It's not KDE specific, you can write any c/c++ app with it, and it does a lot of cool things like automatically documenting your classes and generating autoconf/automake for you. I like having the class browser as well. It also has a decent debugger as well, though I wish it was more like DDD (Data Display Debugger), which has the capability to graph data.
Interestingly enough, I hated VC++ 6. I prefer PFE + CygWin for Windows. Fortunately I haven't had to do Windows programming in years...
Or in other words, what is wrong with more choices? Someone forcing you to use them? Someone confiscating the tools you already have?
You sound like yet another "I am the expert, do it my way, and no other."
Especially considering the loudest yell against M$ is that they take away choices, and Linux restores them, this is really hypocritical. And add another shot of hyprocisy for this choice from Borland being a burr under M$'s saddle, which would seem to make them natural partners in crime with the Linux zealots who scream against M$ being the anti-choice devil.
What makes you think he's a linux / Unix coder? He said he uses notepad and djgpp.
Personally, I've used VisualC++ and managed to make some pretty cool stuff easily, but now using linux I already have just about everything I need, and anything I need to program myself I can do in sh or perl with vim... but I'm not a professional programmer and my requirements are light.
I don't know enough about the "freedom" issues to have an opinion on whether this is a Good Thing yet, but an IDE from Borland sounds very useful for those of you who need to produce full-featured and native code GUI applications and don't have the time to learn the ins and outs of emacs/vim and GTK/Qt/Xlib.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Re:Sure, here's how Java works
by
Sneakums
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· Score: 2
You can think of this as being totally in keeping with the java way, what is passed is the thing that the program uses.
But you're not. You think you're passing in the object, but you are in fact passing a pointer (or reference, if you prefer), which is a different thing entirely.
By contrast, in C++, if you specify the argument type as Object, you get an Object, and if you specify an Object&, you get a reference to an Object
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:Rapid Application Development...
by
DreamMaster
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· Score: 2
I'd say it's more a reflection of individual programming style. Personally, I prefer to start with the easy creation of a visual template for my application, and then proceed with the actual programming of it. Whilst the old methods did indeed force us to put our ideas on paper, the pain of then having to manually create the user interface and then cobble thte code onto it was more of a pain then the benefits that enforcement of paper designs provided.
I shudder to think back to some of the early Windows 3.1 developments tools... I was never able to finish any serious graphical application until Delphi 1.0 was released. And since then, I've never looked back.
Kylix ... Linux ... and Programming
by
SuperDuG
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· Score: 2
After getting into the C++ world I've noticed that IDE's tend to piss me off more than help me out... right now all I really would need out of an IDE would be that it could show all the sources for a project and could print out color coded to make it easier to read.
Besides that I really see no points in all the glamour of IDE's... MS Visual C++ is non-impressive to me and I really dislike using it even though I'm required to at school. I find more functionality and freedom from loading up djgpp which is what I compile on at home... and what do I use for an IDE?... yep notepad... Truly I see no reason for all these fancy IDE's except they put the tools you'd need to save time right there for you.
-- Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
RADs just make things more efficient
by
Froid
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· Score: 2
Programming for hire has always been about churning out something "good enough", borrowing heavily (cutting&pasting) from previous work, and perhaps even plagiarizing others. RADs help by doing some of the grunt work, so you can get to the fun part of designing and implementing algorithms.
You remind me of someone who would complain that painting was a purer art when each artist pressed his own papyrus, instead of buying it from a local merchant. Sure, you could do that if you wanted, but why would you want to? Get on with the important details.
RAD is not a bad reflection of our times.
by
The+Optimizer
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· Score: 5
As someone who has regularrly used both Micrsoft's Visual C++ and Borland C++ Builder for the past 4 years, I can answer in word: NO
Let me sum it up this way: If it was all about "Programming as a pure art form" we wouldn't ever be using Windows, X Windows or any other layer between us and the computer. We would write our own display drivers, window managers, (G)UI stuff, etc, etc ad nausum...
It has very little to do with the tools/languages/compilers and an awful lot to do with the programmer and his circumstances. It sound like that in your situation you are being pushed too fast, regardless of the tools you have at your disposal.
And that's all each RAD product is: Another (alibet very powerful) tool there for you to choose ot not choose.
In the past 4 years, I've written some code that I believe was fricking awesome code. Some of it was in Assembler, some in straight C++, some using C++ builder. And in the past 4 years I've written a smaller amount of code that would qualify as anti-awsome. Some it was in straight C++, some in C++ builder (None in assembler,;-) The choice of development tools was a non-factor.
Borland's development environment and components don't take away my opprotunities for creative expression in code; rather they take away much of the drudgery. I wrote my own window-button-click code back in '89. I got tired of re-writing it by '92. Now I'm glad it's taken care of --- UNLESS- I have a reason to monkey with it - in which case the VCL lets me jump in and do just that. RAD never took away the cool/unique parts of the appiclations I wrote, they just let me spend a larger percentage of my time budget on them.
As a person experienced with both (Borland's) RAD development, and the more traditional approach I 110% agree with the following statement:
Apart from the Delphi developers, Kylix also brings hundreds of thousands of applications, built in Delphi today, ported with Kylix tomorrow. On the first night that Kylix ships, we'll probably see more new Linux applications than we've seen in the past few months...
Kylix will be a huge boon for Linux by providing the reason that will give non-geek users the opprotunity to try it: applications that mean something to them.
I agree that people should be told that they
can download linux for free. But, I do not agree that the open source movement means you cannot make money off of it. Too often people confuse free software with open source software and vica-versa. The GPL protects software from harm that
commercialism can cause it. If Redhat wants to sell something that can be obtained for free, I say, let them. It's in everyone's interest that they stay in business, so that they can continue to pay programmers, just like us, to do work on an OS that we all love. Not to mention that by buying a pre-packaged CD from redhat you get a manual, and tech-support, as opposed to a burned CD, and having to bug a friend for tech-support, in their already too busy lives.
Re:Rapid Application Development...
by
uradu
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· Score: 2
I see absolutely no disadvantage to being able to layout the application GIU visually, rather than creating widgets in code and constantly having to fool with the metrics and go through endless fiddle/compile/run cycles until it looks right. In particular a nice RAD IDE like Delphi makes life very easy, with decent layout control like Align and Anchors, though they could add a few more options such as percent of window.
I used to be a C++ zealot until about 1997 when I got the first taste of Delphi 2, and I never went back. Sure, I had to switch languages, but I've made bigger sacrifices before. Besides, OP leads to a clarity and readability of code rarely achieved nowadays with C++, expecially when dealing with COM.
RAD from the perspective of Delphi gives you the best of both worlds: easy GUI design, as well as a great class framework and a powerful language. It ties the two together in such a slick and unobtrusive way; it's the way I'd probably do things even if Delphi didn't exist. Sure it adds some overhead, but then every framework does--even MFC, if you can call it a framework. If you want leaner apps, you pretty much have to drop to the API/message loop level, and we've all been there and didn't like it. Compared to something like VC++ that gives you RAD Light and forces you to keep your GUI and event handlers synchronized manually and always keeps you worrying about resource IDs, Delphi takes you to a whole other level of productivity.
The project manager at the company I used to work for was a great MS zealot, and his big mission in life was to convert the shop from Delphi to VC++. We were five developers churning out the code of ten and still were constantly behind schedule (talk about over-commitment of sales). We pleaded with him repeately to reconsider, explaining what a great work multiplier Delphi is and how such things are important to a small company. His retort was always that VC++ is the tool of the future and that tons of very smart guys work at MS and they can't all be wrong. He constantly denied that there were any productivity differences between Delphi and VC++ and accused us of just being irrational Delphi zealots (which probably was true, but with good reason we felt).
Anyway, these kinds of attitudes--influenced more by the great MS marketing machine than reality--are what is keeping Delphi down. I guess all of us Delphi supporters are hoping that Kylix will be the second wind for Delphi. With the momentum Linux has at the moment, and its lack of a serious RAD tool, Delphi should stand a decent second chance. And please don't anyone mention.NET or I'll have to hunt you down and decompose you into little bits.
The language and/or IDE seems suspect in a few areas? Can't you really be more precise than that?
I come from a very strong VB background before moving to Delphi. I just couldn't continue with VB and let me tell you a few reasons:
First, speed. VB apps are dead slow. They may get some impressing numbers in carefully chosen benchmarks but otherwise it's a lot slower than Delphi. In anything heavier I got up to 10 times speedup by moving to Delphi. For example, get the ascii value of a char in a string. Delphi just gets the value with aString[index] while in basic you have to asc(mid$(aString$,index,1)) resulting in creation of temp string.
Second, braindead decisions. VB stores all strings internally in unicode. Try to send a string to a dll and you'll see how VB first converts the string to ansi. If you send an array, each and every string in that array are converted. That's a huge penalty and there's just no way you can change that.
Third, you can't do anything even a bit more advanced without kludges while Delphi provides clean ways to do anything. You just get used to working past the problems without understanding how dreadful that makes your code.
In the end, I hated myself for not changing earlier. Delphi gives you the same variable length strings that VB-programmers love. The syntax is not that much different either so it's easy to start. But when you understand the component model and learn real object oriented programming, Delphi is just wonderful. VB can never get there.
So, blame that programmer for spaghetti code and don't blame the tool.
Project Kylix - Native Rapid Application Development for Linux.
What is Project Kylix?
The goal of Project Kylix is to produce a high-performance Rapid Application
Development (RAD) development tool for Linux. RAD here means component-based, two-way
visual development of your user-interface (GUI), database, internet, and server
applications. Development tool means a high-speed native Delphi/C/C++ compiler for
linux.
Project Kylix should also simplify the porting of existing Delphi and C++Builder
applications between Windows and Linux
--
Windows2000: Where do you think you're going today?
Borland already has the JBuilder development enviroment out for Linux. Although this is Java based, the environment brings the familiar Borland's power IDE interface. It works like a dream with proper hardware under Linux. The Foundation release is free for use. You need to download a license key from the site though.
Re:JBuilder's available now
by
jilles
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· Score: 2
a 400MhzpII with 192 MB is by all means a modest PC if programming is your profession. Really, a programmer earning between 50 and 100K annually (pessimistic for good programmers) should have some decent equipment to do his/her work. Contrary to the common belief, memory is much more important than processor speed.
I think it is very brave of you to even try running java 1.2 on a 32 MB PC. I recall running jdk 1.2 beta1 on a 133 Mhz machine (64MB, it doubled as a server machine). It worked fine, I could even launch the swing demo (for non Java people, this loads just about all available swing components). Of course the application response was terrible, but hey what do you expect?
However, with sufficient memory (192 MB is about the mininimum for JBuilder) it should work.
JBuilder refusing to install with a newer JDK is entirely borlands fault. Apparently they have some dependencies on non standardized parts. The windows version of JBuilder 3.0 came with its own JDK. Replacing it with the superior 1.3 beta from sun (there was no final version yet) wouldn't work and was not supported by borland. Even the released 1.2 did not work. You had to use the borland JDK. This was one of the reasons I refuse to use IDE's such as those provided by borland or IBM. You always get locked into obsolete software at some point. Don't misunderstand me, both deliver excellent products. But if you want to use the latest and greatest, you'll run into problems. Visual age for instance used jdk 1.1 long after 1.2 was released. Apparently it is now possible to use 1.3 with it.
So I have to agree with your last line: simplicity is better. Don't get locked into some IDE. Always keep the way open to use something else.
--
Jilles
Re:Rapid Application Development...
by
Stultsinator
·
· Score: 2
I disagree on two counts.
But before I go on, let's distinguish what we're talking about here. The RAD tool Kylix (and others like it) are not the total of RAD methodology. Your argument seems to be that the RAD methodology is bad, and seems to conclude that RAD tools are too. Both, however, have a place in development.
RAD tools belong in programming for the same reason the STL and design patterns exist; to keep developers from reinventing the wheel. They also allow junior programmers to be productive while their seniors concentrate on problems that cannot be covered by existing tools. I don't know about you, but coding static web pages bores me, and if some tool can competently code what our designers dream up then I'm all for it.
The RAD methodology also belongs on a programmers resume. Every time a project is desinged you'll find that the functionality your customer wants cannot be crammed into the time you have. So, rather than say "If I can't do it all I'm not going to do it," you compromise. You have your customer prioritize his requirements, fit the highest into your project, and offer to do the rest as a follow-up project.
Yeah, RAD methodology may cause programmers to rush things and that's bad. However, that's not the fault of the methodology, only it's implementation. If you think it's forced you to cut corners and reduce testing time, you didn't scope the project out properly to begin with. Every methodology will fail under that circumstance.
Rapid Application Development...
by
Phokus
·
· Score: 4
Does anyone here agree with me that R.A.D. is really a bad reflection of our times? In our fast paced economy, we MUST do everything fast in order to survive. Programming used to be considered an art, we used to actually put our ideas on paper before we even entered a key stroke. Now what do we do? We spew out half baked code in order to meet demand.
Honestly, this is more of a pity post more than anything else. I work for a company that almost demands that i put speed ahead of quality, and i have friends in the same situation as well. Anyone else have this problem?
Re:Rapid Application Development...
by
Sloppy
·
· Score: 2
I see absolutely no disadvantage to being able to layout the
application GIU visually, rather than creating widgets in code and constantly
having to fool with the metrics and go through endless fiddle/compile/run
cycles until it looks right.
There's one big problem that I have with visual GUI layout: you can't
do dynamic interfaces that get layed out at runtime.
At the place where I work, we have been using a proprietary language for
DOS called Clipper that is pretty primitive in the user-interface department,
but that actually turned out to be a good thing in the long run, since it got
us to write our own libraries to handle things right.
Unfortunately, we're now getting forced into more and more Windoze stuff,
and being good unthinking Clipper loyalists (*sigh* you can tell what I
think of this move), we're slowly switching over to the language CA currently
is trying to sell: Visual Objects. It's one of these RAD things where you
draw your interface forms using a graphical layout tool.
It sucks. We can't even do some of the same interfaces that we
could with Clipper, because everything has to be known at compile time. You
can't have the interface depend on the user's data or configuration. (Well,
not unless you write your own GUI libraries instead of using the visual crap
that comes with it. No one has done that yet.)
You know what approach works best? It's the one I've seen on the Amiga,
with toolkits like MUI, BGUI, and ClassAct. The idea is that you write text
(or build arrays) that specifiy a logical structure to the widgets.
It's just as fast (maybe even faster) than using visual layout tools, more
accurate, doesn't require any repository or non-human-readable "resource
files", and the data structures can be built at run time if you need that.
It fucking rules! So, naturally, since the Amiga had it in 1992, the Windows
world should eventually move up to this step sometime around 2007.
(BTW, Linux dudes: is this this how toolkits like gtk and qt work?)
---
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Kylix & Linux Library Hell
by
resistant
·
· Score: 2
What I'd like to see most particularly from this long-awaited "mass-production" environment, is a drastic reduction of (headaches from) the notorious proliferation of grossly overlapping libraries for Linux. With many more people using what amounts to a "standard" environment, one can foresee the library scene cleaning up these gray, fuzzy borders into more sharply delineated borders in which one library much more clearly does this, and another much more clearly does that, with way less ridiculous overlap from almost identical functions (not even functionality, but functions!)
Many of the best Linux programmers, seeing an opportunity to actually make some money selling excellent special-purpose libraries (sorry, rabid "free-software" dudes, some people want to make a living at what they do just like everyone else and not live on cheap noodles and dumpster leavings just to appease the Angry Gods of Open Source), will stop re-inventing the damn wheel and start creating original, useful libraries to meet ever-more specialized demands.
This could be a "very good thing" indeed, if the shipping product is not grossly overpriced. Too many of the best Linux programmers are poor students or very much part-time volunteers working on pet projects, who won't be willing to pay through the nose when they can obtain so many other, totally free, development environments.
(This has been something of a rant, I guess. Wading through hundreds of, and carefully selecting, Debian packages one by one by one, over weeks on-line, and discovering how very much duplication there is in basic Linux libraries even at Debian, did something weird to my mind).
Man, I hate this stinking cruft so, so bad.
-- A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Does anyone else remember a year or so ago when another major company decided that Linux was the future? They talked about how Linux was going to be this, that, and the other thing. And that company was moving their products to Linux, and really staking their future on Linux. Now that company is in the midst of what can only be called its death throes. Sadly, we remember today the company called Corel. And the great promise that we saw in them making things available on Linux.
I do not wish to seem negative before Kylix is even here, but I really have to wonder. It doesn't seem to me that Borland/Inprise is staking their future on Linux to quite the degree that Corel did, but what if Kylix isn't what's its cracked up to be? How would that affect the future of the Linux community? I approach this matter very seriously, because my livelihood depends on it. I work for a development firm that is strongly grounded in Delphi, and there are more than just rumors about shifting over to developing with Kylix. It concerns me greatly that we will be depending on Kylix on Linux, when nary a Delphi developer in the house has any real world experience with either Linux or any type of Unix.
I, for one, will have to wait and see whether the buzz about Kylix is really worth checking into...
I've spent the last 1,5 years programming in Delphi and it rocks. I love the language. It's easy to learn, produces fast and small executables and helps producing high quality apps.
People coming from a Visual Basic background will notice that that Delphi is just as easy but it's a lot faster and really made the right way. The class libraries make sense and you can create new components really easy. After programming a few years in VB, there's no way I'll go back to the old monster.
Delphi is also a lot easier than C. The language helps you avoid errors. I suppose Object Pascal is a good language to learn before C(++)
But the greatest thing about Delphi will be Kylix. It will be a pleasure to port our software for Linux. I really think Borland did a great decision. Kylix will give them a good start as Linux still lacks Visual Basic. It can really become the state of the art RAD tool for Linux and that will also help them gain markets in the Windows world.
Oh, you may also want to have a look at Lazarus, which is open source. It looks like Kylix will be ready first but Lazarus and the Free Pascal Compiler look good. I already use FPC for small apps and hope to get a strong alternative for Kylix which would boost competition and quality in both.
Re:Sure, here's how pascal works:
by
Sneakums
·
· Score: 3
Beside, any language that relies on pointers should be shot immediatly
Leaving aside for a moment the question of exactly how one would shoot a language, I must point out that pointers are not bad. What is is bad is the unthinking use of random pointer arithmetic.
It's worth noting that every language that is any use at all uses pointers: Lisp, Pascal, Java and of course C and C++. They differ in how exposed to the programmer the pointers are. Java, for example, has an annoying impedance mismatch where objects are passed by reference but things like ints and chars are passed by value.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
According to
reliable sources, Microsoft is beginning to (hire another company to) port some of its applications to Linux. Starting with Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 6.3 (which is already ported to Sun Solaris).
The 'other company' is MainSoft. Apparently, they did the IE port to Solaris, and are currently porting Windows Media Player.
Hmm. Has this been on slashdot before? Has anybody else heard this news? And why would Microsoft do this (if it's true)? What would they have to gain?
Certainly they do not want to assist in bringing a free OS to mainstream desktops, do they? Is there an evil plan behind this, or do they just need things to spend money on...
1) Microsoft knows they can't avoid being broken up and the application section is quietly getting ready to slit the throat of the OS section.
2) Microsoft plans to put out substandard software for Linux and then claim that weaknesses in the OS make it impossible to provide good implementations. More chances to slam Linux while appearing to diversify to keep the DOJ happy.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'll be looking out for this.
by
Bilestoad
·
· Score: 2
This is great - but what would be even better is a MS Visual C++ killer for the Linux desktop. The article looks very promising, and I hope they do it right. A truly awesome IDE is more important (and contributes more to programmer productivity, and programmer enjoyment) than just about anything else.
I'm very happy to see them basing some of their product on Qt - in my (brief) exerience it's great.
I've been looking at all the Linux IDEs over the past week and they all have their problems. A lot just aren't available for PowerPC. Most are ugly, clumsy, or are simply a poor wrapper around GCC/GDB. The biggest problem is that integration of the debugger justs isn't as good as DevStudios. Maybe the best of all the ones I have used is Code Crusader/Code Medic - but at best it's 75% of what Microsoft offers.
The lack of a great IDE is a significant disincentive for people to switch platforms. Sure, we can all do makefiles and command-line gdb, but I don't know many professional programmers who don't acknowledge DevStudio as one of the best environments they have ever worked in... and once you've had the best it's hard to give it up, even if you do prefer X-windows to MS-windows.
I am very concerned (read: my clients are very concerned) that Borland is bailing out of the Windows market
I spent most of the spring and summer working on features for a Windows product; we are not bailing out of the Windows market. However --- the goal is that the VCL which uses QT widgets will work on both platforms, and ship in both the Windows and Linux products, which has obvious implications for scheduling.
For all those asking (because the site is/.ed) Kylix is Inprise/Borland's version of Delphi (and later C++ Builder) for Linux.
It includeds a (Qt based) visual form designer, an OO-language (Object Pascal), great database tools and a cross platform OO class library called CLX (which supplements the Windows only VCL).
It will support application developement for KDE, GNOME (or at least GNOME aware, but non-GTK apps) and Apache modules.
I believe that Kylix is going to be a breakthough app for the Linux desktop. Many large companies have many apps written in Delphi (and VB). Rewritting these apps in C/C++ isn't an option, and Scripting languages like Python/Perl don't have the tool support for writing these GUI database applications. Kylix is going after that market, and knowing Borland's reputation for writing good programming tools, I'm looking forward to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why - of course! - Hemos's editorial comment is the shortest all day.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Have you tried KDevelop?
It's not KDE specific, you can write any c/c++ app with it, and it does a lot of cool things like automatically documenting your classes and generating autoconf/automake for you. I like having the class browser as well. It also has a decent debugger as well, though I wish it was more like DDD (Data Display Debugger), which has the capability to graph data.
Interestingly enough, I hated VC++ 6. I prefer PFE + CygWin for Windows. Fortunately I haven't had to do Windows programming in years...
Or in other words, what is wrong with more choices? Someone forcing you to use them? Someone confiscating the tools you already have?
You sound like yet another "I am the expert, do it my way, and no other."
Especially considering the loudest yell against M$ is that they take away choices, and Linux restores them, this is really hypocritical. And add another shot of hyprocisy for this choice from Borland being a burr under M$'s saddle, which would seem to make them natural partners in crime with the Linux zealots who scream against M$ being the anti-choice devil.
Gaaakkk.
--
Infuriate left and right
What makes you think he's a linux / Unix coder? He said he uses notepad and djgpp.
Personally, I've used VisualC++ and managed to make some pretty cool stuff easily, but now using linux I already have just about everything I need, and anything I need to program myself I can do in sh or perl with vim... but I'm not a professional programmer and my requirements are light.
I don't know enough about the "freedom" issues to have an opinion on whether this is a Good Thing yet, but an IDE from Borland sounds very useful for those of you who need to produce full-featured and native code GUI applications and don't have the time to learn the ins and outs of emacs/vim and GTK/Qt/Xlib.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
But you're not. You think you're passing in the object, but you are in fact passing a pointer (or reference, if you prefer), which is a different thing entirely.
By contrast, in C++, if you specify the argument type as Object, you get an Object, and if you specify an Object&, you get a reference to an Object
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
I shudder to think back to some of the early Windows 3.1 developments tools... I was never able to finish any serious graphical application until Delphi 1.0 was released. And since then, I've never looked back.
Besides that I really see no points in all the glamour of IDE's ... MS Visual C++ is non-impressive to me and I really dislike using it even though I'm required to at school. I find more functionality and freedom from loading up djgpp which is what I compile on at home ... and what do I use for an IDE? ... yep notepad ... Truly I see no reason for all these fancy IDE's except they put the tools you'd need to save time right there for you.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Programming for hire has always been about churning out something "good enough", borrowing heavily (cutting&pasting) from previous work, and perhaps even plagiarizing others. RADs help by doing some of the grunt work, so you can get to the fun part of designing and implementing algorithms.
You remind me of someone who would complain that painting was a purer art when each artist pressed his own papyrus, instead of buying it from a local merchant. Sure, you could do that if you wanted, but why would you want to? Get on with the important details.
As someone who has regularrly used both Micrsoft's Visual C++ and Borland C++ Builder for the past 4 years, I can answer in word: NO
;-) The choice of development tools was a non-factor.
Let me sum it up this way: If it was all about "Programming as a pure art form" we wouldn't ever be using Windows, X Windows or any other layer between us and the computer. We would write our own display drivers, window managers, (G)UI stuff, etc, etc ad nausum...
It has very little to do with the tools/languages/compilers and an awful lot to do with the programmer and his circumstances. It sound like that in your situation you are being pushed too fast, regardless of the tools you have at your disposal.
And that's all each RAD product is: Another (alibet very powerful) tool there for you to choose ot not choose.
In the past 4 years, I've written some code that I believe was fricking awesome code. Some of it was in Assembler, some in straight C++, some using C++ builder. And in the past 4 years I've written a smaller amount of code that would qualify as anti-awsome. Some it was in straight C++, some in C++ builder (None in assembler,
Borland's development environment and components don't take away my opprotunities for creative expression in code; rather they take away much of the drudgery. I wrote my own window-button-click code back in '89. I got tired of re-writing it by '92. Now I'm glad it's taken care of --- UNLESS- I have a reason to monkey with it - in which case the VCL lets me jump in and do just that. RAD never took away the cool/unique parts of the appiclations I wrote, they just let me spend a larger percentage of my time budget on them.
As a person experienced with both (Borland's) RAD development, and the more traditional approach I 110% agree with the following statement:
Apart from the Delphi developers, Kylix also brings hundreds of thousands of applications, built in Delphi today, ported with Kylix tomorrow. On the first night that Kylix ships, we'll probably see more new Linux applications than we've seen in the past few months...
Kylix will be a huge boon for Linux by providing the reason that will give non-geek users the opprotunity to try it: applications that mean something to them.
I agree that people should be told that they
can download linux for free. But, I do not agree that the open source movement means you cannot make money off of it. Too often people confuse free software with open source software and vica-versa. The GPL protects software from harm that
commercialism can cause it. If Redhat wants to sell something that can be obtained for free, I say, let them. It's in everyone's interest that they stay in business, so that they can continue to pay programmers, just like us, to do work on an OS that we all love. Not to mention that by buying a pre-packaged CD from redhat you get a manual, and tech-support, as opposed to a burned CD, and having to bug a friend for tech-support, in their already too busy lives.
I see absolutely no disadvantage to being able to layout the application GIU visually, rather than creating widgets in code and constantly having to fool with the metrics and go through endless fiddle/compile/run cycles until it looks right. In particular a nice RAD IDE like Delphi makes life very easy, with decent layout control like Align and Anchors, though they could add a few more options such as percent of window.
.NET or I'll have to hunt you down and decompose you into little bits.
I used to be a C++ zealot until about 1997 when I got the first taste of Delphi 2, and I never went back. Sure, I had to switch languages, but I've made bigger sacrifices before. Besides, OP leads to a clarity and readability of code rarely achieved nowadays with C++, expecially when dealing with COM.
RAD from the perspective of Delphi gives you the best of both worlds: easy GUI design, as well as a great class framework and a powerful language. It ties the two together in such a slick and unobtrusive way; it's the way I'd probably do things even if Delphi didn't exist. Sure it adds some overhead, but then every framework does--even MFC, if you can call it a framework. If you want leaner apps, you pretty much have to drop to the API/message loop level, and we've all been there and didn't like it. Compared to something like VC++ that gives you RAD Light and forces you to keep your GUI and event handlers synchronized manually and always keeps you worrying about resource IDs, Delphi takes you to a whole other level of productivity.
The project manager at the company I used to work for was a great MS zealot, and his big mission in life was to convert the shop from Delphi to VC++. We were five developers churning out the code of ten and still were constantly behind schedule (talk about over-commitment of sales). We pleaded with him repeately to reconsider, explaining what a great work multiplier Delphi is and how such things are important to a small company. His retort was always that VC++ is the tool of the future and that tons of very smart guys work at MS and they can't all be wrong. He constantly denied that there were any productivity differences between Delphi and VC++ and accused us of just being irrational Delphi zealots (which probably was true, but with good reason we felt).
Anyway, these kinds of attitudes--influenced more by the great MS marketing machine than reality--are what is keeping Delphi down. I guess all of us Delphi supporters are hoping that Kylix will be the second wind for Delphi. With the momentum Linux has at the moment, and its lack of a serious RAD tool, Delphi should stand a decent second chance. And please don't anyone mention
I do. It's really not that difficult if you know C, though I learned Pascal first (language of choice in the BBS world).
And anyone who used TurboVision in BP/TP7 will have no problem with Delphi/Object Pascal. It's really powerful.
The language and/or IDE seems suspect in a few areas? Can't you really be more precise than that?
I come from a very strong VB background before moving to Delphi. I just couldn't continue with VB and let me tell you a few reasons:
First, speed. VB apps are dead slow. They may get some impressing numbers in carefully chosen benchmarks but otherwise it's a lot slower than Delphi. In anything heavier I got up to 10 times speedup by moving to Delphi. For example, get the ascii value of a char in a string. Delphi just gets the value with aString[index] while in basic you have to asc(mid$(aString$,index,1)) resulting in creation of temp string.
Second, braindead decisions. VB stores all strings internally in unicode. Try to send a string to a dll and you'll see how VB first converts the string to ansi. If you send an array, each and every string in that array are converted. That's a huge penalty and there's just no way you can change that.
Third, you can't do anything even a bit more advanced without kludges while Delphi provides clean ways to do anything. You just get used to working past the problems without understanding how dreadful that makes your code.
In the end, I hated myself for not changing earlier. Delphi gives you the same variable length strings that VB-programmers love. The syntax is not that much different either so it's easy to start. But when you understand the component model and learn real object oriented programming, Delphi is just wonderful. VB can never get there.
So, blame that programmer for spaghetti code and don't blame the tool.
Project Kylix - Native Rapid Application Development for Linux.
What is Project Kylix?
The goal of Project Kylix is to produce a high-performance Rapid Application Development (RAD) development tool for Linux. RAD here means component-based, two-way visual development of your user-interface (GUI), database, internet, and server applications. Development tool means a high-speed native Delphi/C/C++ compiler for linux. Project Kylix should also simplify the porting of existing Delphi and C++Builder applications between Windows and Linux
Windows2000: Where do you think you're going today?
Borland already has the JBuilder development enviroment out for Linux. Although this is Java based, the environment brings the familiar Borland's power IDE interface. It works like a dream with proper hardware under Linux. The Foundation release is free for use. You need to download a license key from the site though.
Banu
But before I go on, let's distinguish what we're talking about here. The RAD tool Kylix (and others like it) are not the total of RAD methodology. Your argument seems to be that the RAD methodology is bad, and seems to conclude that RAD tools are too. Both, however, have a place in development.
RAD tools belong in programming for the same reason the STL and design patterns exist; to keep developers from reinventing the wheel. They also allow junior programmers to be productive while their seniors concentrate on problems that cannot be covered by existing tools. I don't know about you, but coding static web pages bores me, and if some tool can competently code what our designers dream up then I'm all for it.
The RAD methodology also belongs on a programmers resume. Every time a project is desinged you'll find that the functionality your customer wants cannot be crammed into the time you have. So, rather than say "If I can't do it all I'm not going to do it," you compromise. You have your customer prioritize his requirements, fit the highest into your project, and offer to do the rest as a follow-up project.
Yeah, RAD methodology may cause programmers to rush things and that's bad. However, that's not the fault of the methodology, only it's implementation. If you think it's forced you to cut corners and reduce testing time, you didn't scope the project out properly to begin with. Every methodology will fail under that circumstance.
Honestly, this is more of a pity post more than anything else. I work for a company that almost demands that i put speed ahead of quality, and i have friends in the same situation as well. Anyone else have this problem?
What I'd like to see most particularly from this long-awaited "mass-production" environment, is a drastic reduction of (headaches from) the notorious proliferation of grossly overlapping libraries for Linux. With many more people using what amounts to a "standard" environment, one can foresee the library scene cleaning up these gray, fuzzy borders into more sharply delineated borders in which one library much more clearly does this, and another much more clearly does that, with way less ridiculous overlap from almost identical functions (not even functionality, but functions!)
Many of the best Linux programmers, seeing an opportunity to actually make some money selling excellent special-purpose libraries (sorry, rabid "free-software" dudes, some people want to make a living at what they do just like everyone else and not live on cheap noodles and dumpster leavings just to appease the Angry Gods of Open Source), will stop re-inventing the damn wheel and start creating original, useful libraries to meet ever-more specialized demands.
This could be a "very good thing" indeed, if the shipping product is not grossly overpriced. Too many of the best Linux programmers are poor students or very much part-time volunteers working on pet projects, who won't be willing to pay through the nose when they can obtain so many other, totally free, development environments.
(This has been something of a rant, I guess. Wading through hundreds of, and carefully selecting, Debian packages one by one by one, over weeks on-line, and discovering how very much duplication there is in basic Linux libraries even at Debian, did something weird to my mind).
Man, I hate this stinking cruft so, so bad.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Does anyone else remember a year or so ago when another major company decided that Linux was the future? They talked about how Linux was going to be this, that, and the other thing. And that company was moving their products to Linux, and really staking their future on Linux. Now that company is in the midst of what can only be called its death throes. Sadly, we remember today the company called Corel. And the great promise that we saw in them making things available on Linux.
I do not wish to seem negative before Kylix is even here, but I really have to wonder. It doesn't seem to me that Borland/Inprise is staking their future on Linux to quite the degree that Corel did, but what if Kylix isn't what's its cracked up to be? How would that affect the future of the Linux community? I approach this matter very seriously, because my livelihood depends on it. I work for a development firm that is strongly grounded in Delphi, and there are more than just rumors about shifting over to developing with Kylix. It concerns me greatly that we will be depending on Kylix on Linux, when nary a Delphi developer in the house has any real world experience with either Linux or any type of Unix.
I, for one, will have to wait and see whether the buzz about Kylix is really worth checking into...
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
I've spent the last 1,5 years programming in Delphi and it rocks. I love the language. It's easy to learn, produces fast and small executables and helps producing high quality apps.
People coming from a Visual Basic background will notice that that Delphi is just as easy but it's a lot faster and really made the right way. The class libraries make sense and you can create new components really easy. After programming a few years in VB, there's no way I'll go back to the old monster. Delphi is also a lot easier than C. The language helps you avoid errors. I suppose Object Pascal is a good language to learn before C(++)
But the greatest thing about Delphi will be Kylix. It will be a pleasure to port our software for Linux. I really think Borland did a great decision. Kylix will give them a good start as Linux still lacks Visual Basic. It can really become the state of the art RAD tool for Linux and that will also help them gain markets in the Windows world.
Oh, you may also want to have a look at Lazarus, which is open source. It looks like Kylix will be ready first but Lazarus and the Free Pascal Compiler look good. I already use FPC for small apps and hope to get a strong alternative for Kylix which would boost competition and quality in both.
Leaving aside for a moment the question of exactly how one would shoot a language, I must point out that pointers are not bad. What is is bad is the unthinking use of random pointer arithmetic.
It's worth noting that every language that is any use at all uses pointers: Lisp, Pascal, Java and of course C and C++. They differ in how exposed to the programmer the pointers are. Java, for example, has an annoying impedance mismatch where objects are passed by reference but things like ints and chars are passed by value.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.drbob42.com/kylix/hotshots.htm
Hmm. Has this been on slashdot before? Has anybody else heard this news? And why would Microsoft do this (if it's true)? What would they have to gain?
Certainly they do not want to assist in bringing a free OS to mainstream desktops, do they? Is there an evil plan behind this, or do they just need things to spend money on...
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
2) Microsoft plans to put out substandard software for Linux and then claim that weaknesses in the OS make it impossible to provide good implementations. More chances to slam Linux while appearing to diversify to keep the DOJ happy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is great - but what would be even better is a MS Visual C++ killer for the Linux desktop. The article looks very promising, and I hope they do it right. A truly awesome IDE is more important (and contributes more to programmer productivity, and programmer enjoyment) than just about anything else.
I'm very happy to see them basing some of their product on Qt - in my (brief) exerience it's great.
I've been looking at all the Linux IDEs over the past week and they all have their problems. A lot just aren't available for PowerPC. Most are ugly, clumsy, or are simply a poor wrapper around GCC/GDB. The biggest problem is that integration of the debugger justs isn't as good as DevStudios. Maybe the best of all the ones I have used is Code Crusader/Code Medic - but at best it's 75% of what Microsoft offers.
The lack of a great IDE is a significant disincentive for people to switch platforms. Sure, we can all do makefiles and command-line gdb, but I don't know many professional programmers who don't acknowledge DevStudio as one of the best environments they have ever worked in... and once you've had the best it's hard to give it up, even if you do prefer X-windows to MS-windows.
I am very concerned (read: my clients are very concerned) that Borland is bailing out of the Windows market
I spent most of the spring and summer working on features for a Windows product; we are not bailing out of the Windows market. However --- the goal is that the VCL which uses QT widgets will work on both platforms, and ship in both the Windows and Linux products, which has obvious implications for scheduling.
Robert West
Delphi R&D
For all those asking (because the site is /.ed) Kylix is Inprise/Borland's version of Delphi (and later C++ Builder) for Linux.
It includeds a (Qt based) visual form designer, an OO-language (Object Pascal), great database tools and a cross platform OO class library called CLX (which supplements the Windows only VCL).
It will support application developement for KDE, GNOME (or at least GNOME aware, but non-GTK apps) and Apache modules.
More info at http://www.borland.com/kylix/
I believe that Kylix is going to be a breakthough app for the Linux desktop. Many large companies have many apps written in Delphi (and VB). Rewritting these apps in C/C++ isn't an option, and Scripting languages like Python/Perl don't have the tool support for writing these GUI database applications. Kylix is going after that market, and knowing Borland's reputation for writing good programming tools, I'm looking forward to it.