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Delphi's 25th Birthday

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Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#91
post #37

OK, At the time of the Delphi 8 release I went to a Delphi conference to get to know the community better. This was 2003 or so? I was evaluating whether or not to get more licenses for our company so we could put extra effort into developing Delphi for .NET. Let's just say that I found the people there to be rude and insulting. Not just the people at the conference there but also by some of Borland staff there as wel…

No offense, but that'd be like if you stopped eating your favourite vegetables because you once met an offensive vegan :-)

Why would you move your ENTIRE company to a different language/development system because someone was rude at a conference?

FWIW I felt out of place at conferences before, many are just an exercise in peacocking and showing off (and still, I have learnt some interesting things from some incredibly irritating people in my time). But I would never change something that I like and that works for me because other people that just so happen to use it too, are rude.

I've met arrogant and frankly insulting people at both Linux and Microsoft events, for example (Linux famously has people who can be wonderfully insulting on mailing lists and dare I say often deservedly so) but it would never occur to me to switch my entire company to, say, Windows Server, because Linus (heaven forbid) said something rude to me :-)

I can't even actually rule out that I might have behaved in a way that might have been interpreted as rude at conferences myself, especially after several days of travel, talks and general exhaustion. So I'd actually be curious to hear how you felt you were insulted or bullied or made a joke of so that I might keep an eye out for such behaviour myself.

FWIW, you may find that Borland is no longer around or involved with Delphi (and hasn't been for a decade now, I think), so the people might be different, too. I've certainly found Delphi worth a second look recently and hope the forums and communities of old have been or will be revived in some way.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#92

Delphi is great; just ensure you always stay subscribed. Their tech support team regard properly managing their own strict license system as 'a courtesy' and will prevent you from installing the licensed software that you purchased. For that reason alone; I am out.

> will prevent you from installing the licensed software that you purchased

Could you elaborate on that? I'm actually interested in procuring Delphi commercially after getting to know the free Community edition recently and I'd like to avoid any licensing pitfalls if possible. I can't really imagine how they would stop you from installing a properly licensed and purchased software but if they do, I'd be curious to know how to avoid running into that situation. Thanks.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#93
post #80
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for chiming in! I'll give it another spin, if I get some time.

...although language features, 64bit, and integration with C++ were never really where my quarrels were. If we take "rapid application development" out of its trademarked context, applying just its common-sense meaning, and applying it to the year 2020, then the modern tech ecosystem that one would want to integrate with is clearly not C++, but rather maybe JavaScript & the browser ecosystem, Python, and low-overhead…

Haha. 10 minutes further into my Delphi-in-2020-exploration (60% of which was the time that the installer actually took), this was the sequence of events:

* Hit the installer and switched windows, to let the installer work in the background.

* Installer mysteriously gone.

* Tried to run the programme, and it took some digging to understand that the product seems to be in a half-installed state.

* Re-run the installer. This time, keeping the installer in the foreground. Now it works.

* Started Delphi.

* Dropped a button in the form designer to start playing around.

* Oh gosh. Form designer still using pixel-based layouts.

* Deleted the button.

* Doing some Googling to figure out how to do layout managers, and found an interesting youtube tutorial on something called TGridLayout.

* Dropped a TGridLayout on my form.

* Form Designer now caught in an infinite loop bringing up an Error modal that says "Control TButton($17EE2200) has no parent window. Path: ~TButton($17EE2200)".

Thanks Delphi! See you again, another 10 years from now.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#94
post #28

I used to love Delphi in the late 90s, and if someone could do a late-90s-Delphi-like experience for programming UI-heavy software today, and do it right, and in a way that properly integrates with the anno 2020 tech landscape, then I would love to use such a thing. In a bout of late 90s nostalgia, I convinced my then-employer in 2011 to buy a license for the professional version of Delphi for a software project I wa…

> I sincerely hope that someone will get it back on the right track (or has already done so ... 2020 Delphi supports five platforms, has 64-bit compilers everywhere, has modern language features, interoperates with C++ through C++Builder, and more. In the past few years especially, we've* seen both a lot of work on it, and increasing interest in using it. It's modern, and used more widely than one might realise. * "W…

I really wouldn't call it modern, unless you consider C++ modern.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#95
post #3

I loved Delphi. It was amazing. But then they ate their own future by going to the stratosphere with enterprisey tool acquisitions nobody remembers the names of any more; then they fell back down to earth, and flirted with Kylix -- Delphi for linux -- but at a time of great upheaval in the linux desktop world, and it never really took off either. Meanwhile, the former creator of Delphi had left for MS and created C#…

My impression was they had already lost the race before they went down the enterprise route. If anything it was their general failure in the market that pushed them down that route.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to give it away. I learnt to program from a free magazine cover-disk Delphi, and its excellent help system.

We give it away now too :) There is a Community edition, where the license terms are basically that you should buy it only if you make significant revenue. Students, hobbyists, early stage startups etc - free. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter

No source code, thus bad debug experience. 32 bit only.

I suppose it is not easy for you (as a tool supplier).

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#97
post #35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interbase was a proper client server db. If you wanted embedded you needed Paradox. Ah, I have many happy memories of pulling all nighters repairing corrupted Paradox files...

No, you can (dynamically) link Interbase into your app, so the server runs in-process. You can also do it with Firebird: https://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/html/ufb-cs-embedded.h...

Was it always that way? My memory is failing me.. I'd hate to think those nights in the 90's were completely wasted!

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#98
post #75
post #20

I made my first substantial, steady paycheck with Delphi. It was pretty great for its time, and it really lowered the barrier for entry into programming, and especially GUI-based programming. I wasn't a huge fan of Pascal, so I ended up continuing to work in C++ Builder, but this stuff was _such_ a breath of fresh air back when Microsoft tooling sucked real bad, and Visual Studio was not "visual" at all. There were e…

MS Visual Basic had windows forms as long as Delphi if not longer and long long before .net came along.

I think that was referring to "Windows Forms" the .NET library, not Windows forms in general.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#99
post #93
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...although language features, 64bit, and integration with C++ were never really where my quarrels were. If we take "rapid application development" out of its trademarked context, applying just its common-sense meaning, and applying it to the year 2020, then the modern tech ecosystem that one would want to integrate with is clearly not C++, but rather maybe JavaScript & the browser ecosystem, Python, and low-overhead…

Haha. 10 minutes further into my Delphi-in-2020-exploration (60% of which was the time that the installer actually took), this was the sequence of events: * Hit the installer and switched windows, to let the installer work in the background. * Installer mysteriously gone. * Tried to run the programme, and it took some digging to understand that the product seems to be in a half-installed state. * Re-run the installer…

...feels like a relationship with an old friend who you've lost touch with when he became an alcoholic, but every now and again you feel bad for him and think you owe him a meeting.

Re: Delphi's 25th Birthday

#100
post #37

OK, At the time of the Delphi 8 release I went to a Delphi conference to get to know the community better. This was 2003 or so? I was evaluating whether or not to get more licenses for our company so we could put extra effort into developing Delphi for .NET. Let's just say that I found the people there to be rude and insulting. Not just the people at the conference there but also by some of Borland staff there as wel…

No offense, but that'd be like if you stopped eating your favourite vegetables because you once met an offensive vegan :-) Why would you move your ENTIRE company to a different language/development system because someone was rude at a conference? FWIW I felt out of place at conferences before, many are just an exercise in peacocking and showing off (and still, I have learnt some interesting things from some incredibl…

OK I guess I did feel a bit butt hurt, but I was at that conference to genuinely get information about the latest features (MIDAS, ASP.NET integration, etc...) and my questions fell on deaf ears. It was being ignored and pranked upon combined with a general sense of directionlessness that turned me off of Delphi.
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