Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

C++Builder 11 Community Edition

embarcadero.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 76 posts

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#61

Post by dleslie »

rbanffy wrote: post #56
pjmlp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The custom C++ extensions argument is a very bad lame excuse, it isn't as if WinRT was ever going to be cross platform, or not every single C and C++ compiler used in production (not toy compilers) doesn't have their own set of extensions anyway. I also don't consider anything related to WinUI/UWP trustworthy for production development, and I used to advocate for it. Stuff like how .NET Native, C++/CX => C++/WinRT tr…

I really, really, am baffled at how difficult it seems to have a GUI builder tool that outputs a description of the UI that a program can just load (or a compiler transform into a structure inside the program) as objects the program can use, handling events and pushing presentation information into it. That was pretty much what VB did, with immense success.

It was easy to do in Win95 through to Win2k because the interface was consistent throughout. Then they started changing the interface guidelines, and toolkit, for every major release of windows; and sometimes several times during the life of a major release.

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#62

Post by qwerty456127 »

blinkingled wrote: post #9

Borland's C++ compiler was _fast_. And I mean eye wateringly fast on crappy pre-AMD64 hardware. I wonder if it supports modern C++ today and is still faster than other compilers. (If I am not mistaken this new edition is a offshoot of that?) (Yeah I am not downloading the "Community" edition if I have to provide my name address and phone number. Really if your product needs mindshare and you offer community edition t…

It took Microsoft some generations to stoppe requiring you to sign-in to use community edition after the trial period ends. Perhaps Borland will fix this in some years as well.

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#63

Post by CamperBob2 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #62
blinkingled wrote: post #9

Borland's C++ compiler was _fast_. And I mean eye wateringly fast on crappy pre-AMD64 hardware. I wonder if it supports modern C++ today and is still faster than other compilers. (If I am not mistaken this new edition is a offshoot of that?) (Yeah I am not downloading the "Community" edition if I have to provide my name address and phone number. Really if your product needs mindshare and you offer community edition t…

It took Microsoft some generations to stoppe requiring you to sign-in to use community edition after the trial period ends. Perhaps Borland will fix this in some years as well.

Far as I can tell, it still does. Nothing more annoying when chasing a bug than being forced to look up a password I haven't used for several months in order to use the debugger.

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#65

Post by badsectoracula »

rbanffy wrote: post #56
pjmlp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The custom C++ extensions argument is a very bad lame excuse, it isn't as if WinRT was ever going to be cross platform, or not every single C and C++ compiler used in production (not toy compilers) doesn't have their own set of extensions anyway. I also don't consider anything related to WinUI/UWP trustworthy for production development, and I used to advocate for it. Stuff like how .NET Native, C++/CX => C++/WinRT tr…

I really, really, am baffled at how difficult it seems to have a GUI builder tool that outputs a description of the UI that a program can just load (or a compiler transform into a structure inside the program) as objects the program can use, handling events and pushing presentation information into it. That was pretty much what VB did, with immense success.

The problem is that you need some form of RTTI that allows object serialization. This is basically what Delphi does: the forms, controls, etc you are editing are not fake stand-ins, they are the class instances you are working with. The object inspector shows you the actual instance properties as defined in code and you are editing live objects - the only difference is that those objects have a "design mode" flag so they can ignore any user input. When you save a form, it serializes the objects on disk. That serialization data is stored on the executable and when you run the program, the form is deserialized and the object instances are what were stored.

There is almost no UI-specific functionality there, the same functionality can be used to serialize any type of object and you can even implement your own serialization logic for your objects. The language's RTII allows for declaring properties (think like C# properties, though really C# properties were inspired by Delphi properties as the latter had them since the original Delphi 1.0 for Windows 3.1) as part of a class and has support for metaclasses (classes are instances themselves of a metaclass that describes the class), including virtual constructors (since classes are instances they have their own VMT) which allows for constructing class instances on the fly by passing a class type in a function.

The thing is, C++ does not have this sort of functionality. You can implement your own RTTI, as several projects do (many game engines do that for example), but it is often clunky (e.g. relies on macros, duplicating info, manual registration and/or external tools that parse the code and generate the RTTI boilerplate).

C++ Builder did it because it extended C++ to add that functionality in a way that is ABI compatible with Delphi - and is how it can use VCL (which is written in Delphi).

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#66

Post by badsectoracula »

deaddodo wrote: post #64
pjmlp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resource editor for dialogs isn't the same as the C++ Builder experience.

Whatever you say.

...is correct. Visual C++ has a visual resource editor, but this isn't what C++ Builder does. C++ Builder edits live objects, you declare a class with its properties (this needs extensions to the C++ language) and during design time the object is instantiated and edited visually through the property editor ("object inspector"). This works for both visual (buttons, controls, etc) and non-visual objects.

The difference between what VC++ does and what C++ Builder (and Delphi) does is massive and at a very fundamental level.

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#67

Post by rbanffy »

dleslie wrote: post #61
rbanffy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really, am baffled at how difficult it seems to have a GUI builder tool that outputs a description of the UI that a program can just load (or a compiler transform into a structure inside the program) as objects the program can use, handling events and pushing presentation information into it. That was pretty much what VB did, with immense success.

It was easy to do in Win95 through to Win2k because the interface was consistent throughout. Then they started changing the interface guidelines, and toolkit, for every major release of windows; and sometimes several times during the life of a major release.

This is also baffling. A button, a text input, a checkbox, a drop list, a combo - they all have a "default" look in every Windows version since 2.0 (1 didn't have the drop list, IIRC). It shouldn't be difficult to make an abstract description of a dialog box look at home with a new version of the OS and, yet, digging through Windows 10's built-in apps you sometimes find things that you recognize as skinned versions of Windows NT 4 dialogs. That they look like NT 4 dialogs with the Windows 7 skin applied is disconcerting, at best.

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#68

Post by wolpoli »

rbanffy wrote: post #67
dleslie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was easy to do in Win95 through to Win2k because the interface was consistent throughout. Then they started changing the interface guidelines, and toolkit, for every major release of windows; and sometimes several times during the life of a major release.

This is also baffling. A button, a text input, a checkbox, a drop list, a combo - they all have a "default" look in every Windows version since 2.0 (1 didn't have the drop list, IIRC). It shouldn't be difficult to make an abstract description of a dialog box look at home with a new version of the OS and, yet, digging through Windows 10's built-in apps you sometimes find things that you recognize as skinned versions o…

The Office team used to pioneer (hard-code) the look and feel for the UI, and then the Windows team goes and implement the look and feel system wide in a generic way. Then somewhere along the way, the Windows team decided to hard-code the look and feel that you could now do an archeological dig through decades of UI.

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#69

Post by [deleted] »

marcodiego wrote: post #24

My main problem with delphi: it is "too proprietary". It was a very productive IDE in the 90's or early 2000's but lost their path and never recovered. Some new versions broke compatibility with previous version's components. There was the case where you paid a good amount of money on some proprietary components and they simply wouldn't work in the next version: you were imprisoned in an obsolete IDE. By not being mu…

[deleted]

Re: C++Builder 11 Community Edition

#70

Post by zorgmonkey »

blinkingled wrote: post #9

Borland's C++ compiler was _fast_. And I mean eye wateringly fast on crappy pre-AMD64 hardware. I wonder if it supports modern C++ today and is still faster than other compilers. (If I am not mistaken this new edition is a offshoot of that?) (Yeah I am not downloading the "Community" edition if I have to provide my name address and phone number. Really if your product needs mindshare and you offer community edition t…

I've never used it, but if memory serves they are, like many other companies, using a fork clang. So I expect it will be about as fast if not slower then clang.
Post reply on HN