They had chance to become Unity of business applications
They failed.
24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
161–167 of 167 posts
Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Extreme skeumorphism a la Mac sometime ago is also undesirable, though Mac never had extreme skeumorphism. Extreme skeumorphism would be like the common case of DVD player apps made to look real-life DVD players (with all the frustrating LCD-like text displays and tiny cryptic buttons). It's not about having 3d looking buttons, or having faux-leather on your Notes app, which are the kinds of things Apple did.
I'm probably using the word wrong, then. But those 3D-looking buttons with glare, or faux leather, is exactly what I'm talking about - it is unnecessary cognitive overhead.
A button that looks like a physical real world button that I'd push, with a clear text label beneath it, is less cognitive overhead for me than an abstract squiggly icon with no border or text that I have to interpret.
Bonus points if the icons are hidden inside various hamburger menus sprinkled across the interface - Atlassian I'm looking at you.
I shouldn't be forced to learn some designer's personal visual symbology to use an app. It's hieroglyphics.
Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm probably using the word wrong, then. But those 3D-looking buttons with glare, or faux leather, is exactly what I'm talking about - it is unnecessary cognitive overhead.
A button that looks like a physical real world button that I'd push, with a clear text label beneath it, is less cognitive overhead for me than an abstract squiggly icon with no border or text that I have to interpret. Bonus points if the icons are hidden inside various hamburger menus sprinkled across the interface - Atlassian I'm looking at you. I shouldn't be forced to learn some designer's personal visual symbolo…
I'm not advocating for either of those extremes. To remind, in this thread, we were talking about UI aesthetics of the times when Delphi was popular. That's Windows 9x and NT, classic MacOS 7.x to 9.x, BeOS; and on Unix: Motif, NeXTSTEP, Gtk 1.x, Qt 1.x to 2.x.
So, basically, buttons are chiseled gray (or other color of user's choice), with prominent 3D borders, but flat where the label is for maximum readability. Just enough to capture the essence of a physical button, but without actually rendering one.
Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at their price / feature matrix, they are running this platform like it's still 1999. The cheapest option is outrageous, and has no client/server DB support. So that means spending at least $3,600 (on sale!) for a usable development platform. Batshit crazy.
You're not the market for these tools. There are loads of enterprise systems built on top of this which need development and yes, they're still bought and sold like it's 1999. A lot of enterprise systems haven't been 'disrupted' yet and as long as Embarcadero is kicking then there is still a market for them. Oh, you've got this early 2000's system written in Delphi which you need to continue supporting, way too expen…
The existing "market" for this are enterprises who are stuck with Delphi for legacy reasons. As far as I can tell no new projects are starting with Delphi - which means it is only a matter of time when Delphi as a platform is relegated to history.
Embarcadero/Inprise/Idera or whatever they are calling themselves these days have zero vision.
Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBitBtn ;) In fact in Windows 95 and everything after it simply looks totaly out of place and the Delphi documentation tried hard to dissuade people from using that and instead presented some idea of what MS's HIG say (notice that Delphi 2 does not use TBitBtn anywhere and tries to match W95 UI style very hard, even more than Office 95), obviously for a long time it didn't really work.
This even predated VCL and Delphi. Remember OWL in Borland Pascal? https://i.imgur.com/esNFWJB.png
I have the feeling that this particular screenshot (given the combination of BWCC and Ctrl3d style in same window) is actually of Graphics Vision, which is open source reimplementation of Turbo Vision with true GUI which uses exactly this styling.
Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
#166Reading through the comments and as a 20+ years developer, using mainly Delphi, and with past 10 years as freelancer exclusively using only Delphi I realize people here don't actually understand what this IDE is doing. So here are a few points:
a - About dying and used only for legacy projects. Well, when a company wants something fast to win their customers hearts and push through next phase of moneygrabbing, do you think they care about latest technologies? Dirty Delphi does the job in 5 hours, what in others takes days if not weeks.
b - price too high. Correct, it is. But when you fly your technicians across entire continental US to deal with a hardware problem at one of your venues do you think 5k USD/year is much? That's pocket change.
c - Younger developers do not learn it. Well, younger developers should not learn anything but only one language for at least 3 years, ideally while still in college, and absorb instead algorithms/paradigms/math - skills more valuable then a computer language syntax. Once you master those and a language, no matter what, the entirety of the rest of languages are nothing more then syntax equivalent. Hence grabbing Delphi should be a maximum 3 weeks venture, after that I'd expect that young developer to be able to solve problems. I did just that, with Pascal in my beginnings and over the years/companies I've worked for I learned Java/C/C++/PHP/ASM/VB/ASP/ etc etc. Knowing how to implement quicksort in Pascal is the same as in C++, it's a syntax equivalent, nothing more.
d - Many comments about native - this is a type of comment from proponents. Well, in my experience that nativity was such a hassle for me that I'd rather go away with it and used Dalvik/the new ART instead in case of Android, but it is what it is.
Feel free to AMA.
Re: 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today
#167I have so many fond memories of putting together quick apps with Delphi "back in the day". Every now and again I'd buy a copy of PC Plus magazine just because they had Delphi 1, 2 or 3 on the cover CD. I really miss the RAD concept, and I'd love to find a modern tool which had that aspect of Delphi, though perhaps with C++ or Python as a backing language. I know there's Lazarus (opensource Delphi), but it's C++Builde…
Anvil ( http://anvil.works ) is the closest thing I've come across to Delphi in the modern age. It's python, and it's webapps, but it's stupidly quick and easy (and fun) to get something working.
I've actually found the combination of Python, Flask, SQLAlchemy and Bootstrap really good for throwing together quick web-apps.
I usually use wxWidgets (well, wxPython) for the desktop stuff, but I wondered if there was a better way. It just doesn't feel quite as smooth and polished as Delphi/C++Builder/Kylix were.