Slashdot Mirror

While not free, their academic volume pricing is up to 97% less that commercial list price.

BTW - I work for a company that is currently using Delphi XE4 and will be migrating to XE5 (just released) after verifying it's stability with our existing code base. Guess we're gonna hold out a bit longer... :)

All the developer tools were spun off a couple of years ago into CodeGear, which was bought by Embarcadero last year.

All those tools you knew are still alive and well. Delphi 2009 is the best native Win32 developer tool in the world and the language is experiencing a renaissance with the addition of new language features such as generics and anonymous methods. The whole environment has recieved major upgrades as well, which has also benefitted C++ builder, since they use the same IDE. They are also really starting to nail down the documentation side, which honestly has been the suits weak point for years.

By the way, there are free trial versions! Check them out!

All the developer tools were spun off a couple of years ago into CodeGear, which was bought by Embarcadero last year.

All those tools you knew are still alive and well. Delphi 2009 is the best native Win32 developer tool in the world and the language is experiencing a renaissance with the addition of new language features such as generics and anonymous methods. The whole environment has recieved major upgrades as well, which has also benefitted C++ builder, since they use the same IDE. They are also really starting to nail down the documentation side, which honestly has been the suits weak point for years.

By the way, there are free trial versions! Check them out!

All the developer tools were spun off a couple of years ago into CodeGear, which was bought by Embarcadero last year.

All those tools you knew are still alive and well. Delphi 2009 is the best native Win32 developer tool in the world and the language is experiencing a renaissance with the addition of new language features such as generics and anonymous methods. The whole environment has recieved major upgrades as well, which has also benefitted C++ builder, since they use the same IDE. They are also really starting to nail down the documentation side, which honestly has been the suits weak point for years.

By the way, there are free trial versions! Check them out!

No need to wait.

Delphi Prism

Yes, as did I, good times indeed. Borland split that off long ago...about um 2006. They spun it off as codegear with the intention of selling off their ide stuff, and then codegear got bought up by embarcadero in 2008. I guess borland didn't want my money anymore as for the enterprise version I drop $1500 for an upgrade copy every couple of years. I find that was a pretty stupid idea...well not as stupid as changing their name in 1999 to inprise...well at least they undid that in 2001 and went back to borland...but still pretty dumb. I still use it every day...well kinda, it lives on here: http://www.codegear.com/products/cppbuilder You can get a free version(s) here: http://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/c_builder I also used turbo pascal way back when, but when delphi came out I ignored it since their PR department touted it as a totally new thing instead of visual pascal, so I never got into delphi since I had no idea it was pascal at the time. and turbo pascal (ok turbo delpi) here: http://downloads.embarcadero.com/free/delphi

Pick any of:

http://www.kdevelop.org/
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/index.html
http://www.eclipse.org/
Borland's

etc...

This makes me think you either don't understand Java, or you don't understand Smalltalk. They both share a common object and memory model. The only difference is that Java adds intrinsic (non-object) types and static flow control.

There is one more major difference: message passing. In Smalltalk, it's explicit, and messages are essentially first-class: an object can receive any message, even the one it cannot understand, and forward it on to some other object. Conceptually, this is very different from Simula/C++/Java-style static method calls, even if it looks similar (and works the same in many common cases).

I wouldn't want to second-guess the Java designers as to what their true source of inspiration was, but I'd like to point out that Java also shares a common object and memory model with Simula (to the point of distinguishing between a fixed set of primitive value types, and reference types corresponding to classes).

lan Kay was using the term 'object oriented' to describe his style of programming when he was back at Utah in the early '60s - the earliest references predate Simula by about three years.

I may well be wrong here, but a mention in passing is still not the same as providing a full language spec and implementation built on OO ideas. Of course, Simula-67 did not just appear on the spot to be standardized, either - it was developed throughout 60s as well (first paper in 1965, IIRC, and by that time they already had a working implementation of the current state of the language). It's also telling that it was Dahl and Nygaard, and not Kay, who got several awards specifically recognizing them as "originating of object technology concepts".

Simula never claimed to be OO, it just had better than average support for abstract data types.

Simula never claimed to be OO, because the term was then non-existent (or, if you are indeed correct, known only in a very small circle of people). However, in retrospect, Simula had all hallmarks of a classic OO language, and specifically the defining one, OO-polymorphism aka "late binding" (in Simula, the thing that enabled it was introduction of "virtual"). If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I'm very much inclined to call it a duck (ironic - something that I can do in Smalltalk, but not Simula).

Inheritance, which Simula treats as a first-class operation, is nothing more than a special case of delegation. The only reason to treat it differently is efficiency (and as someone who has written a Smalltalk compiler, I would have to admit that that is a pretty good reason, although the use of hidden class transforms allows compiler writers to use it without programmers needing to be aware of it. It's still quite a nice model sometimes though).

I can actually agree with that; it's a pity that no mainstream OO language in the last decade had done anything (e.g. syntactic sugar for convenient delegation) to move away from implementation inheritance (it is particularly ironic that Java has nothing of a kind, considering the "classes are evil" sentiment popular in the Java camp). The likes of Sather, that really embraced the idea of doing code reuse the right way, never became popular, sadly. Though the idea had surfaced in some strange and unforeseen places lately, to my surprise.

Well... there were several games written to teach kids programming while they have fun.
Obviously, I'd recommend ChipWits (see my sig) - a 1984 Mac game, which I ported to Windoze (for free, so don't worry). Several other games like that were created (for example 'Mind Rover'), and they really are a nice introduction.

Strangely enough, board games would work, too: there is a great little game called "Robo Rally" (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/roborally) where you actually program a robot in a race across a changing map. Very enjoyable.

After that, I'd strongly suggest a language which was created to teach students programming: Pascal. You can get Delphi (the continuation of Turbo Pascal, have a look at http://www.codegear.com/products/delphi/win32) pretty cheaply these days (eBay), and I believe you can download a free version somewhere, too.

Don't worry too much about the exact language to use, though (mind you, I do also STRONGYL advise against Visual Basic) - kids can pick up such things much faster than we think. Just set up a system, show him a good book and some good sample code, and bingo ;-)

Actually it's never needed, unless you meant multiple inheritance from interfaces. Interface inheritance is your friend.

Wake me up when there's a mainstream language that has syntactic sugar for interface delegation to a class member to provide for the lack of implementation inheritance (so that I can do what C++ MI lets me do with interfaces in comparable number of lines of code).

In case I didn't make myself sufficiently clear, here is a description of the feature for a language that actually implements it. It's not a mainstream one, though.

Codegear owns C++ Builder now.

C++ Builder 2009: http://www.codegear.com/products/cppbuilder

Unless you meant Kylix, which seems to have been abandoned.

Best programming language ever :) http://www.codegear.com/

I think that at least the basic interpreter should be taught to the new generations. They don't feel confortable enough in less than 1 GB, what if they had just 4 KB?

Anyone remember Turbo Pascal 3.02? It had a pretty decent editor, compiler, overlay support and was able to create .COM files by copying parts of itself into the compiled file. And everything packed together in a single .COM file of 37 kilobytes. Impressing. Check out The Borland Museum and have a look for yourself.

They really knew how to create small and elegant code in those days. I'd like to have the assembly code for that, just for fun and inspiration.

It is not surprising that Ada is going through a "rediscovery" phase. A few days ago I was discussing with a professional software developper the pros and cons of Java and I realized that C programmers who migrated to Java did so for some of its features that Pascal had long before Java was even "born". It is likely that most Java programmers were never exposed to either of Ada, Pascal, or Delphi. Perhaps it's not too late; a fully featured, non-time limited, free version of Delphi (Turbo Delphi Explorer http://cc.codegear.com/free/turbo) is available from Codegear, the Borland spin-off.

The medium block manager obtains memory from the OS in 1.25MB chunks. These chunks are called "medium block pools" and are subdivided into medium blocks as the application requests them.

I wonder how much orphaned legacy Delphi code there is out there looking for a support route.

Little to none. Delphi is still actively supported despite its continued lack of popularity.

- T

Wheee! I wish BORL had traded as TPSCL.

Ridiculous.

This is a clear ploy to tie the stock to something that might drag it back to the 95-2000 glory days, where they'd hit USD 80, and split 2 or 3 ways - then immediately recover the price.

Oh, well. What do you expect when Schwartz believes that Star Office is one of the most recognised brands in the world? "It is to larf, mate!"

Correction to my last.. CodeGEAR.com I think I am getting old.

Just released today, C++Builder 2007 fully support Windows Vista and includes the tightly bound CodeGuard memory checker. CodeGuard will monitor overwrites, pointer usage, etc.

C++Builder 2007 is the only C++ development environment that supports Windows Vista development (Visual C++ Orcas is still beta, might ship this year). But it supports Vista, XP, and 2000 all simultaneously. It's also the only RAD native compiling C++ development tool (Visual C++ is still MFC based... still uses resource files... not visual tools, components, or two-way designers).

Check it out. http://www.codegear.com/products/cppbuilder

Yes, there's a lot of Delphi code out there that still needs to be maintained (or ported). In fact, I hear there's a fast, powerful, free IRC client written in Delphi that's looking for someone to take over development...

There's even Delphi for PHP now. WTF? It uses a completely different language and library, and applies to a completely different field of software, but for some reason it's still called Delphi and the library is still called VCL.

Is this a misprint? Are they kidding?

http://www.codegear.com/Downloads/TrialandFreeVers ions/Delphi/DelphiforPHP/tabid/250/Default.aspx

compare:

http://video.codegear.com/php/hello/hello.html

and
http://docs.rinet.ru/ActiveVB/f22-3.gif ...

Why does this IDE remind me of my visual basic 3 days (not to say that there's anything wrong with that). I guess I've been staring at eclipse for too long.

I heard Oxygen is also popular among breathers.

By that time there was already Delphi, which wraps most Windows API in a beautiful, well organized OO library called the VCL, and generates single-file executables (no DLL Hell) with C-like speed.

I use Delphi since then, already did dozens of small and medium apps with it, and, altough sometimes necessary, it's pretty rare to use direct Windows API calls. AFAIK, one of today's most famous application made with Delphi is the Win32 client for Skype, but many shareware and corporate apps uses it too.

When I was writing text-based PC apps in the early 90s, Borland's TurboVision blew me away. It was very easy to work with and it made building nice, windowed user interfaces a snap. Not only that, but full source was provided and that source was clean, elegant, and such an excellent demonstration of proper object-oriented design that I built an OO design class around it.

Borland released TurboVision to the world after it was obsoleted by the takeover of GUIs, and some enterprising folks have ported it to gcc/ncurses and fixed up some of the few defects in the original library.

I haven't actually used this library, but its existence almost makes me want to go write some text-mode code just for the fun of it.