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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

#91

Post by vram22 »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #83
800xl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xojo Web aims to do exactly what you describe. https://xojo.com/products/web.php I haven't really used it - I'm just a hobbyist coder who enjoys the VB6 style development of the desktop version of Xojo.

Wow, a quick cruise through the documentation suggests that this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I'm looking for! I find myself waffling between "This is too expensive for me to play around with at home" and "Considering what this does, $399 really isn't that bad..."

There is a free trial or a $100 personal use version or some such, at least there was, when I checked it out a while ago.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#92

Post by baq »

rudedogg wrote: post #84
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> For example, all layout was pixel based. These sort of excuses always come up when Delphi and its insane productivity is mentioned. The same thing happens in conversations about how slow software has gotten. High-DPI displays, internationalization, and accessibility are a pain but don't introduce enough complexity to hand-waive away the criticism. Going a bit off-topic, but the browser is carrying around so many le…

The browser is the OS. We can already put WASM on a and ignore most of it, but turns out rendering text properly is hard.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#93

Post by tomcam »

baq wrote: post #92
rudedogg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, all layout was pixel based. These sort of excuses always come up when Delphi and its insane productivity is mentioned. The same thing happens in conversations about how slow software has gotten. High-DPI displays, internationalization, and accessibility are a pain but don't introduce enough complexity to hand-waive away the criticism. Going a bit off-topic, but the browser is carrying around so many le…

The browser is the OS. We can already put WASM on a and ignore most of it, but turns out rendering text properly is hard.

Accessibility too

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#94

Post by tomcam »

burgos_thrw wrote: post #66
LelouBil wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

My grandfather, on the other hand, was a gold miner in Alaska, then returned to Seattle in the 1920s just in time for the Great Depression. So I’m just a bit older than you ;)

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#95

Post by tomcam »

airstrike wrote: post #76
antonyl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I can't answer, because that website is so incredibly disorienting I had to close it after scrolling for a few seconds

That comment seemed a little bit snide to me, so I visited the website just to prove you wrong. Unfortunately, it was so disorienting I had to close it after scrolling for a few seconds :0

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#96

Post by tomcam »

kopirgan wrote: post #81

Borland was really a pioneer, made great stuff.. Sad they couldn't survive the Microsoft onslaught both in terms of product and tactics.

It was mostly unforced errors. They tried to compete directly with Microsoft by buying word processors, databases, making a spreadsheet, etc. It was pretty clear to me even at the time.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is severely underrated for its ability to just not fuck up too often.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#98

Post by JodieBenitez »

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'm not going to minor the merits of Delphi, but this...

> Especially on the web side, where even a single view sometimes requires having multiple unrelated dependencies (packers, builders, transpilers, etc.),

... is only true if you jumped on the SPA bandwagon. Things don't have to be this complicated.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#99

Post by pjmlp »

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…

No it wasn't, this keeps being wrongly repeated.

Both had layout managers, they just required a bit more effort to use, and developers as we know are all lazy.

Re: Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete

#100

Post by pjmlp »

sigzero wrote: post #30
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"easy UI development" Java never really got that part right.

Yes it did, IDE tooling was the answer, and Netbeans still provides its Matisse, WindowBuilder on Eclipse, and as does InteliJ.

Back in the day, JBuilder offered a Delphi like experience.

What I would agree is that the thing that actually made Swing hard are the defaults, which required books like "Filthy Rich Clients" as gate into making wow Swing applications.

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