Delphi 5 was awesome. From memory it was the last version where you could do jump to definitions on tons of the systems/built in code. 6 had that obscured somehow
Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
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Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#62Earlier 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…
As I recall, the installer seemed to complete fine, but the IDE itself had problems, and this was consistent on every Vista and W7 computer. Windows XP computers could run it without issue.
It's been a long enough time that the details have left my brain, but the feelings of pain have not been forgotten :-)
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#63I 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 remember a product called PHP builder, that was out for awhile. It was supposed to make it easier to create and deploy PHP apps.
It failed within a year or two.
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#64I 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 have barely 2 years of experience in software development, so I wasn't around doing Delphi and stuff (I vagely remember seeing a Pascal book at my grandparent's).
However I feel like the current paradigm of declarative ui, with automatic re-render, like React (and what I actually use: Compose Multiplatform) is very good for producing maintainable applications and encourages UI decoupling.
I agree that the dependency hell and project setup parts on the web are horrible, but I wouldn't say it's part of "UI Development".
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#65Delphi was nice, but the community was horrible to me, accelerating the move of my company to C#.
I have exactly opposite experience, Delphi was awful UI, verbose language experience, with hops and tricks and a ton of Win32 rendering to do simple controls like a ComboBox with checkboxes. Yet the community was brilliant, always helpful and SO questions answered the same day!
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#66I 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 have barely 2 years of experience in software development, so I wasn't around doing Delphi and stuff (I vagely remember seeing a Pascal book at my grandparent's). However I feel like the current paradigm of declarative ui, with automatic re-render, like React (and what I actually use: Compose Multiplatform) is very good for producing maintainable applications and encourages UI decoupling. I agree that the dependenc…
> I vagely remember seeing a Pascal book at my grandparent's).
First time someone used “grandparent” and I could relate :-)
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 earl…
Thanks, I like your website BTW. It reminds me of the 90s.
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 earl…
Man I love it. Back in 1999/2000 I was very into Quake mapping and Half-Life mapping. I didn't make any good maps but the community was great. I remember talking to other mappers on ICQ every night.
I believe the community is still thriving.
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#69I 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…
Is there kinda gui builder for web?
Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Its a very old product, and afaik it was discontinued (many) years ago. It was reasonable for crud applications, nowadays you can do rougly the same with any oss airtable clone. Could have been a great tool, but unfortunely poor marketing and lack of vision killed the product.