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Delphi still exists and is actively developed

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Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#231

Post by CRConrad »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #225
mycall wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond Compare is a lovely Delphi application.

Good to know. I use that; didn't know it was Delphi. It's...not terrible looking. It's all Windows controls, as I mentioned above, which makes it look, well, simple. And it's a utility that really doesn't need to look fancy, so it's fine for what it is. It doesn't seem to have a dark theme, which is a bummer, but otherwise it does the job. But that doesn't mean I want to work on it.

> It's all Windows controls, as I mentioned above, which makes it look, well, simple.

Simple is beautiful.

> And it's a utility that really doesn't need to look fancy, so it's fine for what it is.

"Fancy" sucks.

> It doesn't seem to have a dark theme, which is a bummer, but otherwise it does the job.

"Dark theme" is moronic: Having your app use only standard Windows controls meant it automatically used whatever "theme" the user had set Windows-wide, so it always adapted to their preferences. No per-application "dark theme" or "purple theme" needed.

Until Microsoft themselves sabotaged all that, starting late in the lifespan of Windows 7. Assholes.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#232

Post by CRConrad »

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…

> 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.

They weren't lower then, they're lower now.

> 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".

Yup. That's still the correct definition.

> We've just come to expect more variety so the RAD approach doesn't take you as far these days.

Yes, unfortunately users have been conditioned to expect myriad variations of something like Kai's Fucking "Power Tools". And most of them have even been deluded into thinking of that as a good thing. They're wrong.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#233

Post by CRConrad »

fomine3 wrote: post #199
tdeck wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What??? WTF are you talking about?

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#234

Post by CRConrad »

badsectoracula wrote: post #95
kwanbix wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they really screwed up after Delphi 7, when they did the horrible Delphi.NET. Also, they should have had some better pricing, something like: Personal use: Free. Commercial use: Free until you are making $x a year, like Unity I think, and then different prices. Note: I might remember wrong, as this was so long ago. I started with Delphi 1.0!

I think their original pricing scheme for the first 5 or 6 versions of Delphi was fine. The cheapest version was just $100, which even a student could buy by saving for a few weeks (get them hooked while young, etc :-P). The versions that added features focused on enterprises were more expensive but these wouldn't be needed by a lot of people (a lot of Delphi programmers were making small shareware utilities instead…

After a while they got greedy and fucked up that scheme, moving stuff that had been in the Professional edition (most importantly, client-server DB connections) into Enterprise, and other stuff (three-tier app development) from Enterprise into a new Architect edition. And then steady substantial price hikes for all editions from version to version. Shot themselves in the foot, AFAICS.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#235

Post by CRConrad »

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.

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

As the GP said, FP / Lazarus.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#236

Post by CRConrad »

p_l wrote: post #165
therealmarv wrote: post #10

I still have the feeling it's the most productive way to create beautiful native Windows desktop programs. Rapid application development is not an empty promise here. All my other endeavours with UI programming (Java/Swing, HTML/JS frontends, QT) felt way less productive. Maybe MS C# is the closest to Delphi nowadays.

AFAIK one of the main driving forces behind C# and .NET was the designer of Delphi that Microsoft managed to hire away.

Yup: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Anders+Hejlsberg

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#237

Post by CRConrad »

wenc wrote: post #29
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…

Borland pivoted to enterprise long before this thing called Embarcadero. Recall it renamed itself Inprise before renaming itself back to Borland. Also Embarcadero isn’t Borland. They acquired Borland’s product lines but not Borland itself.

And the original company seems, name change notwithstanding, to have stuck with the "Enterprise"-y mentality of Inprise.

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#238

Post by CRConrad »

chinabot wrote: post #188
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 :-)

Put in a bid to port it to FP/Lazarus?

(Oh, you already did that? ;-)

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#239

Post by CRConrad »

pawelmurias wrote: post #76
aaa_aaa wrote: post #47

AFAIK they signed a deal with education ministry of Turkey so that Delphi will be taught as the programming language in technical high schools.

Super evil

> Super evil

...On the part of the Turkish Ministry of Education, which figured out that they'd get legions of young programmers all primed to jump ship to Free Pascal / Lazarus?

Naah -- smart, but not exactly evil. :-)

Re: Delphi still exists and is actively developed

#240

Post by CRConrad »

unpeasant wrote: post #217

Went for a job interview last year and the tech stack was an API built in Delphi, on Macs, using a virtual machine running Windows. Company was doing well from it, but trying to scale, and finding anyone to code delphi was impossible.

Throw me a link or a mail, gotta see if they're still looking.
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