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I miss Delphi

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Re: I miss Delphi

#41

Post by chadcmulligan »

acqq wrote: post #27
chadcmulligan wrote: post #22

There's this http://www.unigui.com make all your web apps in Delphi :-), they've been in beta for a long time but seems to work.

Good find. Some opinions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3649969/what-do-you-think...

it has some negatives imho:

No source for bits of it which makes it risky since it seems there's only one guy developing it.

Looking at it's comms it seems pretty lightweight, though it does generate a lot of messages.

Last time I looked the Sencha library it used was fairly old

That said if you've got a low-medium weight web app you want to build and don't care if it looks like windows, then it's dead easy (really 1 day or so, it's that easy).

Re: I miss Delphi

#42

Post by chadcmulligan »

clouddrover wrote: post #34
chadcmulligan wrote: post #22

There's this http://www.unigui.com make all your web apps in Delphi :-), they've been in beta for a long time but seems to work.

VirtualUI is another interesting way to have a remote web interface to a Win32 Delphi app. Not necessarily scalable to a large number of users but a nice option if it fits your requirements: http://www.cybelesoft.com/Thinfinity/VirtualUI/

Looked at this a while ago and it had some problem, though can't remember what it was...

Edit: maybe it was per seat licensing? - client didn't want that

Re: I miss Delphi

#43

Post by Yetanfou »

supercoder wrote: post #29
mtkd wrote: post #25

If anyone using Delphi to build big apps in early 90s was told that to do the same function in 25 years time they would need HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby or PHP or similar, some SQL, some Rust or Go and probably a few DSLs - it would take months longer to build - require multiple servers - and would need more test code than app code to get it 98% as stable - you wouldn't have believed a word of it. Every single time I have to…

You're still using Rust / Go ? I've been using Luna on the Rocket stack, with Huston for distribution and Apollo for stack management, and it fixes mostly all the problems you've mentioned.

Just make sure to avoid Apollo release nr. 13 as it is rumoured to contain a nasty bug. Something with some storage method causing it to blow up I think it was.

Re: I miss Delphi

#44

Post by lojack »

mtkd wrote: post #25

If anyone using Delphi to build big apps in early 90s was told that to do the same function in 25 years time they would need HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby or PHP or similar, some SQL, some Rust or Go and probably a few DSLs - it would take months longer to build - require multiple servers - and would need more test code than app code to get it 98% as stable - you wouldn't have believed a word of it. Every single time I have to…

I write enterprise apps almost exclusively in Ruby and a very small amount of SQL and HTML, but I'm guessing Delphi doesn't have some magical fairy dust that makes SQL unnecessary.

If you told me your stack is as you described, I'd say there's either some serious overengineering going on where you work, or you're solving a very different problem that would have been very complicated even in the Delphi world.

I think you're also vastly underestimating the operational work involved in deploying, maintaining, and syncing thousands of desktop apps in this type of environment. I'm personally happy I only have to get my software running on a couple nodes both with the exact same configuration.

Re: I miss Delphi

#46

Post by pjmlp »

dozzie wrote: post #26
TurboHaskal wrote: post #3

What I miss is Pascal. Delphi and other drag & drop RAD tools are easy, not simple.

I never understood why would anybody choose Pascal over Ada when talking about languages alone.

Because Ada compilers used to be targeted to the military, aviation and corporations with big pockets. Only in the last decade we saw the language getting an usable open source version thanks to the work of Ada Core and their contributions to GNAT.

All other surviving Ada compilers are commercial, following the same price practices as usual.

So many of us in the Pascal golden days were only able to buy Pascal compilers.

Just to put this in perspective, Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5, the last TP version before Delphi was created, would be around 100 € on today's money. An Ada compiler would be at very least 5K €.

Also despite the famous "Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language" assay from Brian Kernighan, the majority of Pascal compilers supported the UCSD, Apple and Borland extensions, so the actual Pascal dialect used by most of us was quite close to Ada83 in terms of features (minus generics).

In 2017, given the existance of GNAT, SPARK and updated Ada standards, Ada would be probably a better option.

Re: I miss Delphi

#47

Post by chadcmulligan »

hueving wrote: post #32
mtkd wrote: post #25

If anyone using Delphi to build big apps in early 90s was told that to do the same function in 25 years time they would need HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby or PHP or similar, some SQL, some Rust or Go and probably a few DSLs - it would take months longer to build - require multiple servers - and would need more test code than app code to get it 98% as stable - you wouldn't have believed a word of it. Every single time I have to…

>I strongly suspect the generation after this will rediscover the power of desktop apps and some of the dev tools that were around at that time. The biggest thing desktop apps are missing was the delivery mechanism. With web apps: * a new user is just a hyperlink away * pushing app updates is a page reload * server-side state eliminates all of the migration headaches for client-based state People are fickle and they…

yes this was always the reason given for not using Delphi instead of making a web app in every enterprise I worked at. Every time I said "hey how about we do this in Delphi, we'll have it finished in a couple of weeks" the argument was "but we'll have to put it through the windows guys and get a package made and distribute it to the users", so we made a web app. a couple of hundred grand later we had a web app, it wasn't as good as what the Delphi one would have been, it was slower, less features, but hey our 20 users didn't need to download it. lmao, I was paid by the hour.

Re: I miss Delphi

#48

Post by pjmlp »

pron wrote: post #33
pjmlp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mostly hate in webdev is exactly that, helding together with spit and baling wire, a pile of HTML tags meant for document publishing, CSS and JavaScript, while pretending the browser is a proper application VM. Than switching browsers, including the same one but a different version, and start implementing workarounds. Multiplying this experience for each browser/version/OS required by the customer.

And it's not just web. I also used Julia in that project, and while the language itself is really awesome for numerics (especially as I had to migrate a lot of existing Matlab code, which is a pleasure with Julia), good luck trying to package a standalone app (especially if you're using native libraries). Oh, and the startup time? It's funny how some people complain about the JVM in that regard. Every once in a while…

Julia's startup time is the biggest issue holding people to leave Python behind, as I understand from some talks I saw online.

Still I am hopeful that they will overcome them, as Julia is an interesting language for those of us that know Dylan.

Re: I miss Delphi

#49

Post by chadcmulligan »

Svip wrote: post #30

I work with Delphi professionally. And we maintain a code base of about 150,000 lines of Pascal and about 300,000 lines of T-SQL (written to work in both Sybase and Microsoft SQL). Delphi may be easy, but it's not simple. Once you get into the meat of things, Delphi's ecosystem truly becomes a limitation. Delphi's main drawback is its lack of library availability. If you are in the marked for modern technology, using…

Indy is problematic there are other (commercial quality) http libraries around. Indy works and has source available and has a great set of maintainers but it's quality is variable.

There are some great sets of component libraries around though - tmssoftware and devexpress are very good, and of course you can always use c.

Re: I miss Delphi

#50

Post by pron »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
pron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not just web. I also used Julia in that project, and while the language itself is really awesome for numerics (especially as I had to migrate a lot of existing Matlab code, which is a pleasure with Julia), good luck trying to package a standalone app (especially if you're using native libraries). Oh, and the startup time? It's funny how some people complain about the JVM in that regard. Every once in a while…

Julia's startup time is the biggest issue holding people to leave Python behind, as I understand from some talks I saw online. Still I am hopeful that they will overcome them, as Julia is an interesting language for those of us that know Dylan.

Oh, don't get me wrong -- Julia is a great language and I hope I get the chance to use it again. But its biggest issue right now isn't even the startup time, but the fact that you can't even write a self-contained application with it (well, you can, sometimes, and with great care).
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