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Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

blog.marcocantu.com

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Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#31

Post by RDeckard »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #26
FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

Delphi and Visual Basic 6 were definitely not the pinnacle of UI development. For example, all layout was pixel based. Making windows resizable required much complex ad-hoc code, and internationalization was hard as well. Very early in my career, I have spent person months clicking through every single screen in a large desktop application to find words cut off due to words having different lengths (measured in pixel…

> Delphi and Visual Basic 6 were definitely not the pinnacle of UI development.

> All layout was pixel based.

I'd say that was a very reasonable trade-off at the time, when most screens were somewhere between 640x480 and 1024x768 resolutions at 72 DPI. This simplified UI design sufficiently enough that VB/Delphi provided an optimal solution that, yes in hindsight, would most accurately be described as a "local maxima" for the environment and the time.

> Making windows resizable required much complex ad-hoc code

I remember there were ActiveX controls one could drop onto their form that would attempt to derive the layout based on initial positioning of controls, i.e. that a lower row of buttons should be anchored to the bottom of the window, while textboxes are took up a larger area would automagically resize with the window.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#32

Post by antonyl »

FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

Isn't Retool (https://retool.com) like modern-day Delphi?

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#33

Post by pjmlp »

klipt wrote: post #23
pjmlp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including being high level, low level systems programming, and compiled ahead of time. It is incredible that given its heritage, we have had to wait 25 years for .NET to finally provide a similar experience, and there are still some rough edges. While it offered a way to perform AOT compilation, NGEN was only meant for fast startup and nothing else.

> It is incredible that given its heritage, we have had to wait 25 years for .NET to finally provide a similar experience It's even the same person: Microsoft poached Anders Hejlsberg, creator of both Turbo Pascal and Delphi, to architect .net.

This myth keeps being repeated.

If anyone poached Anders Hejlberg, it was the ex-Borland friends working at Microsoft, under the usual referral program many companies have.

Actual history behind on what happened,

"Anders Hejlsberg: A craftsman of computer language"

https://behindthetech.libsynpro.com/001-anders-hejlsberg-a-c...

And yes that is why .NET not having proper AOT in 2001 was such a disappointment.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#34

Post by theamk »

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #26
FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

Delphi and Visual Basic 6 were definitely not the pinnacle of UI development. For example, all layout was pixel based. Making windows resizable required much complex ad-hoc code, and internationalization was hard as well. Very early in my career, I have spent person months clicking through every single screen in a large desktop application to find words cut off due to words having different lengths (measured in pixel…

Don't know about VB6, but at least Delphi had Align property and TPanel/TGroupBox. Together, it allowed to make apps that handle resizing just fine without any custom logic.

(it has been a very long time, but I think those only handled internal composition and not overall window size.. so you'd still need some custom code if you wanted dialogs as compact as possible. But as long as you never missed setting Align property, you did _not_ have to manually resize every control for different text/font size).

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#35

Post by jksmith »

WillAdams wrote: post #13

Is this applicable to: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Yep, I'll have a major rich gui workstation client/server package with basic D365 functionality coming out in I hope about 8 months. Win, Linux, hopefully Mac, and browser. The browser version is definitely legacy gui compared to the native versions, just because it's browser.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#36

Post by tracker1 »

okanat wrote: post #10
FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

It is the result of cheaping out by the entire tech industry. Responsive design to support multiple resolutions and pixel density was extrapolated to use a single framework (HTML+JS+CSS) for every single device that exists. Except for a few, most businesses deploy Web based apps on browsers, desktop apps and mobile phones. Usually from the same monorepo. Add developer laziness and unnecessarily tight deadlines, we en…

These days, I'd say Flutter is the closest alternative to something like VB6 or Delphi.

While I get the aversion, HTML+CSS is a pretty good combination for layout and there are efforts towards application tooling for other languages. That said, I don't dislike JS/TS nearly as much as some on here. It's a highly expressive language that's flexible enough to get things done in a number of ways. And yeah, the overhead is kind of crazy, especially when devs bring in massive dependency chains. As a whole, it's still one of the better options for getting an application "everywhere".

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#37

Post by tracker1 »

magicalhippo wrote: post #25
bruce511 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I would be surprised if Delphi 5 ran without a hitch on Windows 10/11 I'd be surprised if it didn't. Not Delphi, but I've been helping a client update their Windows program, from a compiler which shipped in 1998. Their program, with that compiler, runs just fine on Windows 11. The backward compatibility of the Win32 API is such that I regularly use programs last compiled 20 years or more ago.

Microsoft sure has done a great job, but I have experienced some issues around Program Files and registry virtualization, along with UAC. I suppose if you run it as admin and/or install it outside Program Files it'll make it a lot less troublesome. So, not unexpected, but I'd still be mildly surprised.

Yeah... I saw a lot of poorly written apps using localized data in the application's directory, when they started locking down Program Files, all kind of bugs started to pop up. I don't blame MS much, they had some compatibility shims in place, but it was still troublesome. Mostly blame the early app devs for not understanding separation of the application/libraries and the data the app uses/manipulates.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#38

Post by kelafoja »

FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

I was so in love with Delphi 7 (didn't care much for Delphi 8, didn't try any version after). I don't think I've ever been more excited about a programming language/environment as when I was easily and quickly creating desktop applications with Delphi 7.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#39

Post by jksmith »

okanat wrote: post #10
FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

It is the result of cheaping out by the entire tech industry. Responsive design to support multiple resolutions and pixel density was extrapolated to use a single framework (HTML+JS+CSS) for every single device that exists. Except for a few, most businesses deploy Web based apps on browsers, desktop apps and mobile phones. Usually from the same monorepo. Add developer laziness and unnecessarily tight deadlines, we en…

One reason for this is when the big players move their business models over to taking your data and renting it back to you, there's no profit motive in pushing state-of-the-art ux when they just give their apps away to act like honeypots. MSFT gives their stuff away if you get on Azure. Atlassian charges 14 bucks a seat if you use their cloud. Lots of people who use this stuff have a laptop plus a bigger monitor their company bought to get their work done and it's like staring into an empty desert every day.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#40

Post by johanstokking »

FeistySkink wrote: post #6

I feel like Delphi, along with maybe VB6 and WinForms, have been the pinnacle of easy UI development, and things have gone significantly downhill since then. Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.), often implicitly-configured to produce output, in head-space. And due to this dependency hell, when porting a p…

And these programs, compiled in the ninetees, still run today on modern Windows with a functional UI. Microsoft, Borland and others then built developer tools and platforms to last. I think that cross-platform (including web) and touch changed the game because it wasn’t a simple and controlled ecosystem anymore. All of Microsoft’s successors to Win32 seem to be replaced sooner or later by something else, even in the Windows ecosystem, with Win32 still being supported. Let alone the web frameworks.

I also feel like this created a kind of positivity at the time rarely experienced today. I remember these Delphi conferences I used to go to as a teenager with my dad with many of the names Marco mentioned in his acknowledgments present, including himself. It was really rapid application development (RAD) without many of the stuff that parent mentions that brings so much struggle today (frontend) software development. People were having fun building software.

I’m happy to see that most of these names still seem to be able to make a living off Delphi. There’s probably still a lot of critical Windows enterprise software being maintained that needs consulting and support. Including my dad’s software he wrote 30 years ago which is still being maintained and used daily.

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