24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today • Hacker News Board

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#141

Post by fmxexpress » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

wila wrote: post #118

Svip wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing model is the main reason newer people are not getting into Delphi. This is why they tried to lure people with iOS and Android capabilities. But when there are alternatives that are free, why bother? Yes, Delphi has a Community Edition now (which is free), but the fact that are excluded from a large portion of the library, because you cannot afford it, is always going to alienate some people. And it is alw…

Yes, thank goodness for FreePascal/Lazarus. Also have the Professional Edition and would update if only they took the macOS platform seriously. Again with this update, like the previous few, there are zero improvements for macOS. Really regret to ever have invested any time (and money as I bought several updates) into their FireMonkey platform. It looks bad on macOS for not using native controls and it looks bad on W…

They have macOS64 on their roadmap. I agree though that they should keep up with the macOS support better than they do. Even if it is probably the smallest platform by marketshare they support.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#142

Post by fmxexpress » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #127

Svip wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing model is the main reason newer people are not getting into Delphi. This is why they tried to lure people with iOS and Android capabilities. But when there are alternatives that are free, why bother? Yes, Delphi has a Community Edition now (which is free), but the fact that are excluded from a large portion of the library, because you cannot afford it, is always going to alienate some people. And it is alw…

Their community edition is kind of a joke when compared to Microsoft's VS Community Edition which basically brings everything.

Does VS Community Edition let a developer compile to Android/iOS/macOS32/Windows with a single codebase and single UI? I've used Xamarin and it doesn't really seem to do that.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#143

Post by magicalhippo » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

FranciscusG wrote: post #125

chadcmulligan wrote: post #82

I've been a Delphi developer off and on for 20+ years (since 2, though dabbled with 1). A lot of people focus on the object pascal and it is dated as a language, though the latest is catching up. The IDE has problems now and then with code completion - it pauses a lot and sometimes just stops working, if you come from Visual Studio or XCode this is incomprehensible and annoying. Where Delphi shines is the VCL - the V…

Delphi shines in so many ways - I tried to develop something in Go but I hit a brick wall with a sub-par editor (Visual Studio Code), all kinds of restrictions, no way to make halfway acceptable GUI apps, a slow runtime, a slow compiler, unacceptable formatting rules, totally hopeless. Rust has even worse issues. I considered C, C++, Java and PHP 7.3 but I'm basically forced into using Delphi again for a new major pr…

> hard to find developers for it

Our last two hires were guys without any prior Delphi experience. They did have Java, C++, Python etc background, tho. We sent them off to a two day intro course and with some assistance they were doing useful work within a couple of weeks.

A small investment IMO if you plan on keeping your employees for a while...

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#144

Post by giancarlostoro » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

fmxexpress wrote: post #142

giancarlostoro wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their community edition is kind of a joke when compared to Microsoft's VS Community Edition which basically brings everything.

Does VS Community Edition let a developer compile to Android/iOS/macOS32/Windows with a single codebase and single UI? I've used Xamarin and it doesn't really seem to do that.

Depends on what you use. You could use Cordova instead, but I'm not primarily a mobile developer. I'm mostly web / back-end.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#145

Post by distances » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

wila wrote: post #121

acqq wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter "If you're a small company or organization without revenue (or up to $5,000 per year in revenue), you can also use the Delphi Community Edition. Once your company's total revenue reaches US $5,000, or your team expands to more than 5 developers, you can move up to an unrestricted commercial license with Professional edition."

If your team is over 2 developers and you don't have a revenue of $5k then I don't think you will be in the market for long. In other words, CE only caters to students and those will not invest their time in a dying platform if they are smart.

Or hobbyists. Personal projects don't need to bring in money.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#146

Post by pkphilip » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

marcocantu wrote: post #94

Svip wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing model is the main reason newer people are not getting into Delphi. This is why they tried to lure people with iOS and Android capabilities. But when there are alternatives that are free, why bother? Yes, Delphi has a Community Edition now (which is free), but the fact that are excluded from a large portion of the library, because you cannot afford it, is always going to alienate some people. And it is alw…

"Delphi has a Community Edition now (which is free), but the fact that are excluded from a large portion of the library" That's not really the case. With Delphi Community edition you get support for 4 operating systems, VCL and FireMonkey, it only lacks access to Enterprise databases like Oracle and some of the multi-tier architectures. Community has a large percentage (80%+) of the features...

As a person who has used Delphi since around 1997 and Turbo Pascal I find it frustrating and extremely disappointing that people like Marco Cantu who are leading figures in the Delphi community do not do enough to criticize the absolutely crazy Delphi pricing and products such as this ludicrous "community" edition with the $5K/year limitation.

Why would any company want to start developing in Delphi if the pricing/developer is suddenly going to jump to a ridiculously high number the moment they touch $5K/year limit?

But even the $5k/year limitation came in far too late.

I am very sad to see the way the Delphi community is languishing and slowly dying out.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#147

Post by pkphilip » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

sifoobar wrote: post #102

I started working professionally in Delphi around 1998, and then spent 13 years evolving and maintaining a sprawling 2+ mloc reservation system. They had a great thing going around that time, but then the pivoting and squeezing started. Instead of evolution we got enterprices, buzzwords and bit rot. By Delphi7, I'd say it was already as good as dead. All owners so far share an unfortunate tendency to oversell half-ba…

This. I completely agree. Delphi was killed by the suits who suddenly jumped onto the Application Lifecycle management fad. Sad.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#148

Post by wila » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

wila wrote: post #118

Svip wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing model is the main reason newer people are not getting into Delphi. This is why they tried to lure people with iOS and Android capabilities. But when there are alternatives that are free, why bother? Yes, Delphi has a Community Edition now (which is free), but the fact that are excluded from a large portion of the library, because you cannot afford it, is always going to alienate some people. And it is alw…

Yes, thank goodness for FreePascal/Lazarus. Also have the Professional Edition and would update if only they took the macOS platform seriously. Again with this update, like the previous few, there are zero improvements for macOS. Really regret to ever have invested any time (and money as I bought several updates) into their FireMonkey platform. It looks bad on macOS for not using native controls and it looks bad on W…

@fmxexpress you are showing up marked dead here.

Yes, they have it on their roadmap for 2 years now. Doesn't offer a lot of confidence in that it will actually show up on time. Right now you cannot release a 32 bits app anymore in the apple app store.

So I'd argue that they are very late already. Who is going to invest time into a product you cannot release, but that -pinky promise- will be delivered before you can not even run existing 32 bits apps anymore.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#149

Post by wila » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

wila wrote: post #119

Svip wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, saying 'large portion of the library' was a mistake. But as I remember, you don't have access to the VCL source code with the Community Edition. The feature matrix says that this is 'limited in Community', whatever that means. We wanted to do MongoDB connections, which comes with FireDAC. But that's only available in the Enterprise Edition. So we ended up rewriting TMongoWire[0] to fit our needs. I a…

Oh FireDAC is no longer available for Professional version either? Geez.. really not going to lay down $3k for an EE. How is that "professional" if you cannot even read/write to sqlite.

@fmxexpress thanks for the info. That's exactly what I am doing now, but I am not on the latest version.

Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

#150

Post by FranciscusG » Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #143

FranciscusG wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delphi shines in so many ways - I tried to develop something in Go but I hit a brick wall with a sub-par editor (Visual Studio Code), all kinds of restrictions, no way to make halfway acceptable GUI apps, a slow runtime, a slow compiler, unacceptable formatting rules, totally hopeless. Rust has even worse issues. I considered C, C++, Java and PHP 7.3 but I'm basically forced into using Delphi again for a new major pr…

> hard to find developers for it Our last two hires were guys without any prior Delphi experience. They did have Java, C++, Python etc background, tho. We sent them off to a two day intro course and with some assistance they were doing useful work within a couple of weeks. A small investment IMO if you plan on keeping your employees for a while...

Exactly... The only issue is that many developers will prefer to get experienced in other languages, go with the times so to speak.