Coincidentally that was first 15 years ago with extjs, second time with react 3 years ago - the latter being a slower process but still pretty much doable.

Does #1 still work?

It did until roughly 5 years ago. From what i found by googling the product was acquired by a larger competitor and then decommissioned in favour of an existing product. The benefit in web based uis is that they work on any platform a supporting browser can be installed. And if you understand js it can work for a very very long time.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#209

Post by selfmodruntime »

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…

Yes. In fact the entire javascript toolchain that HN is always bemoaning is there to make sure that an application runs on 15 year old browsers just fine.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#210

Post by magicalhippo »

mhuffman wrote: post #181
magicalhippo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I think you just might just give it more credit due to familiarity.

Fair enough. I've tried searching for these things but it's very hard to find good resources. So far I've not found a way to do this with similar ease, but from this thread it seems it might be possible after all.

Some concrete examples or resources would be much appreciated.

> There are benefits to a web-app these days

Sure, I definitely see the positive sides of a web application, especially for our smaller customers.

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