Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#51

Post by magicalhippo » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 7:51 PM UTC

jchw wrote: post #27

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.

It's more hit or miss than you might think. If you're just using mostly basic parts of the Win32 API then it is basically about as solid as any backwards compatibility ever has been. The fall off occurs as you veer off into deeper holes: - Multimedia software and games tend to hit on areas of Windows where compatibility is far from perfect. - Even 32-bit software would sometimes have random Win16 binaries, and those…

> Even 32-bit software would sometimes have random Win16 binaries

InstallShield being a common one in that regard. So common that 64-bit Windows, which doesn't support 16-bit binaries, contains code to handle specifically[1] InstallShield and Acme 16-bit binaries[2].

[1]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20131031-00/?p=27...

[2]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/ap...

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#52

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 7:52 PM UTC

chungy wrote: post #9

okanat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows doesn't break backwards compatibility unless it is absolutely worse to keep it around. Think about old SMB protocol that caused security issues. The old Delphi programs continue to work since both the API design is more future-proof and Microsoft did a mind-boggling amount of work to keep ABI stable.

I recall some very nasty hacks and often-won't-work-at-all issues in trying to get Delphi 6 to run on Vista or Windows 7. Windows breaks backwards compatibility more often than "never".

Was it Delphi or the installer? I do not have Delphi 6 but i have Delphi 2 and while the installer doesn't work out of the box (IIRC you can make it work with otvdm which can run 16bit programs on 64bit windows) you can simply just copy the files from the CD and it'll work.

Here is a screenshot from ~5 years ago when i was playing around writing a Quake 1 level editor in Delphi 2 under Windows 10[0] (i switched to using Linux as my main OS soon after and converted it to Lazarus[1]).

[0] https://i.imgur.com/I48gyMv.png

[1] https://i.imgur.com/7MSH98p.png

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#53

Post by wdb » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 7:58 PM UTC

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #45

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 would love something like Delphi/VB6, but made for web development. My day job involves working with PeopleTools, which basically does this. Draw forms (and build all of the supporting objects), save them, and they're accessible through a web browser. You don't need to know HTML, CSS, JS, etc (though it can help), and you can knock out a very based CRUD form in no time without writing any code. I think the Microsof…

There was Delphi for PHP

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#54

Post by markus_zhang » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:03 PM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #52

chungy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall some very nasty hacks and often-won't-work-at-all issues in trying to get Delphi 6 to run on Vista or Windows 7. Windows breaks backwards compatibility more often than "never".

Was it Delphi or the installer? I do not have Delphi 6 but i have Delphi 2 and while the installer doesn't work out of the box (IIRC you can make it work with otvdm which can run 16bit programs on 64bit windows) you can simply just copy the files from the CD and it'll work. Here is a screenshot from ~5 years ago when i was playing around writing a Quake 1 level editor in Delphi 2 under Windows 10[0] (i switched to us…

Hey this is interesting. Did you write the rendering code in Delphi too?

Did a bit of search, is it QuARK?

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#55

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #54

badsectoracula wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it Delphi or the installer? I do not have Delphi 6 but i have Delphi 2 and while the installer doesn't work out of the box (IIRC you can make it work with otvdm which can run 16bit programs on 64bit windows) you can simply just copy the files from the CD and it'll work. Here is a screenshot from ~5 years ago when i was playing around writing a Quake 1 level editor in Delphi 2 under Windows 10[0] (i switched to us…

Hey this is interesting. Did you write the rendering code in Delphi too? Did a bit of search, is it QuARK?

Yes the rendering code is in Delphi too. It uses an OpenGL control i wrote some years ago[0] which include OpenGL bindings for Delphi 2 (i haven't tested later versions). The control is actually a conversion of one i made for Borland C++ Builder [1].

It is not QuArK, though AFAIK QuArK was made in Delphi too. There have been a few other Quake editors made in Delphi, like the qED Quake Editor which was one of the earlier Quake editors (the author wrote a book about quake mapping too[2]).

[0] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/dglvp/

[1] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/bcbgl/

[2] https://archive.org/details/unofficial-quake-level-design-ha...

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#56

Post by earth-adventure » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:12 PM UTC

Really cool seeing you here Marco, as a teenager I got into Delphi and a part of that were your books (and some local Delphi forum). So thanks for being part of my 14 year old self spiraling into programming!

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#57

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:13 PM UTC

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…

Layout managers were well established industry-wide by the 90s, which is where I started using them.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#58

Post by Mister_Snuggles » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:26 PM UTC

wdb wrote: post #53

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love something like Delphi/VB6, but made for web development. My day job involves working with PeopleTools, which basically does this. Draw forms (and build all of the supporting objects), save them, and they're accessible through a web browser. You don't need to know HTML, CSS, JS, etc (though it can help), and you can knock out a very based CRUD form in no time without writing any code. I think the Microsof…

There was Delphi for PHP

Is https://delphi.fandom.com/wiki/Delphi_for_PHP the one you're thinking of?

This is truly interesting, and the description on that wiki page suggests that it might be exactly what I'm looking for, but it seems like any concrete information about it has vanished.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#59

Post by mikewarot » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:28 PM UTC

I'm looking forward to using this as the missing documentation for Lazarus

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#60

Post by fuzztester » Mon, Mar 24, 2025, 8:58 PM UTC

marcocantu wrote: post #18

pjmlp wrote: post #12

Many thanks Marco for providing this.

Thank you, it was a nice project, partially walking down the memory lane, but also checking how many features in that version of Delphi are still core today -- not just for the product but for the industry

Which Delphi version(s) can the book be used with?

I like Delphi and FreePascal and Lazarus and have used all of them a little, now and then, to create some small personal and paid business apps, Delphi in multiple versions with gaps between versions, from 2 onwards until the 'Berlin' version, IIRC.

And yes, thanks, Marco, for making this book available. I had bought a copy of one of your Delphi books around the 3 to 5 version timeframe, cannot remember which version right now.

Also, I had downloaded your Object Pascal Handbook a few years ago, which is a great resource, because we devs need to know our programming language well too, not just the IDE or the libraries, which is what some book authors focus on. Thanks for that too.

Need to set aside some time to do some more Pascal work for fun and profit.