Slashdot Mirror
Is Linux Ready For Delphi? -- Delphi R&D Answers
Chrismo writes: "Danny Thorpe, Sr. R&D Engineer at Borland, has written a great article addressing "some of the commonly expressed fears, misconceptions, and even misplaced euphoria" heard from the Delphi community since the announcement of their move to support Linux with their development tools."
For those of you complaining of lack of "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that matters." you have no farther to look than here.
Is that Delphi being available for Linux might actually spur the sales of their Windows product quite a bit.
At this point, more savvy IT departments are aware of Linux, but the common perception is that "it's not ready yet" (or is it "we're not ready yet"?). But, even out on the horizon, the existence of alternative environments has to cast some doubt on the typical Windows Standard Environment policy in place at most shops.
So, when a large internal RAD project comes down the pipe, even if 100% of the clients are currently Windows systems, Delphi may look like a better choice than Visual Basic simply because Borland is willing to consider popular non-Windows platforms. It at least gives you long term options -- in 2002, you'd hate to be the person to tell the CIO that Linux on the desktop is impossible because your department has just completed two million dollars of VB development -- a much worse problem than some poorly converted DOC files.
I'd expect there will be quite a few "We get along fine with gcc and vi, thank you." posts, but keep in mind this move isn't really about you. It's about the people on the S curve the author talked about (who probably care as much about you as you care about them), and my guess that in the short term, it's really about providing a more attractive product to their Windows customers.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I am VB programmer... despite the bad publicity the language gets, I was born and raised on GW-Basic, and then moved to VB way back in the old Win16 days. Now, I'm doing more and more (non-programming) work in Linux, but I can't start developing for it because I am too lazy to learn C++ when I can do a bloody good job in VB.
I think that it's great that Delphi(Object Pascal) is being ported to Linux -- how about an open-source version of a basic language so folks like me can start developing? With an open source Object Basic tool I would start porting my programs like crazy -- as would a million other VB programmers.
Before dismissing me completely, just consider that not everyone has to be a "programmer" to generate a lot of decent results in an Object Basic type langauge.
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
That's not true. Some people who advocate Linux do so because it is free software, and would only advocate free software, and consider non-free software to be coercive and immoral. Danny Thorpe clearly disagrees with this view (as do most Linux users, probably) but that doesn't mean that its proponents are hypocrites.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
As a long-time Linux user, and a recent religious convert to the ways of Delphi (having, wrongly, abandoned my old faithful Turbo Pascal skills when Windows 3.0 came along in favor of C/C++, which was a *HUGE* mistake because I'd written about 3 million lines of Turbo Pascal code during the late 80's/early 90's), I am totally ready for Linux Delphi.
Delphi rocks, as a RAD tool. There really isn't much out there for Windows that can compare - Delphi *ACTUALLY* made Windows programming fun again - specifically the extremely well-designed VCL.
Prior to Delphi, Windows suffered the same fundamental problem that Linux currently does, at least for me anyway, which is that there are a large number of API's, and multiple different ways of doing things, from a developer standpoint.
The Delphi VCL changed all of that for me as a developer who cares about getting things done fast, as rock solid as possible - it encapsulates a lot of the dreck that is the Windows GUI API, and makes it productive.
Now, I'm not saying that Linux is the same - certainly, the GNOME/KDE efforts are very well designed projects, but there is still a last-step of organization that is required to make RAD a reality for those GUI environments, and I sincerely hope that Delphi can bring that into the Linux mix. Either way, Linux will still be a great platform to deploy apps on, and I use it every day regardless - its just that the Delphi way of doing RAD is going to make for a *huge* shift in developer focus away from such mundane things as library dependence, text-based GUI design, towards rapid application development.
And, since Linux needs apps, rapid app development can only be a good thing.
When I can use Delphi to build apps on Linux, I will ditch whatever last vestiges of control Microsofts operating systems have over my current development environment/requirements, and happily be a full-time Linux developer. Right now, I'm *forced* to use Windows as a client software deployment platform, because Delphi makes Windows programming so damned fast...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The only thing worse than an incorrect post is a post correcting it that is also incorrect.
In the beginning, there was the land called Bor, and Borland was good. Borland begat InterBase and Paradox and Quattro Pro and Turbo Pascal and Delphi and C++ Builder and J Builder. And the Win32 developers did rejoice.
Behold, a curse came upon the Borlanders and that curse was Del Yocam. This evil leader, full of guile, changed the name to Inprise to capitalize on the buzzword "Enterprise". There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in all the land.
The fairy stockholders were displeased with these actions and did cause that the stock price should plummet. After many fortnights, Borland rose again from the ashes of Inprise as a beacon of hope for all to follow. The evil Del was banished and all rejoiced.
From the vast hinterlands to the north came courting a certain Micheal Cowpland of Corel. This Cowpland did offer bounteous riches that he might own Borland and the Borlanders were beguiled by his cunning. Thus, Borland became united with Corel and Inprise was banished entirely.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
This is a must read for all Linux zealots. I tried to say something along these lines in a post to yesterdays Delphi article, but I did not put the same thought and effort into it as this guy did.
This article is important for Linux freaks to read because this is how the rest of the world outside of the community looks at Linux. They community has trouble understanding that the world doesn't care about open/closed, MS/RH, or any other opposed forces. If you want Linux to be big, this article shows the path to it being a huge success with the other 99.9997% of the world.
- I like pudding.
There needs to be a place besides slashdot for this stuff. It's funny, but the furthest off topic I've seen yet on /.. Dude, you need to put your creative energy to work someplace. You're wasting it trolling here. Someone needs to start a slash style creative writing page. That could actually be pretty cool.
Thats your assignment for tomorrow class...
P.S. It's hard to pick your favorite episode, isn't it?
- I like pudding.
A lot of people have said that this was a really 'articulate' article.. I thought it was pretty condescending. It filled me with a definite sense of 'well, duh.' I think Danny does an outstanding job of stating the blatantly obvious - which makes me really, really wonder why so many people are impressed with that pseudo-rant.
;)
Are we really so used to poor grammar and hot grits that we'll take that kind of shit from a career money-hacker and like it?
I hope not. Linux might need applications, but I hesitate to agree that Yet Another "Rapid Application" tool is the proper panacea to engender them. I'd rather have 'lots of educated programmers.'
Mebbe I'm wrong.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
No sooner do I make the transition from Windows to Linux then my favourite development tool follows me. There is a god after all.
Seriously, Delphi is a great product and will really speed the development of applications for Linux. Think of the simplicity of Visual Basic with the power and flexibility of C++ and you are somewhere close.
But the real advantage is the great environment that Delphi provides for GUI design work. Linux applications often seem to lack polish in the user interface. I am sure that this is in part due to developers not wanting to spend loads of time tweaking convoluted front-end code.
This is why Linux needs a good visual IDE. It's extremely difficult and time consuming to design a decent user interface without one.
In Delphi, you can build, compile and test a GUI for your application without even touching the keyboard. You rarely need to consult any documentation because most features are just a click away. All the chores of programming are basically handled for you, although you can still dive down into the nitty gritty if you feel the need. It's a nicely designed environment that helps you out with all the tedious tasks but doesn't restrict you in any way.
Basically, the sooner I can start coding with Delphi/Kylix on Linux, the better.
Personally I hated a bit the way he put the things. Not because I cannot stand what he calls a "critical point of view" but because his ideas, apparently correct, hid something that I don't like.
Wouldn't it be cool if the VCL core packages were distributed with the OS? No it wouldn't. This only means that we would be somewhat forced to use the VCL for any application we have. And unless it's released under GPL I wouldn't agree with this. Why do you think Microsoft didn't agree to include those packages on its own OS ? Because it would have ment to give Borland the control over a part of their OS. Of course, they weren't that stupid. Should we be instead ?
As a possible solution : unless they release the packages under GPL (or some license that would not allow them to control the OS) they should stick with the installation kit solution
Another question : what are they going to do about the non-ANSI extensions in the BCB compiler (__property and so on) ? I agree they are actually extremely useful, but they are not ANSI. If we are going to use them, at least let's standardize them.
Third question : what about Qt - on which is based KDE ? Will the VCL based on that ? Will it try to replace it ? In what conditions ?
Ok. I asked a bunch of questions that may seem that I see this article and the whole Delphi story aas an evil thing. I don't. I worked for a couple of years with BCB/Delphi and I consider them the best RAD tools available now. Still, I wouldn't like Borland to become something it always wanted to be : some sort of Microsoft. Not because I have something with them - it's just the idea of monopoly that I don't consider viable.
We're hearing about Delphi a lot, but everyone here is clamoring BIG TIME for C++ Builder. They're all crazy for it. I heard a while back that it was up and running on Linux... When will we get big news about that?
I'm all for Delphi, but we have a project that we're working on in MSVC6 that we will have to port to Linux sometime this year, and porting to to Borland is an interim decision that would, in theory, make the Linux port much easier (if the compiler is upwards of 95% compatible between Linux and Win32).
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
This is a good thing though. Firstly, I've got a thing for Wirthian languages and Borland has been keeping the flame going for quite a while. I hope they continue to do so. Pascal is wonderful.
Second, competition is good. VisualAge for Java and Delphi fill an important void in the application development market. No matter how badass a hacker you are, there are a ton of people who spend a ton of money not to be. We need to continue to embrace those people. There are movements to build similar products out of Python and then there is squeak and a good solid Delphi will spur development and provide a ready and working solution for RAD.
Lastly, and perhaps one of the more important reasons is that Delphi has been deployed. There are businesses with substantial amounts of Delphi code in production and they are tied to Windows until there is a Delphi somewhere else. This enables them to move to Linux. Along the same lines, we need to rumble and get IBM to revive "Bart" and port it to Linux. If we can soften the blow of porting your custom apps then we make Linux that much more desirable, particularly in corporate America where it is already infiltrating as a web, print and file server.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
This is a bit of a rant addressed to the small (but vocal) sect of Linux users that whine and scream and cry whenever a company announces a product that is not free (in all senses of the word.)
In two words: GROW UP.
Companies exist for a number of purposes; chief among them are to offer products and services to customers willing to purchase them. To do this requires that talented people be employed to develop and maintain those products and services. How can the company stick around, to continue to provide those products, as well as offer new ones? Sticking around requires a keen sense of the market, to continue to innovate and lead the pack in ways your competition isn't doing. And sticking around also requires that you continue to make money so you can pay those talented developers.
This is exactly what Borland is doing; they are among the few (but growing number) of companies that have the foresight to know that Linux is going to be a huge market, and soon. They are simply providing a product that many developers (myself included) are clamoring for: RAD tools.
Borland's RAD tools are among the easiest to use and most productive I have had experience with. Delphi and BCB give you all the benefits of a powerful language, without all the hassle and trouble of a "traditional" solution laden with mindless, cumbersome details.
It's really quite simple, folks. If you like the idea of developing a fully-functional, complete product in a couple weeks, without having to care about all the silly details that make your life miserable, then you'll love Borland's RAD tools. Afterall, isn't that why we all love Perl? It makes easy things easy, and hard things possible. However, if you'd rather spend all your time under the hood and get to know the application intimately, you're probably already quite comfortable with your current options.
What gets me is that amount of bickering and ugly fighting that rears its head every time a company offers a new product for the Linux market that isn't free. Why try and discourage companies from offering products that many of us would like, just because it doesn't satisfy your personal (albeit warped) agenda? Why not vote with your dollars, and simply not purchase the product that you don't want, rather that making a big scene every time it happens?
It's time many of the kiddies in this community grew up and got a clue. Linux IS all about choice, and you too have the freedom of choice to develop without whatever you'd like. There are many of us who want and/or need the benefits a RAD tool can provide. Why rain on everyone's parade?
I don't think anyone would have a fair argument against having a tool that, as you say, allows you to do a bloody good job at building apps with a tool you are comfortable with.
One of the reasons everyone is so excited about Delphi on Linux is because Delphi is such an excellent rapid application tool, with a very good easy to use and easy to understand programming language, with great GUI capabilities.
Most technical/programmer people, in the Linux world at least, like well designed software that does a good job, and which fundamentally makes sense most of the time. The reason I personally find Delphi to be enjoyable as an environment, and which many people agree with me on, is that it makes programming *FUN* again - and the way that happens has a lot to do with the sensible design of the Delphi environment, and the Object Pascal language.
There is a lot of nonsensical design in Visual Basic however, which does *not* make sense. If you want to read a good article that describes a lot of problems with the way that Microsoft has designed Visual Basic, I suggest you read this article:
Thirteen Ways to Loath Visual Basic
I point this out not to be inflammatory, but to show you one of the reasons why you get so much flack as a Visual Basic programmer, and to point out that Delphi on Linux is a really good thing because a) it provides the ease of use that you're used to on Visual Basic, without any of the utter stupidities of VB (see article for details), and b) it's a very powerful environment for creating world class apps in its own right.
And, lastly, the design of Object Pascal and the Delphi environment is so good that, dare I say it, it will actually c) make you a better programmer.
And that's why its exciting that Delphi is coming to Linux.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'm not convinced that closed-source programming environments will *neccessarily* help free software. Free software is not that free if you have to buy a certain compiler to compile the source code. If lots of developers who would previously have used gcc switch to Borland then we could end up with a whole load of "free" software which won't compile on a free compiler. One of the current strengths of the community is that anyone on the Internet can potentially become a developer for any piece of free software. If lots of stuff won't compile on a free compiler, then it means millions of potential developers become second-class citizens who can't work on a whole host of exciting projects.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'