Delphi Renaissance

bongo69 writes "The TIOBE Programming Community Index is reporting that Delphi is experiencing a revival, this coincides with Borland recently releasing Delphi 2005 allowing users to target both win32 and .net platforms, which to some, is a welcome alternative for .net developers reluctant to use Microsoft Visual Studio or the opensource alternative SharpDevelop."

Comments

delphi?

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't they go out of business years ago?

Re:delphi?

[AndroidCat]

You might be thinking of the Compuserve-ish service. Delphi isn't exactly an uncommon name even within the bounds of computers and software.

Re:delphi?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of fact, that is what I was referring to. I actually am familiar with the programming language delphi, but figured a faux-ignorant FP was better then 'frosty pist lol!!11one'

Re:delphi?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have gone for a tin-foil-helmet reference to the Scientology schools. Ever seen Philippe Kahn and L. Ron Hubbard together?

Re:delphi?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, I only had a second to think it up before I lost the FP. In retrospect, I would have said something much more witty, but apparently I'm not quite as quick as I'd like to be.

Re:delphi?

[Orgazmus]

Ever seen Hitler and Bush together? ;)

lazarus is maturing too

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

ok so it doesn't support microsofts .net but it does support windows linux and (just about) mac os x

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[MacDaffy]

There's an excellent version of the gpc Pascal compiler for Mac OS X available. There's even a plug-in for the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE (not free). Anyone familiar with Objective-C and Mac OS X's Cocoa/Carbon development model is invited to help generate wrappers to call the code, Join the mailing list here. The site and mailing-list are also excellent resources for Pascal syntax and engineering questions, so Delphi coders can benefit, as well.

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[MacDaffy]

The links that didn't appear above:

http://www.microbizz.nl/gpc.html
http://www.pascal-central.com

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[Anonymous Coward]

from what i gather (and correct me if im wrong because ive never actually used it) gpc doesn't have the borland units system which makes it rather useless for porting tp/delphi code

freepascal seems to work pretty well on darwin although lazarus on that platform is still in dire need of development (plugwash)

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an excellent version of the gpc Pascal compiler for Mac OS X available.

Last time I checked, gpc was aiming to implement standard Extended Pascal, and Delphi compatibility was NOT a priority. Extended Pascal has a lot of nice features, but it has taken a very different evolutionary path from Delphi, and the two are only similar at their core; Delphi programmers will find the syntax accepted by gpc very strange, and they will not be able to find equivalent features for many of the idioms they are used to using.

Free Pascal has a similar problem - it implements Delphi, but the Delphi it implements is something like Delphi 3; it has many of the same features as later versions, but they made up their own syntax for them! For example, last time I checked, Free Pascal's implementation of function overloading was DIFFERENT from the implementation Borland introduced six years ago in Delphi 4. This annoys me in particular because I have a Delphi 4 app I'd rather like to be able to compile with Free Pascal... but I'm buggered if I'm going to go through it making incompatible changes first.

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[Teancum]

I love the promise of Lazarus, and I certainly hope that it actually works out eventually. The #1 problem of Lazarus is that they are contantly playing catchup to Borland, which isn't exactly a quick moving target, but Lazarus is still mostly hobbiests. #Develop has been in development for a much shorter period of time and has seem considerable more progress. If Borland does go under, Lazarus will be a good place to run to if you want to keep some sort of Object Pascal going.

.net developers reluctant to use Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about the smallest market ever conceived.

Re: .net developers reluctant to use Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

Most humans aren't very large when they're conceived either.

Re: .net developers reluctant to use Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using it. :-) And I've evaluated a lot of other IDEs. The nice thing about Delphi is that it supports the code-to-the-metal kind of developer and the RAD developer. You have the power and the ease-of-use, and that's not just a marketing blurb.

Why?

[bay43270]

Numbers are nice, but I'd also like to know why. Does anyone know what advantages Delphi has over Visual Studio and mono products?

Re:Why?

[cbrocious]

A decent IDE, relatively good language support (Pascal, now C#, and many others), and a whole lot of other features make it a great environment for RAD. That said, I have barely used it, just going on what I've heard from friends that are HUGE Delphi fans :)

Re:Why?

[Pxtl]

Better language support is cool, because I'll never understand why a nice tool like Delphi standardised on a painful language like Pascal. Replacing the symbols in C with words just makes less legible C. The only nice part of the Pascal languages is the := assignment.

Re:Why?

[zulux]

Pascal is a bit verbose... but Borland's Object Pascal is a great fit for event driven apps that have to talk to databases.

For this particular type of application, Delphi is great. For example - you can get a pointer when you need to, but you don't have to drown yourself with them all the time.

Re:Why?

[Jugalator]

For this particular type of application, Delphi is great. For example - you can get a pointer when you need to, but you don't have to drown yourself with them all the time.

You mean like in Java and C#?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was C that replaced the Pascal words with symbols.

If you remember that Pacal was created as a "theorical" language by a swiss professor, you must admit that he got a lot of things right!

Re:Why?

[Infinityis]

Visual Studio and mono(poly) products?

It's because we all hate Microsoft and their monopoly. Delphi is not made by Microsoft, thus making it better than Visual Studio, etc.

At least, that's the general idea I've gotten from reading a few months worth of material on Slashdot.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

For once, Delphi has supported RAD (what people now think makes .Net great) for ages and in many ways are still far superior to .Net.

For developing Desktop applications there isn't a better suited development tool.

It also has an incredibly rich third-party component market:

http://www.devexpress.com and http://www.remobjects.com are some of the best.

Why not try it out? Delphi 2005 Architect is available for trial download at http://www.borland.com

Re:Why?

[zulux]

You mean like in Java and C#?


No.

Java doesn't HAVE pointers. No pointers at all. That's the point about Java.

Object Pascal has pointers if you need them.

Not sure 'bout C#, but then again, I don't care

Re:Why?

[Omega1045]

C# has pointers. I don't use them - really no need to IMHO. You also have to mark the code as unmanaged.

Re:Why?

[Jugalator]

Java doesn't HAVE pointers. No pointers at all. That's the point about Java.

Java supports JNI, right?

But yes, it's not part of the main language, although JNI is used quite frequently in the core libraries if you look.

Not sure 'bout C#, but then again, I don't care

I can assure you C# has pointers "if you need them".

Re:Why?

[rburt3]

Don't code much Java(TM), do you?

Re:Why?

[Tablizer]

Numbers are nice, but I'd also like to know why. Does anyone know what advantages Delphi has over Visual Studio and mono products?

I don't know about the newest product, but Delphi used to be better for creating mail-able "packaged" applications, while VB targeted custom software. In other words, if you wanted to make a software package (boxed) to sell to many companies, go with Delphi. But VB was often preferred for very customized internal use projects.

Regarding Mono, VB and Delphi seem to more faithfully stick to the event-driven "component" model where each GUI widget handles its own events and attributes (or at least events and attributes are closely associated with a given GUI widget). Java stuff got away from this and turned into a messier model in my opinion. I think Java stuff tried to return to SmallTalk MVC models or something. I find component-event-driven the best GUI model for most custom business software.

Another thing is that coordinate-based GUI's as found in VB and Delphi are often better able to handle picky customers better than the hierarchically-nested "flow"-based GUI setups (such as that found in HTML) found in many Java products. The flow-based approach is perhaps more logical, but customers are not always logical, and want to tweak the GUI in such a way that is difficult to do in flow-based GUI systems. With coordinate-based GUI's you just move stuff to where the customer wants it without worrying about which containing frame or group it belongs to. I have encountered very picky customers before, and they don't want an earfull about nested containers getting in the way of putting things where they want to see it.

Re:Why?

[Karamchand]

Can you elaborate on how Java does this connection between GUI and code if not with this event-driven model? Or do you have any links with a short description about it? I'd be really interested since I can't imagine much else apart from the way Delphi etc. do it. Thanks!

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

delphi gives you real rad (VB style) with a real native code compiler backend

it also (at least in earlier versions) produces reasonable size exes which DO NOT depend on rutime support dlls or worse ocxs (i have heared of people buying delphi to make cd autorun menus because of the ocx issues with vb apps)

not to mention well implemented refcounted strings with automatic copying (which basically means you can treat strings as primitive types without the continous copying overhead)

Re:Why?

[JaxWeb]

C# only has pointers in "unsafe" mode. This causes problems regarding distrubiton.

Some else said:

C# has pointers. I don't use them - really no need to IMHO. You also have to mark the code as unmanaged.

I was programming in C# the other day, and I really missed pointers. I ended up with a lot of lines with code such as:

((string)((((ArrayList)(((ArrayList)(CurrentData[m yMonth]))[myDay])))[n]))

Which could've been simplifed by pointers. Maybe I was doing something wrong?

Re:Why?

[3terrabyte]

You have completely misused what RAD stands for. Or maybe what .NET is.

The two are not comparible. RAD is rapid application development, starting with the IDE, allowing for quick applications. Hardly a Delph-only thing

.NET is a framework that involves the replacment/evolution from COM, COM+. At least in 20 words or less.

Re:Why?

[shutdown -p now]

After some experience with this "RAD" thing, I have to say this name is usually misinterpreted. It is actually supposed to be "Rabid Application Development"

Re:Why?

[Moe Taxes]

Delphi is fast. Fast development, fast compile, fast execution, most people even learn it fast. Object pascal is a powerful, real programming language. Real programming language means you are programming a machine, not an interpreter in a sandbox. If a PC can do it, pascal can tell it to do it. And Delphi has the VCL, the only way I know of to write a complex program for the Win32 api and maintain your sanity. If Delphi 2005 does for WinFX what Delphi did for Win32 Borland will have another winner.

Re:Why?

[abertoll]

Because many programmers find the concepts and philosophies of Wirth to facilitate their art best.

Re:Why?

[gwjgwj]

Java doesn't HAVE pointers. No pointers at all. That's the point about Java.
Sure. And null pointer exception does not exist either.

Re:Why?

[EddWo]

Delphi 2005 doesn't target WinFX, it targets .Net 1.1 and System.Windows.Forms. The Windows Forms API is just a wrapper around Win32 and is very similar in design to the VCL as it was created by the same engineers that were poached from Borland by Microsoft.
Delphi 2005 is basically an alternative IDE for writing Object Pascal and C# applications targeting .Net or the evolution of Object Pascal native applications.
Perhaps Delphi 2008 or so will target WinFX but I doubt a similar wrapper API will be required as WinFX is already high level and fully OO and appears to be quite well designed.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java does do the event driven model, just a little differently.

So, instead of having an onClick() method that's basically already provided for you as it is in vb, you have to connect a listener to the class that basically does the same thing.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, internally references are implemented as pointers, but you don't have direct access to pointer arithmetic so no, the language doesn't have pointers.

Re:Why?

[Karamchand]

Ok, I see and (and least I think so) understand. Thank you for your answer.

Re:Why?

[tigersha]

In Java the code that gets called when you click a button is not in the button object itself. Normally a button (or any other control, but lets stick to buttons here) controls something else. So if I have a widget whichh flashes when I press a button the code that gets run belongs in the widge,t not in the button.

In Java it works like this: The button has a addEventListener methond which the widget calls. The button maintains a list of all other objects interested in the event and calls them in a row when it happens.

This is very cool because it decouples the UI from the code that actually does the work, which is how it should be.

Re:Why?

[Mod Me God Five]

I see, so its just like Excel VBA?

Re:Why?

[birder]

It's almost as if Microsoft bought out the creator of Delphi and had him build the same thing.

Oh, wait...

Re:Why?

[cayce]

No, you have to mark the code as unsafe not unmanaged.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I was doing something wrong?

Using C#.

Re:Why?

[chr1sb]

For example - you can get a pointer when you need to, but you don't have to drown yourself with them all the time

Actually, with Delphi, any object that inherits from TObject (effectively all of them) must be created dynamically, and therefore pointers are required.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? You generally don't need to use pointers in Win32 Delphi, but you can. Delphi's RTTI stuff is pretty useful, actually.

Since you can't do pointers in .Net, Delphi.Net doesn't do pointers.

Hardly anyone writes top-level objects in Delphi (i.e., objects that inherit only from TObject), just like they don't in Java, .Net, or whatever. There is just too much useful things to inherent from TComponent, TWinControl, etc.

I dub thee, Sir Troll.

Re:Why?

[nullforce]

Isn't that what generics will clean up? Instead of having Arrays of Objects you can have it know that they're ArrayLists.

Re:Why?

[Henrick]

That is not entirely relevant. You rarely have to dereference a Delphi object variable in the same way you would dereference a e.g. a char* variable in normal C/C++ code.

In practice, the fact that Delphi object variables are pointers to instances just means that object assignments are not deep copy operations, like they were with old style object pascal objects.

Re:Why?

[Henrick]

It would be more adequate to say that with Delphi you can do anything you can do in C/C++ and get practically the same performance. Anyone who has tried to write code that does advanced bit fiddling or arithmetics in C# or Java should be well aware of what I am talking about.

Re:Why?

[Omega1045]

yes, but it is the same thing. Never done it, don't intend to do so.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Delphi outperforms Microsoft compilers such as VB and VC++ by a FAR performance margin is one advantage it has & was proven in of ALL places, "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" & as far back as Sept./Oct. 1997 issue titled 'INSIDE THE VB5 COMPILER' where Delphi 2.0 swept the floor with VB & VC++ especially in math & strings work which EVERY program does. The only thing it lost in was form paints to VC++ & by such a tiny margin (far outweighed by how much it won by in the other areas) that it literally made me give it a try... I have not turned on it since vs. Microsoft compilers (that use runtimes for many things usually /by default in C++ & always in VB - which equates to less messagepassing overheads due to Delphi's static single .exe high performance code by default).

More recently online in "Jakes Programming Efficiency Contest" in the year 2000 Delphi 5.0 (iirc) did the same again vs. MSVC++ 6.x... tell you anything?

Many here mentioned VCL as well: Alot like .OCX OleServer components (which Delphi can also use & create) BUT compile statically into the code lending to less to distribute and less to worry about in terms of DLL Hell possibilities.

It compiles FAR faster as well vs. VC++/VB also.

You can do & create a good 99% of what VC++ can do as well natively with the tools it ships with, but you can REALLY extend it and develop faster in "RAD" paradigm to do anything VC++ can create & faster because it builds like VB does.

(Driver development's really the only thing I am not sure you can do in Delphi vs. VC++...)\

Top this ALL off with one SOLID FACT - The designer of Delphi, Anders Heijelsberg, was hired away from Borland by Mr. Bill Gates @ Microsoft to improve Visual Studio with Delphi-like features... this really stands out as to what is better overall than what!

APK

P.S.=> IMO, the reason Microsoft tools are more widely selling is that MS is a GREAT marketing organization & has money. This very same reasoning lent to IBM (another great P.R./marketing organization) leading thru the 70's-80's: "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" in the minds of mgt., Microsoft has money & therefore longevity in terms of company life & this influences MIS/IS/IT managers greatly... not necessarily a better product! apk

The Return of Verity Stob ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could mean the long awaited return of Verity Stob, whose column in DDJ has not been seen for many a months now.

I miss her.

Languages die for a reason

[cexshun]

Throughout the years, we've seen many languages die out. It's a natural progression of technology. I can't but think this is merely an act of nostalgia. Is delphi really feasible with the countless superior languages out there, or are people using it for the same reasons they still play NES games?

Re:Languages die for a reason

[ites]

The reason is only rarely technological. Borland's languages, from their Turbo- series onwards, were always significantly better than Microsoft's, but the market chooses tools based mainly on intertia and marketing. Microsoft advertised their way to dominance. Remember that so-called "Visual C/C++" was simply a wrapper around a few poor tools, with Visual Basic being the only component-based system, producing slow interpreted code, while for yearsBorland were producing fast compiled OO apps with Delphi.

There's a reason why some people dislike using MS tools and adore Borland's tools. Often, though, the developer does not have the say in such choices.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[TopShelf]

In actual practice, the abilities of one language or another are often inconsequential to a particular business. Once they have an installed base of software built around a certain language, the costs of switching are higher than any gains achieved from the "superior" language.

I work for a $1.5 billion company whose ERP runs on RPG. Sure, there's a Java version of the software coming out, but there's just no business case for making that switch. We'll probably still be using RPG for 10 more years...

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Infinityis]

Languages die out because they change. No one speaks Latin any more because we needed to communicate more information in fewer syllables, so we now have English and a bunch of other languages. Granted, we still see Latin roots in many English words, but we also see words that have no real basis.

Same thing with assembly language...unless you're programming device drivers, you have almost no need to go back to it because C++ and other languages supercede it. Sure, you see some of the assembly language roots, but assembly has largely "died out" for modern software development.

So long as Delphi produces higher and higher level programming languages, they're a contender, and they'll only die out when people stop using it.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Jugalator]

Keep in mind you're mostly talking in past sense now. Today, things seem to be far from the days of Turbo Pascal to me, both in the Microsoft and Borland camps.

In my opinion Microsoft has taken a great leap forward especially with the new compiler in .NET that actually *gasp* is starting to follow standards pretty well. We also cut the size on our compiled files across the board with that one in our flagship product, sometimes as much as halving them compared to Visual C++ 6. And then that compiler didn't even have any significant problems I could notice us or our customers suffering from. So I a renaissance this day is honorable, but also logical to question the value of, especially with the enormous amount of add-on libraries for C++ as opposed to Pascal.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[vasqzr]

In the early days, Delphi was not just a 'Pascal for Windows', but a much-faster-executing alternative to the other RAD system out there - Visual Basic. Remember how slow VB was until version 5 or 6, when it actually became compiled?

Another reason why it's so popular, is it's based on Pascal. Which is much easier for many people to program than C/C++

Borland's early C/C++ products for Windows were much faster than Microsofts as well. They did make many mistakes however (remember OWL?)

Go to http://groups.google.com/ and look for old newsgroup discussions of Visual Basic vs Delphi. Fun reading.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

No one speaks Latin any more because we needed to communicate more information in fewer syllables,

Hah! I sincerely doubt that syllabic efficiency had a thing to do with the death of Latin, even if Latin is possibly less efficient. I expect politics had a lot more to do with it - rise of the middle class, fall of Rome, etc.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[urmensch]

We also cut the size on our compiled files across the board with that one in our flagship product, sometimes as much as halving them compared to Visual C++ 6

Is that including the .net runtime that you have to distribute in addition to your compiled files?

Re:Languages die for a reason

[AndroidCat]

At the start, OWL was better than MFC in many ways.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[ites]

Past tense, yes.

Microsoft still play the same game though. Standards for C++? Well, after how many years? And then whole new proprietary languages like C# at the same time...

The marketing goal is to capture developers, yes? The more bells and whistles the better. The technical focus often gets lost in the process.

Borland's main quality - before OSS made this a common philosophy - was to place technical quality first. It was, and still is, probably the wrong strategy for a commercial company.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Delphi has consistently beaten Microsoft's Visual Basic & Visual C++ in, of all places & as far back as 1997, "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" Sept. or Oct. 1997 issue "INSIDE THE VB5 COMPILER ENGINE" where it absolutely TRASHED both (especially in math & strings which every program does alot of) & other areas as well (losing only in form paint to VC++ & by a far tinier margin than how much it won by in the other areas).

It also did so more recently in the year 2000 in the "Jakes Efficiency Programming Challenge" online which took string work done in Delphi & VC++ (combined if needed with compiler + hand optimization, & inline Assembler code) & did the same (for the 'naysayers' among you that say "well, what has it done lately?")

BOTTOM-LINE - Delphi can do ALL of what VB/VC++ can do for the most part & in VB "RAD" style... but, easier & better!

BUT to top that ALL off?

A big question folks have to ask is: If Delphi were inferior? Why then did Bill Gates hire away Anders Heijelsberg from Borland to redesign & improve Visual Studio, period??

Delphi IS better... but there is a mindset among management that "Microsoft will be around forever" & "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" type thinking... this does not mean MS stuff is better (quite the contrary from the examples I cite above)...

APK

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

VB6's speed increase by native code compilation is iffy at best. I've written software that actually ran several times faster when it was compiled as p-code. I was surprised too! Okay not that surprised considering I was using a MS development environment. I've become considerably jaded over the years in finding odd quirks in Microsoft's software.. I mean crap.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Jugalator]

Is that including the .net runtime that you have to distribute in addition to your compiled files?

I wasn't talking about managed code, just regular C++. So there are no .NET runtimes required as I don't use the .NET libraries.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Jugalator]

Well, after how many years?

Does that matter when we're talking Delpi 2005?
We aren't comparing Turbo C with an early version of Visual C.

And then whole new proprietary languages like C# at the same time...

They're preserving and improving C++ support. Don't care about C# if you don't wish to care.

The marketing goal is to capture developers, yes?

Yes, as with all companies, including Borland.

The more bells and whistles the better

I'm sure you'll find the same in Delphi 2005. Heck, they're even applying the Microsoft Versioning Scheme(tm).

It was, and still is, probably the wrong strategy for a commercial company.

Why do you believe that is the wrong strategy?

I fully agree that technical quality is a very nice thing to have, but I'm just questioning how much they'll achieve with a release like this. How are they going to convince the Visual C++ devs that their product is significantly better? It's easy if you compare Firefox with IE as there are major notable improvements while IE is almost daily suffering from security problems. But in this case I don't see a reason to shout "wow" even if I'm interested in developer IDE's. I've even tried Delphi in the past, but didn't see why I should learn Pascal when it seems like 95% of all developers use either Java, VB or C++ today.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[bad-badtz-maru]

The person who originally wrote Turbo Pascal, and was also largely responsible for Delphi, led the C# design team.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Teancum]

Keep in mind that Delphi 1 was pretty much Turbo Pascal 9 repackaged and a nice GUI development environment thrown on. The compiler was pretty much the same, and most program written for Turbo Pascal can compile just fine in Delphi. The only major problem I have with that now is that the specialty units in Turbo Pascal like DOS, CRT, Graph, ect. aren't available in Delphi, but a determined hacker could easily put something together for Delphi and make full source code compatability to work... including compiler directives and switches.

Also, there are an enormous number of libraries for Pascal as well. Just type your current need into Google and add Delphi or Pascal to the search (like PNG Source Delphi) and you will find many pre-written components for Delphi, many with source code and much that is even GPL'd. While admittedly not as much as C++, it isn't as obscure as say FORTH or Component COBOL.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record so that it's complete; that seems to have been a guy named Anders Hejlsberg.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[NavySpy]

Countless superior languages? I can't think of /one/ superior language.

http://www.codefez.com/Default.aspx?tabid=79&new sT ype=ArticleView&articleId=47

or

http://tinyurl.com/63x85

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Ronin Developer]

Why do you assume there are "countless superior" languages out there? Have you ever tried programming in Delphi's dialect of Pascal?

I program in a variety of languages. However, I became a Delphi convert when Delphi was first released. And, I still am a Delphi convert today and it is my tool of choice for Win32 programming.

As another post points out, Delphi is, and still remainds, a superior IDE, a very fast and optimizing compiler, a wide range of tools and components (VCL and CLX based) and decent. The "Delphi" language is merely the latest incarnation of Object Pascal. It is not Turbo Pascal -- it has evolved far beyond that.

The Delphi environment makes RAD programming possible with its compiler, debugger and visual editor symbiotically working together. Other tool developers (even MS) try to mimic the seemlessness of the environment and, for the most part, fail. MS went so far as to recruit the lead developer behind Delphi. .Net works because of that move.

Until just recently, Kylix broght the power of the Delphi to the Linux community. Unfortunately, it wasn't a success there. .Net, however, is proving to be a very lucrative venture and fit into the Delphi paradime. Borland now offers several languages targeting the .Net environment in Delphi 8/Delphi 2005. The weakness, in my opinion anyway, is that the class libraries are still base on WinForm. That makes it relatively difficult to port to Mono at this time. I hope we see a change there soon.

The bottom line is that Delphi is make resurgence because people see the advantages of such a development environment and the popularity and pervasiveness of .Net.

RD

Re:Languages die for a reason

[r2q2]

Languages don't die because technologly progresses. Languages die out because they prove to be too limited in what you could do with the language or the expressiveness in the language. Either that or the niche it filled before doesn't exist anymore. Languages that are truely effective although they might not be popular they still don't die (lisp for example).

Re:Languages die for a reason

[geg81]

You are naive if you think that C, C++, Java, or C# are "superior languages". Languages used commercially are basically going in circles and are still at the level of 1960's and 1970's technology.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[voodoo1man]

Throughout the years, we've seen many [programming] languages die out. It's a natural progression of technology.

This statement demonstrates not only a supreme ignorance of technological change, but of Darwin's ideas as well. Don't take it personally, though - this attitude is ingrained in most Slashdotters. If you didn't know, "survival of the fittest" and all the associated bullshit was actually an invention of Herbert Spencer, noted opportunist and pseudo-scientist, building on Darwin's idea of evolution (who correctly identified environmental fitness as the only criterion for evolutionary change). Read Stephen Jay Gould's The Lying Stones of Marrakech for an interesting take on the matter.

As far as technology goes, it's been shown time and again that there is no such thing as a deterministic progression of technology. Most technological change is motivated primarily by environmental factors (much like evolution, actually), and most environmental factors are motivated by political and sociological conditions. Several good books on the subject are Albert H. Teich's (ed.) Technology and the Future, and David F. Noble's Forces of Production. Noble makes a convincing argument in favor of re-visiting previously developed and alternative branches of technology, focusing on point-to-point and continuous numerically controlled automatic metalworking machinery as examples. Despite being developed several years later, being more technically complicated and backed by millions of US military dollars, after a decade of modest growth continuous-path N/C machines were still inferior to point-to-point machines in efficiency, and were quickly outsold by point-to-point machines when they were re-introduced to the market in 1960.

Lucky for (good) programmers, judging whether software technology is crap or not comes quite naturally, and such expensive trial-and-error market experiments shouldn't be necessary. As many people have pointed out, by many metrics Delphi is worthwhile technologically, and enables certain productivity advantages. The environmental factor is key here - witness yourself parroting the unfounded assumption that Delphi is somehow an ancient, inferior technology. I don't think you thought this up all by yourself, but rather this seems a more widespread notion in the IT industry. The question to ask is why is this so? I don't have a good answer.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Eravnrekaree]

One of my favourite sayings:

A feature that seems worthless to one person might be essential to another. Just because something seems to have no use to you does not mean that someone else doesnt have a use for it.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, a good number of people still speak derivatives of Latin: French, Italian, Spanish.

Besides, syllabic "efficiency" doesn't describe how German mashes together nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. to make new words... What is the real word for "gmbh"?

If it was just syllabic efficiency, we'd probably all need to learn Klingon.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[plover]

That's just a cheap shot. MFC has always sucked, and I mean badly.

No offense intended to Mike Blaszcak (one of the lead developers of MFC) as he made MFC tackle some pretty amazing things, but MFC's macro interface was horrible, self-inconsistent, and the documentation was extremely poor. I saw Mike at a conference once, and watched him whip out some clever MFC solution to answer an attendee's question. On one hand he acknowledged the poor quality of the documentation, then ripped the questioner a new one because he [paraphrasing here] "should have been looking at the definition of the macro, not reading an out-of-date manual" followed by "if you can't read the macro source, you shouldn't be programming."

I think at that time Mike was pretty typical of the heavy tech Microsofties. Brilliant, arrogant, socially awkward (at best), and intolerant of people who he felt weren't at his level. He navigated thru the code with the ease of the author (we all know what that's like) and demanded every chair in front of him contain either people at exactly his level, or those who should worship at the feet of the worthy. (Microsoft was wise to keep those guys locked up in Redmond, and to hire PR flacks to put on a happy public face.)

Re:Languages die for a reason

[llefler]

Keep in mind that Delphi 1 was pretty much Turbo Pascal 9 repackaged and a nice GUI development environment thrown on.

That's rather simplistic. The last version of TP was version 7. There were DOS and Win versions. Delphi might be considered a successor to TPW, but not only was the IDE a huge improvement, so was the VCL. Saying Delphi is 'version 9' discounts many of it's labor saving features. I couldn't imagine doing Win apps without the forms designer. And I've never had to write a message loop. (at least not in Delphi)

DOS, CRT, Graph, ect. aren't available in Delphi

That is because they were for DOS applications. Delphi is strictly Windows. SysUtils replaced the functions that were reasonable for a Win app. Sorry, but ClearScreen just doesn't port. And Sleep() is better than Delay() in a multitasking environment.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Teancum]

Yes, I will admit that it is a simplification to call Delphi to be the same as Turbo Pascal, but the point I was trying to make is that the core compiler is largely the same, with even the same bugs and quirky language details... clearly Delphi was at some point bootstraped from Turbo Pascal at some point in its lineage and the Delphi development team was comfortable with the Turbo Pascal IDE environment. To the point that Delphi still allows you to use the same keystroke commands from the TP IDE (that don't break compatability with Windows in general... some old control things don't work the same due to "standard" Windows keystroke sequences).

ClearScreen and GotoXY do make sense for a "console" application, and in that regard it is too bad that Borland didn't provide 32-bit compatable units that would be source compatable with some of the earlier Turbo Pascal programs.

BTW, I have written a message loop in Delphi (a rather unusual circumstance that was unique to that particular project), but on the whole it is the TApplication object that deals with the actual message loop. It is there, and if you have a Professional version of Delphi (with the source code), you can recompile with debug information the message loop and see down and dirty how the messages get parsed by the VCL environment. Actually it is quite facinating to watch by stepping through the code at that low level.

I can imagine how to do Win apps without a form designer, as I've done it, and yes it is a royal pain in the rear end. On the other hand, even when Delphi 1 was released it wasn't that novel of a concept. There were some good features, and frankly I think Borland "got it" with what the API for GUI environments should be like.... doing some significant improvements over Microsoft. The fact that there are "non-windowed" controls that work at all are quite amazing (where Delphi handles the window messaging directly rather than dealing with the Microsoft Windows messages... including rendering).

It is also real interesting to see how much of the Delphi interface has been adopted into Visual Studio... more than Microsoft will openly admit.

What a wacky statistics system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding up comments on boards? What if most of the say, ADA developers are DoD contractors and never post anything on boards because of security clearance? (never used ADA myself).

The rankings are ok by me though as long as they have Java ranked over C#

Visual Studio

[alnjmshntr]

besides the fact that it costs a lot, it's actually a damn good ide, don't think any developer can disagree with that. and the new (beer free) beta versions of visual studio express are pretty fine too.

Re:Visual Studio

[AndroidCat]

Like beer, you're only renting it. The beta versions are due to switch off in March or so. And they require another Gawd_Awful of space for .NET 2.0 beta. (Shades of VBRUNx00.EXE.)

Re:Visual Studio

[Dystopian Rebel]

it's actually a damn good ide, don't think any developer can disagree

Well, we can't have you strutting around all day thinking that!

Have you ever used a Borland IDE? I've used both Borland and Monoposoft and prefer Borland by far. Especially for UI development. All the properties of an object are easily accessible and the IDE's dialogs are nicely designed instead of being modal and unsizable.

I don't think any developer can disagree...

Re:Visual Studio

[Lucas Membrane]

I went to two presentations by traveling road shows about a year and a half back. The Borland guy using Delphi wrote all kinds of interesting apps in seconds. Never hit a problem, was able to handle any kind request from the audience (can you do this ...), etc, etc.

The Microsoft VS C# guy started about 15 minutes late, since he couldn't figure out how to increase the font size in his IDE so that the audience could read the screens that he was demoing. He gave up on that. So, we couldn't read his screen too well, but it was no loss. He didn't get very much to work. He did show us screen after screen of inscrutable WSDL automatically generated for us, but he never got it to do 1/10th as much as the Borland guy accomplished in roughly the same time.

Maybe it would be premature to buy Borland's product based on just those two demos, but you'd have to be religiously insane to buy Microsoft's on the same evidence.

Re:Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

it's actually a damn good ide, don't think any developer can disagree

I can't honestly say it's the worst IDE I've ever used (C++Builder wins that hands down, mostly because of its utterly abysmal text editor.)

Compared to Metrowerks' IDE's, though, it's incredibly slow, awkward, clumsy, crash happy, and everything I do seems to take a few extra steps. It does have much better Intellisense and Help integration, and it's the only way to go for MFC & ATL stuff that (realistically) requires a lot of automatic code generation. I won't mention the great VSS integration, because that POS just lost a few days worth of checkins again this morning (fortunately I do separate backups.)

Re:Visual Studio

[3terrabyte]

I agree.

And if it's good enough for Justin Frankel, it's good enough for me.

Re:Visual Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it with a passion, for some reason. Then again, I've only used it for ASP.NET, so I might have seen the worst part of it.

So, in short: Here I am, and I disagree.

Re:Visual Studio

[upsidedown_duck]

...you'd have to be religiously insane to buy Microsoft's on the same evidence.

How lucky for Microsoft that they have a religiously insane customer base! I saw a company make a Microsoft-only policy, which was followed by a year-and-a-half of sheer hell for the employees suffering under the new IT infrastructure, and I wonder, "How in the hell does Microsoft have any customers at all?"

On the smaller Sun section of the network, the admin had a machine dedicated to virus scanning all the e-mail sent to the Windows section. What a waste of a machine. There were always outages on the Windows side. Electronic time cards were a roll of the dice. The Windows support staff was huge. With that money pit of a network, I bet the management was proud of how much money they controlled, because no rational thinking person would be proud of such a kludge otherwise.

It has always been a bit sad that there are always superior alternatives that are never chosen to great consequence. Such is the foundation of Microsoft's success.

Re:Visual Studio

[llefler]

This seems to be normal for Borland presentations. They take them very seriously.

Several years ago a local VB users' group put together a VB/Delphi presentation. Borland sent David I, Microsoft sent a local C++ coder with a powerpoint presentation. I remember the first time I saw a database app put together with a dbGrid, a datasource, a TTable, and 30 seconds.

As impressive as those presentations are, you can go to BorCon and melt your brain with "I didn't know it could do that" kinds of things.

Re:Visual Studio

[alnjmshntr]

Well, we can't have you strutting around all day thinking that!

:)

I didn't say that Borland was better or worse, just that Visual Studio is "damn good", Borland may very well be better than "damn good".

But I'm intrigued, how do you figure that the properties of an object are *not* easily accessible in VS?

Re:Visual Studio

[alnjmshntr]

That's wierd, when I installed it the total download was about 70meg for C# and 2.0 fw. Which is not bad when you consider the install size of VS x.

(Shades of VBRUNx00.EXE.)

Shades of JVM?? What's your point?

Re:Visual Studio

[Dystopian Rebel]

You can ~get~ to what you need in DEVStudio. But the dialogs are badly designed and often not resizable. The damned thing is always getting in the way.

To see how Borland exposes properties for objects, try "test-driving" Delphi or C++ Builder.

SharpDevelop

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

This is the first I've heard of SharpDevelop.

Other than what I can find at their website, has anyone had practical experience creating and distributing an app using only SharpDevelop?

Re:SharpDevelop

[arethuza]

Yes, I've used it for over a year. It isn't nearly as slick as VS.NET but I find it to be pretty usable. When combined with the GUI debugger from the .Net SDK it makes a pretty decent development environment.

Re:SharpDevelop

[9thWave]

I used #Develop for a while and was impressed with how far it has come in the last year. It appears to be a very good development effort overall, although it is not as feature rich as VS.NET (or Eclipse, from which it seems to take its inspiration). The only issues I had with it was the tendency to change UI toolkits every couple of releases (I preferred the Magic library to whatever it is they are using now), and the lack of an integrated debugger. Of course, it is an open source, plugin based architecture, so I am sure contributers will be stepping up soon. As far as good free alternatives, you could do a lot worse than this one. They also have some very interesting documentation if you are interested in writing plugin-based apps in general.

Re:SharpDevelop

[Teancum]

I would say that SharpDevelop is one of the best Free-As-In-Beer environments for you to learn how to write software in C#. Download the ECMA docs for the specification and try to write a few programs, and it works out pretty well. Certainly much better than trying to write something with a text editor and trying to compile by command-line when everything else you may have is done through a GUI environment. Get the C# How-to books if you don't have access to them anyway.

I happen to be a Delphi developer as well, and my #1 complaint about Sharp Develop is that they use the Visual Studio environment as the model for how user interaction should take place. It isn't bad, but moving between Delphi and #Develop can be a bit of a paradyme shift that is uncomfortable. For those who are VS fans, it would be a much more familiar environment (like the windowing stuff and location of help files, etc.)

The GUI end is a little bit clunky, but it is getting better. The first time I tried #Develop the menu editor was so buggy that it crashed the package. It has been showing significant improvement over time, and is remarkably stable now for some fairly serious GUI development. They bootstrapped the development with Visual Studio, but I believe that #Develop is self-compiling now (the editor can be edited with itself).

The part of getting it to work with Mono is a big deal, and the only real reason that it doesn't self-compile in Mono is because Mono lacks the GUI support necessary to get it to work. This is being worked on, and with #Develop getting stable there is now a larger push to get it working in Mono on Windows (and yes, Linux too). It would be terrific if you could get true cross-platform development going for a GPL'ed GUI development environment.

Re:SharpDevelop

[anomalous cohort]

We use VS.Net but I took the liberty of trying out SharpDevelop with the solution to our flagship product. The solution is pretty big and fairly slow using VS.Net but it was really slow using SharpDevelop. It was so slow that it was unusable.

I tried SharpDevelop on a smaller, single project solution. It was definitely agravatingly slow but usable. It was still much slower than VS.Net

Re:SharpDevelop

[wizardNinja]

Sharp develop was the first and only IDE i use for .net programming. True, i am a college student, not known for having much money. And, add to the fact, i am a fairly new programmer (about 2.5 years now (some c++ , java, c#)). But, yeah...good for making windows applications fast and easy. Also there is a sharp develop linux port (not official) at Monodevlop.com http://www.monodevelop.com/ [monodevelop.com]. This port has started quite recently and uses GTK#. Screenshot to a sticky note app i made. http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp50.JPG 50% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] http://www.geocities.com/themanwiththechair/sticky noteapp100.JPG 100% transparency [geocities.com/themanwiththechair] ---- first post ever on /.

It's Pascal

[wiredog]

Which makes it harder to write bad code. PLus, it's Borland. Borland, IMHO, writes better compilers than MS, and better libraries too.

Re:It's Pascal

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel makes the best compiler for the usual suspects in languages (C, C++, Fortran).

Re:It's Pascal

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's worth noting that Borland is stagnating in the compiler side of their world: they've so far refused to embrace AMD64 and are concentrating all their development efforts on .NET.

The Win32 compiler has only received marginal development, and barely anything in the way of improved optimizations to try to bring it up to Intel's codegen standards.

I've made the move to VC++, and unless Borland suddenly reverses course and announces an AMD64 compiler I don't see any reason to look back.

(As a sign of how little they listen to their customers, take a look at this report in their public bug/feature tracking system:

http://qc.borland.com/wc/wc.exe/details?reportid=7 324 (sign-up required, it's free)

That's the highest rated report in their system, and they refuse to act on it.)

Re:It's Pascal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice... but do I get support with that?

Ow, that hurts.

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who bought Delphi 8 got a minor reaming. All the fixes and improvements (and hopefully the damned documentation) that should have been in 8 get dropped into "2005" after less than a year.

Releases that need a later mega-patch are bad enough without the mega-patch being the next ver$ion.

It's not a language

[wiredog]

it's an IDE. Delphi uses Pascal, but the compiler can also handle C++.

Re:It's not a language

[cexshun]

I am aware of this. I apologize for a mis-use of terminology. I often equate IDE/programming environments with the word language. My apologies and I will turn in my geek card for shredding.

Re:It's not a language

[rikennedy]

The original Delphi through Delphi 4 used a language called Object Pascal. With the release of Delphi 5, the name of the language was changed to Delphi.

No Delphi compiler understands C++, although C++ Builder can compile Delphi code and Delphi supports compiler directives for exporting C++ headers for use by C++ Builder. Delphi 2005, the newest Delphi version, does not include C++ Builder; it includes C# Builder.

In the past, Delphi has included C++ Builder as a separate install. It was usually the previous release version, so Delphi 5 came with C++ Builder 4.

Delphi 2005 is three products in one. It handles Win32 development in the Delphi lanaguage, it handles .Net development in the Delphi language, and it handles .Net development in the C# language. It's all in a single IDE, not separate products. To my knowledge, Borland still uses Microsoft's C# compiler for that portion of the product.

Re:It's not a language

[Lord Crc]

it's an IDE. Delphi uses Pascal

The official story is that the language Delphi-the-ide used was always called Delphi. However that fact wasn't communicated to the people who wrote the documentation and similar. Many still prefer to call it Object Pascal though.

This has been discussed at lengths in the newsgroups.

Re:It's not a language

[Anonymous Coward]

> It handles Win32 development in the Delphi lanaguage, it handles .Net development in the Delphi language, and it handles .Net development in the C# language (...)

Just a tiny correction: it handles .Net in the Delphi language also.

And it allows you to support Win32 / .Net with the same sources if you use the VCL framework (not to speak of Win32 and Linux using the CLX framework).

Can anyone actually get sharpdevelop to run?

[Idimmu Xul]

I've just installed SharpDeveop to have a tinker and when it runs I am getting a shit load of errors based around a missing zip file. No wonder people would prefer to use Delphi, if it actually works!

Re:Can anyone actually get sharpdevelop to run?

[fiffilinus]

You might consider a) consulting the #develop forum

- a nice place, or

b) run the postinstalltasks.bat coming with #develop

Re:Can anyone actually get sharpdevelop to run?

[Idimmu Xul]

b)run the postinstalltasks.bat coming with #develop

cheers, that fixed it! thanks a lot

Re:Can anyone actually get sharpdevelop to run?

[Your Pal Dave]

This can be caused by having an old version of Windows Scripting Host installed. You should have 5.6, or manually run the batch file as suggested by fiffilinus.

Re:Can anyone actually get sharpdevelop to run?

[thebra]

Works great on my w2k box. I've been using it for 6 months and have had few problems with it.

Delphi big in the UK

[MrBandersnatch]

Actually Delphi is still quite a popular in the UK
(http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JS/JobResults.asp?ref erre r=none&SiteID=2&MarketID=14&IndustryID=1&Mode=&Sea rch=Ind&PageNum=1&Industry=IT+%26+Internet&RankByT itle=1&JobType1=&PostedDays=7&Keywords=delphi&Sort =1&Locations=)

It was SO FAR ahead of the field when it first came out, I actually did my first non-unix based programming on it and was very impressed. Sadly like most Borland products, while being technically superior to their rival offerings they have just never got the market share they deserved.

Re:Delphi big in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

There's certainly no doubt about you comment. I certainly agree that Borland IDE's are far superior to anything Microsoft has to offer. Not to mention how nice VCL and CLX are to use. And that if you wish to use C++ you can use Borland C++ Builder and using the same exact VCL/CLX libraries with the same syntax and not have to relearn a new component library.

Novell is porting SharpDevelop

[bflong]

It's interesting to note that Novell is porting SharpDevelop to Mono.
See http://www.monodevelop.com/

Re:Novell is porting SharpDevelop

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell isn't porting anything. MonoDevelop is a 100% community effort with no support from Novell.

Poor ol' Delphi...

[ElGuapoGolf]

I used Delphi in my first programming job out of College. Initially I chuckled over the fact that it was Pascal, but eventually grew to learn and love Object Pascal.

It wasn't so much the language that made it great, it was the way the IDE, Debugger and compiler all played so nicely together. And yes, a C++ version was available as well. It was all of the ease of Visual Basic (and let's be honest, more) but without the bullshit of being stuck with some horrible language and the pain of trying to manage runtime distribution. Delphi compiled all dependencies into your binary, if you so wished. No more dll hell, at least, as far as your Delphi applications went.

It also had the relatively unheard of concept (at least in the windows world, at that time) of direct database access. You didn't have to mess with ODBC. You could write your corporate app for in-house use, and just let them change parameters in configuration screen, use them to connect to a database yourself. No freakin ODBC control panel applet to mess with. Nirvana, I tell you.

The VCL was another nice Borland item. It was their Visual Component Library (I think) and it was basically a wrapper around the standard Win32 controls/forms. Worked very well, and even made it over to linux with Kylix.

Unfortunately, Borland subscribed to the commodore school of marketing. The best place to see Borland adverts was in Borland targeted publications. The choir was already converted, but they never figured that out. That combined with typical MSFT tactics (hire away their best developers, give away competing products for a song) reduced Borland to a shell of it's former self. Now they exist by pumping out JBuilder updates every 8 months and living off that revenue gravy train.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[Infinityis]

(based on "How Come" by D12)

How come, we don't even code no more,
And you don't even work no more
We don't barely use your stuff at all
and I don't even feel the same love when we debug no more
And I heard it through Slashdot..we ain't even beefin now
After all the years we ignored you...ain't no way no how
This software can't be true
We developers...ain't a IDE changed...unless its you!

Ok...so there's a my song. Where do I get my free competing software?

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[skintigh2]

That was both intelligent and insightful, are you sure you have the right web site? You're supposed to be posting things like "pascal is the sux0r, msft told me so."

Anyway, I'm a hardware guy that programs for fun and for work when he has to. I've used c, c++, java, ada, pascal, delphi, scheme, asm, matlab, VHDL, etc. When I first used Delphi in 1995 it's IDE was not just beyond anything I had ever used before, that 1995 IDE is STILL beyond the latest C++ IDE Microsoft released to date.

In addition, Pascal-based languages are inherently more intuitive that any C-based language, and thus more readable. The simplest example I can give is something I do all the time: logic operations.

Say you want to write:
(a or b) and (c nor d) xor (e nand f)

In Pascal/Delphi you write
(a or b) and (c nor d) xor (e nand f)

In C you write ...

that was a trick: unless you are a memorizing champion, before you can write this in c you go to your book shelf and you look up "xor" in the index, but you won't see it. So then you look up "logic" but that's not their either, so you start guessing. You're pretty sure you used an xor last year and it was something with a pipe, or mayme a percentage symbol, so you start at the beginning of the index and start to flip through all the giberish combinations that look like swears from the sunday comics. Eventually you find the answer.

So, now you write: ...

HA! Tricked you again! In Pascal the compiler is smart enough to compile the code without having it's hand held the entire time by forcing the user to write crap like prototypes. In this example, I never specified whether I wanted to write logical or bitwise comparisons. Pascal/Delphi is smart enough to figure it out on its own. C++ is lost without you holding it's hand in the scary darkness.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[ElGuapoGolf]

Actually, I'll disagree slightly.. :)

For me the best version of Delphi was V2. The Win16 version was buggy when you really pushed it hard. But Delphi 2.... wow... Even when Delphi 5 was out, I'd use that on a build box and do all my coding with Delphi2. Which is a very nice testament to the backwards compatibility of the language.. yeah, I'm sure I was missing out on all sorts of nice Delphi5 specific features, but 2 was just that good. And even in that early of a version, it was still light years ahead of anything else.

Kylix wasn't bad, but they did screw the pooch on it. Making it x86 specific was okay in the Win32 world, but it was never going to cut it in the Linux world. If they had made a portable compiler or at least announced they were going to and released an x86 compiler first, I think they could have owned the corporate development space. Instead, they lost out to Java. But hey... JBuilder isn't all that bad. :)

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[tomstdenis]

---
Say you want to write:
(a or b) and (c nor d) xor (e nand f)

In Pascal/Delphi you write
(a or b) and (c nor d) xor (e nand f)
---

I don't recall nor, nand being operators in Turbo Pascal 6 or 7.

Oh that's right. Borland "updates" the language with every release. Unlike say C which is a standard that largely hasn't changed much since the 80s [yes, there are many nitpicking details that have changed but pretty much any C89/C90 code will compile nowadays].

So when I write "C" programs I'm not writing "Delphi 2005" programs or whatever...

Also "hand holding to write prototypes"... well then you suck as a software developer. Pascal units have implementation and interface sections. The "interface" section DEFINES THE PROTOTYPES FOR THE FUNCTIONS.

So if you write all of your code in one huge source file without breaking up the code... well you can't develop code properly.

Tom

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[ElGuapoGolf]

I would just like to point out that Turbo Pascal != Delphi, unless I'm very mistaken.

Delphi was Object Pascal... Turbo Pascal wasn't.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[b1t r0t]

Delphi was Object Pascal... Turbo Pascal wasn't.

I guess I was imagining TP 6.5, then.

If so, it was a bad dream, because Borland never came out with Object Pascal as it was originally defined, and had already been implemented by Apple. What they came up with should really have been called Pascal++, because it was Pascal with C++ style objects. Why? Because their heap code sucked chocolate salty balls at the time, and could never have handled the kind of memory management that heap-only objects would have required.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[b1t r0t]

I meant TP 5.5. I got a lot of mileage out of TP 5.0, that's for sure.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[shutdown -p now]

Turbo Pascal was Object Pascal since version 5. Delphi, starting with version 2, changed the language significantly, adding an entire new object model which 'class' keyword, properties, and other nifty things (but preserving the old one which used the 'object' keyword). What is there now is no longer the original Object Pascal, it's a Borland's dialect of it.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[tgrigsby]

Back when I worked for DHL using BP7, I got a hold of the beta version of Delphi 1.0. It was code named "Wasabi", the EXE was, IIRC, AppBuilder, and it came on six diskettes. It had a tiny subset of the VCL palette, and no real way to talk to a database.

And I was in love.

I contracted with a company to move their DOS apps to Delphi after it came out officially. We started out using Delphi 1, but quickly moved to 2 when it was released. Skipped version 3, went to 4, then 5. Awesome stuff.

I agree completely with your statement about the "Commodore School of Marketing." Mirco$oft did hire some of their architects away, but that's not what killed Borland. It was the marketing.

That and the completely stupid attempt to tie their development products to their database products. The BDE would have been fine if they'd supported a decent way to talk to ODBC. I was among many who tried desperately to get Delphi to talk to something other than Paradox. Interbase may have been cool, but none of my clients wanted it.

Then Peter Blair came up with Titan, and it was a new day. I could at least get Delphi to talk to Btrieve. It was fast as hell, and the guys I did the port for used Btrieve exclusively. Pretty soon I had tools written that generated DDLs on the fly so we could alter the schema without recompiling the EXE. Suh-weet.

Later, when we needed to talk to SQL Server and Oracle, we used ODBCExpress. Once again, fast as hell, and we didn't have to worry about the BDE. It was the best of both worlds. ADO components were an add-on in version 5 and standard in version 6. Bigger and better.

The components available for every concievable purpose have swelled into the millions, the compiler is devastatingly fast -- I'm currently using version 7 -- and it now supports .NET. Delphi 2005 has new extensions to the IDE, component libraries, and the language itself that will be as revolutionary as the original Delphi.

And yet, I'll bet they continue to struggle. Why? Easy. How did you first hear of Delphi 2005? I found out because I went on their site looking for a utility to autogen documentation. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known. When I was looking for a job a few months ago, I would mention Delphi to a recruiter and they would actually laugh out loud. "Come on!" they'd say, "Delphi is dead. Do you have Visual Basic and .NET?" What does that say about Borland? Have they learned from their mistakes? It's time to start publicly throwing down the gauntlet. Either you believe in your product or you don't.

Borland, grow a spine and advertise like you mean it.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[Anonymous Coward]

Borland never came out with Object Pascal as it was originally defined, and had already been implemented by Apple. What they came up with should really have been called Pascal++, because it was Pascal with C++ style objects. Why? Because their heap code sucked chocolate salty balls at the time, and could never have handled the kind of memory management that heap-only objects would have required.

Er... are you trolling, or are you just thick? Delphi's objects ARE heap-only. There is no way to allocate a Delphi object on the stack.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[skintigh2]

Oh, I totally forgot to make fun of you for confusing TP and Delphi, and for assuming you can't write multiple source files in any language without the use of prototypes. But I do suck.

However, I will gladly pounce on you for mentioning unit headers and comparing them to prototypes... because the headers are automatically written by the IDE!!! Thank you for proving my point for me!

PS, can't anyone solve my riddle in C? I'll let you build operators that are missing from C. Can you mush them together, like !& for nand, or do you have to use ()s?

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[ghjm]

Just to check, I loaded up an old Turbo Pascal 2.0 project that I happen to have kicking around. It's not a trivial project - it's a utility to help with the mechanical aspects of designing a vehicle for Steve Jackson Games "Car Wars" system. Basically, from a full screen text window, you pick and choose items for your car, and the system calculates weight, cost and space. Once you finish, you can print a vehicle sheet just like the one from the Car Wars rule book.

It was developed on a CP/M system in 1983, in Turbo Pascal 2.0. A few years ago, for reasons of nostalgia, I had it transferred from the (miraculously still readable) 8" floppies on which it had been saved.

Because my CP/M system had a weird ASCII terminal with proprietary control codes, I never used any of the built-in terminal control - I just used functions of my own, with a boolean that specified whether to use my-weird-terminal or VT100 code sets. Back when I converted it, I switched it over to use the Borland CRT unit, which was trivially easy.

I just tried it in Delphi 2005. I hit a couple compiler errors because of bad coding in my original source (I had a habit of mixing signed and unsigned integers as if they were the same thing, which type checking in the modern compiler now catches). And the CRT unit doesn't exist any more, so I had to download some random replacement from a third party. Total elapsed time: 45 minutes.

So the net damage over 20+ years is: I have to fix my broken integers (which I admit is my own fault in the first place), and I have to find a tty control unit because people don't really use ttys any more (but the exact unit I need is the first hit on my first Google search).

Show me a C application with that good a track record through 20 years and two platform switches (CP/M-->DOS-->Windows, or three if you count Win95/98 and Win2k/XP separately).

If you were writing in C in 1983, you were doing it on Unix and using "classic" K&R syntax. There's no way that code will run with just a tweak or two under, say, Visual C++.

-Graham

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[Hard_Code]

Just to check, I loaded up an old Turbo Pascal 2.0 project that I happen to have kicking around. It's not a trivial project - it's a utility to help with the mechanical aspects of designing a vehicle for Steve Jackson Games "Car Wars" system. Basically, from a full screen text window, you pick and choose items for your car, and the system calculates weight, cost and space. Once you finish, you can print a vehicle sheet just like the one from the Car Wars rule book.

Get out! I guess I wasn't the only one writing a utility in turbo pascal to help design vehicles for "Car Wars". :D

At the time I was learning pascal through distance learning (essentially a BBS, but also through nascent email), and although I tried to explain what I was doing to my instructor, she didn't understand.

BOOTLEGGER REVERSE

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[ntruick]

Before I begin, let me state that I am a reformed Delphi bigot. I am only such because one can only bang their head against a wall in confusion for only so long. I have been using Delphi since version 1, and have one of the most complete (and useful) Delphi libraries of any Delphi developer I have known. My copy of "Secrets of Delphi 2" is still my most valued tome in my collection, followed closely by Konopka's second "Developing Custom Delphi Components" book. I earned my certification for Delphi 5 in 2001, and attended seven consecutive conferences from 1996 through 2002.

I attended the Philadelphia Borland conference in 1999, and was in the computer lab filling out an online survey regarding my conference and Borland experience. The question asked me for three areas where I felt that Borland could show some improvement. My answer: Marketing, marketing, and marketing. Not an unfamiliar complaint for Borland-philes tired of MS dominance in the corporate application development arena.

A staffer who worked in R&D was looking over my shoulder at my response, and asked me to enlighten him on my response to that question. That discussion lasted 45 minutes. I vented everything from my appreciation for the technological superiority that Borland products provide compared to MS products, to the ongoing frustration of having to inform IT managers that rumors of Borland's demise are vastly exaggerated. Borland has constantly and consistently placed the burden on the developer to be advocates for their products, while providing no voice of their own. The vast majority of IT management have limited exposure to the technical details of competing products, so they focus on colorful ads and glitzy white papers. Borland's attitude can almost be described as "snobbish," choosing not to lower themselves to advertising games or boorish attacks at MS technology. Meanwhile, a frustrated Delphi community feels abandoned and cast adrift, due to the great expense of money, resources, and TIME spent becoming experts of our craft using their tools. By the way, that staffer I was telling you about? It was Simon Thornhill, who later became the Vice President in charge of RAD Products (including Delphi), and is now the Vice President and General Manager in charge of .NET Solutions. He was very attentive during our discussion, and for the next couple of conferences always took time to speak to me if our paths crossed.

When Microsoft gave Borland that $125 million payoff (which I believe was to keep Borland afloat so that the DOJ wouldn't consider them a monopoly), the Delphi developer community saw that as an opportunity for Borland to finally be able to complete with MS on a level playing field. Delphi (version 7) versus Visual Studio .NET (version 1)...do you want to risk investing in new, untested technology or put your trust in a product that has been around for more than six years and seven iterations? Once again, Borland not only dropped the ball, but kicked it out of bounds, down the block, and into the mulcher.

Borland will be around for as long as Microsoft needs them. Whenever the heat picks up from the DOJ, Microsoft will "buy some tech" from Borland just to keep them afloat. For more than fifteen years, the story has been that Microsoft will buy Borland. It will never happen, because, right now, Borland is Microsoft's only competitor, and, to a community's continued frustration, it's not even a competition.

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[kamileon]

I found out because I went on their site looking for a utility to autogen documentation.

This one? http://cc.borland.com/codecentral/ccweb.exe/listin g?id=22743

(Just curious...)

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true! See http://www.undu.com/Articles/010327a.html

Re:Poor ol' Delphi...

[b1t r0t]

Where did I say Delphi's objects were stack-based? I was talking about its ancestor, TP 5.5. It was quite literally C++ objects implemented with a Pascal syntax. That way they didn't have to support heavy use of heap objects, because, as I said, TP 5.5's heap management sucked. If you randomly allocated and freed a lot of small blocks in random order, it would run out of memory just from the free list alone. Not to mention that it ran in x86 Real Mode, so nothing could be more than 65521 bytes (65536 - 15) long.

Delphi has always been under-rated

[gUmbi]

I'm sure that there is going to be a bunch of Delphi bashing posts but Delphi was one of the first truly great object-oriented development environments (the other might be IBM's VisualAge). It allowed for rapid layout of forms with the power of OO components. And the language, although not loved by many, is consistent and just as powerful as Java. The component library was also second to none.

Re:Delphi has always been under-rated

[Tablizer]

It allowed for rapid layout of forms with the power of OO components.

What is the difference between "OO components" and non-OO components? VB/Delphi style is to have events and attributes closely associated with a given widget, but I am not sure doing this by putting everything in a single class per widget is the best or only way to do that.

The associations needed for widgets, attributes, and events is a fairly complex structure that could be built with multiple classes/objects, some kind of internal structure of pointers, a nimble database, etc. Ideally the IDE user doesn't have to know or care how it is implementated (although exposing the internal structure may simplify sticky debugging and roll-your-own IDE add-ons).

Re:Delphi has always been under-rated

[timts]

c# is doing that now, well, java still cant do that smoothly. but IMHO, it's really convenient to do so, with the help of mouse, create the layout and everything, then double click or choose the events to handle, bang, you are done with the GUI part, now it's only the real handling for the content, instead of spending hours and hours to massage the GUI and the final lay out still doesnot look right.
I've had that pain with old MFC windows application and java application.
but back in the old days, I enjoyed the delphi so far, still look pascal, only if they didnot invent java or c# for the money's sake, pascal could have been the best thing since sliced bread.
well, that's just me, somebody even wanted to hire me as I had experience in delphi, some kind of rare case in USA, maybe. I settled for a job in c++, then java, now c#. I dont care too much about language, but a convenient IDE and good library classes does make a hell lot of difference.

Re:Delphi has always been under-rated

[geg81]

Delphi was one of the first truly great object-oriented development environments

Delphi was a good programming environment, but it came out in 1995. Apple had a powerful visual Pascal-based OO programming environment a decade earlier. And both Delphi and Apple's environments paled in comparison to the Smalltalk environments available since the early 1980's.

Re:Delphi has always been under-rated

[voodoo1man]

IBM's VisualAge comes in a Smalltalk environment, and it was also popular around the same time as Delphi. It continues to befuddle me to this day what kind of industry-wide marketing dysfunction caused products like Delphi and VisualAge to go from prominent market positions to nowhere in the span of a few years.

Re:Delphi has always been under-rated

[0D0A]

It has nothing to do with marketing or product quality, and everything to do with trust. In my experience IT managers for a fortune 500 company have to sell thier development platform to executives, VPs, or a committee of some sort. Which almost always has 0 developer input and ends up being completely driven by business oriented people with little or no direct IT/Software experience. These people might be presented with 2 choices: Borland blah or Microsoft blah. Now, imagine you are the president domestic development for ACME Widgets, and you have to decide what platform to base your entire company's software and financial future on. "Who is Borland anyway? - never heard of them. Oh, Microsoft, Hmm. Yeah, they make great stuff. Lets use them."
Unless you have some IT people that can really argue the benefits (and there are plenty), it's going to be MS every time.

Delphi 2005 - A Winner

[Anonymous Coward]

Delphi 2005 is really good value for money. For the same price as previous Delphi releases you get C#Builder, Delphi for Win32 and Delphi for .NET all in the same IDE. And Borland have enhanced the Win32 language too, they haven't just plugged it into the new IDE. So they show that they do actually care about the rest of us that do not believe that .NET really delivers that much benefit (and quite a few negatives actually) to end users.

Unlike Microsoft, Borland doesn't believe in pushing one platform. They have no specific platform agenda. When you buy Borland tools you know you're getting something that preserves your existing investments well- be they multiple platforms or simply your existing code base. For example, it is much easier to move code from Delphi for Win32 to Delphi for .NET than VB6 to VB.NET.

That, and all the enhancements to the IDE such as refactoring, sync-edit, and MDA developement make Delphi 2005 a winner!

Re:Delphi 2005 - A Winner

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unlike Microsoft, Borland doesn't believe in pushing one platform. They have no specific platform agenda. When you buy Borland tools you know you're getting something that preserves your existing investments well- be they multiple platforms or simply your existing code base."

Not any more, Borland become ms.borland and is pushing Microsoft technology. They quit supporting Kylix/Linux and switched to .NET.

Re:Delphi 2005 - A Winner

[justins]

Unlike Microsoft, Borland doesn't believe in pushing one platform.

And as their assfucked support of Kylix proves, your statement is particularly true if that one platform happens to be Linux.

Re:Delphi 2005 - A Winner

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with all the progress that Linux has made it has not cracked the desktop market. Kylix and Delphi have always been perceived as client-side tools. In reality, they're strong on the server-side as well. However, the Kylix market was the desktop because of this perception. Linux really has a much bigger presence on the server side than the client side. So.... Kylix probably hasn't been that successful so far. However, Kylix is still a great dev tool. Sure, it needs a little maintenance work, but is there really a better RAD IDE on Linux? I haven't seen it yet.

Borland is still working on Kylix- they made an announcement about it at the recent BorCon. So it isn't time to give up on Kylix just yet.

Re:Delphi 2005 - A Winner

[Anonymous Coward]

Delphi 2005 is really good value for money. For the same price as previous Delphi releases you get C#Builder, Delphi for Win32 and Delphi for .NET all in the same IDE.

That's not what what my boss said. He pointed out that we're only doing win32 programs, and we just got Delphi 7.

Obligatory coffee talk...

[Weaselmancer]

Microsoft Visual Studio is neither visual, nor is it a studio.

Discuss.

Re:Obligatory coffee talk...

[Infinityis]

Microsoft is neither micro, nor is it soft.

Mod up.

Re:Obligatory coffee talk...

[halivar]

Microsoft Visual Studio is neither visual, nor is it a studio.

It could also be said that Microsoft Works doesn't, and neither does Microsoft Excel. Microsoft does give easy Access, though, because it's hard to lock your Windows.

Perhaps Microsoft is being more metaphysical? "Try Visualizing a Studio, and you will be there." Sort of a cosmic humanistic what-you-feel-makes-it-real type of software value-add delivery.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go puke now.

Re:Obligatory coffee talk...

[oldwarrior]

Java is not a country, nor a beverage, nor a movement - it's a copyrighted trademark.

market persistence

[gargonia]

I think the real question is whether or not this resurgence of Delphi will continue once the "new" has worn off of Delphi 2005. I think some people are trying it out right now, but may move back to other IDEs after a while.

Re:market persistence

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Bah, Vim is the only IDE I need..

Re:market persistence

[gargonia]

See what I mean! It's already starting! ;^)

Borland and its IDEs

[Space_Soldier]

One thing that annoys me about Borland is that they have a bunch of IDEs that overlap. They should unite all of them and have a single IDE similar to how Microsoft has Visual Studio that supports many languages. If you were to buy a bunch of this IDEs to support multiple programmers who want to use their religious language, the price will be higher than Visual Studio, which comes with the same languages except Pascal and Sun's Java.

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Infinityis]

Beware the IDEs of March...

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in Version 6 MS Visual Studio was "just a bunch of IDEs" as well. It was just a package of MSVB, MSVC++ and some other goodies. Not one IDE supporting many languages.
Did this change with .NET?

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to do a bit of reseach.

Here allow me to help : http://www.borland.com/delphi

The Delphi 2005 IDE is one IDE with the capability to create Delphi applications (win 32 and .NET), C#.NET, ASP.NET, VB.NET, Console Apps, CPL apps, etc, etc, etc. No need to launch more than one development IDE, even if you want multiple projects in multiple languages all open at once.

All that and more (already mentioned was the code-refactoring and sync-edit)

Not to mention the ease in deploying a .NET application (Frontpage Extensions, FTP or XCopy) Visual Studio only allows FP Extentions.

My 2 cents.

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Anonymous Coward]

The IDE for Visual Studio .NET is the common IDE for VB.NET, C# and VC++. Visual SourceSafe and Visual FoxPro are still separate products and IDEs.

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[DigitalTechnic]

They did, that's what Delphi 2005 is. It's Borland Development Sudio 3 aka BDS 3. It uses same IDE core as Delphi 8 and C# Builder now and combined.

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Space_Soldier]

No, I do not need to do more reasearch. I'm aware aware what Delphi 2005 supports. What about C++Builder, Mobile Studio, Kylix, JBuilder, other Java IDEs, CodeWright, etc.? Like I said, they have a ton of IDEs with overlaping functionality.

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding.

Just take a look at what's included with Delphi 2005 and you'll get an idea of where their priorities are--

• Delphi [.NET Framework]
  
• C# Builder [.NET Framework]
  
• Delphi [Win32]

I think it's obvious from that package where Borland is heading-- right into .NET-land with Microsoft.

And it seemed to me like they were bent on killing off their native code compilers. It was only after people complained, loudly, about being forced into .NET that Borland finally decided to include a marginally updated native compiler as a token.

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.... Borland intended Delphi 8 to be a united IDE with the Win32 compiler as well. They just ran out of time. If you look back a few years they were hinting about a united IDE back then. Borland has always intended to enhance the Win32 compiler. After all, Delphi _IS_ built with their Win32 compiler. So they _NEED_ and _USE_ it as much as their customers do. It's akin to Microsoft enhancing their C++ compiler. To Microsoft the C++ compiler is their core compiler. They don't care about VB really. What's VB written in? C++. That says it all!

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[llefler]

If you were to buy a bunch of this IDEs to support multiple programmers who want to use their religious language...

A non issue, unless you are a moron as a manager. Everybody writes in the same language. You can't have App A written in C++, App B written in Java, and App C written in Delphi. Because then when you have to add/replace programmers, you need someone fluent in all three. So you pick a language, and anyone who won't use it can go find another job.

The only practical exceptions are platform issues. Mainframe, PC, embedded.

Why should open source accept .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?
Acceptance of .NET by open source and therefore linux distributions is what will determine the future of the ".NET" platform.

If ".NET" becomes part of linux distributions then it will really mean "compile once run everywhere" and eventually even Sun and OSX will be forced to provide it. If OTOH .NET is available only in MS windows then it will go down because developers will prefer more portable languages.

Why should open source help MS by accepting .NET?

Re:Why should open source accept .NET

[arose]

A true compile once, run everywhere system helps everyone except Microsoft. Don't expect it to actually work that way. OTOH Parrot is beeing worked on too.

Very trustworthy

[Guillermito]

A survey based on a Google search referred on Slashdot. How trustworthy.

Re:Very trustworthy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that would make it about 2x more accurate than a Slashdot poll.

They should port it to BSD

[Cro Magnon]

They have something in common, if you believe Netcraft.

Delphi is my secret weapon

[Local Loop]

I don't know (or care) about .NET, but if you are writng a windows program Delphi is staggeringly more efficient to develop in than C++. You can also use it to do Windows API stuff efficiently, meaning you can write most of your custom controls in delphi itself without have to resort to C++.

I just wish they could get their act together and make better documentation.

I actually used C++ for many years before finding out about Delphi, but now that I've switched there is no way I would ever go back.

Of course, more efficient development is not in the best interests of most programmers, because they are motivated to drag out projects as long as possible for job security reasons. But when you are doing fixed-bid contracts, or even if you just care about your reputation, Delphi is the way to go.

New web cartoon: Jendini.com

Re:Delphi is my secret weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

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/*HMMM......Sound s like someone is using frontpage, own up to it, that MS whacky guiland is too addictive!*/

Re:Delphi is my secret weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

MM is for MacroMedia Dreamweaver, although those js functions are frequently copied manually all over the place.

Re:Delphi is my secret weapon

[StrawberryFrog]

I don't know (or care) about .NET, but if you are writng a windows program

If you are writing windows programs, sooner or later you will need to know and care about .NET. The good news is that it's not that hard.

I can see why

[Keick]

My company just is now switching back to Delphi for our tools development, after a year or so stint of using C#. I personally love C#, but I've been using Delphi since version 1, on Win 3.11.

Just for kicks, I compiled our latest C# development project, weighing in at less that 10K lines. 30 seconds on my 750MHz. Our last Delphi project, about 70K lines, build in 3 seconds.

Microsofts C# is over an order of magnitude slower. Between that, and the relatively lacking availability of components for .net, it was an easy decision for us to switch back.

Re:I can see why

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you compiled an interpreted language, eh?

Lack of components for Vs.net vs. Delphi?! That's the most ridiculous claim I've ever heard.

How I do it

[oexeo]

I don't need any of this IDE crap; I send assembly instructions directly to the kernel using an oscillator connected to a PS2 cable

Re:How I do it

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is this flamebait? some of you mods have issues

Re:How I do it

[Anonymous Coward]

He meant to mod it +1 Yorkshire Men, but he had a glitch on the oscillator connected to his PS2 cable.

Re:How I do it

[Anonymous Coward]

PS2 or PS/2? and why PS/2 if so?

-- Kehvarl AC/CD

Re:How I do it

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, this comment should be scored 5. I'm still laughing at it.

Price and licensing killed Delphi

[Junks Jerzey]

Delphi is some kick-ass technology. It's a solid language, it compiles like *lightning* (essentially instaneous since ~1997), zero link times, and the provided libraries are great. Maybe not greater than .net, mind you, but an excellent alternative that was there many years earlier.

Delphi used to be the darling of the small developer and hobbyist programmer. Not only did you get all of the above benefits, but the standard edition was only $70. An absolutely brilliant alternative to Visual C++ and Visual Basic.

But then Borland quietly upped the price and changed the licensing. It used to be Standard for ~$70, Professional for ~$500, Enterprise for ~$1000. Then they changed it so the cheapest edition you could use in a commercial environment was $1000+. The only other version is Personal, around $100, but it is strictly license-bound to be used for learning the language and writing applications that other people don't use. Borland essentially made a one-line change to the license that forced programmers to jump to a product that costs 10x more. The result? Delphi web-sites and tutorials and hobbyist-written programs in Delphi dropped like a rock. Too bad, Borland.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[Lucas Membrane]

You may have noticed that all the other vendors of affordable language vendors have also disappeared. Gone. (Watcom, Symantec, JPI, Utah, Marshall, Oregon, Stoney Brook, ...) Used to be that you could stop at BDalton software and pick up the language of the week for $69. My first copy of Borland's Pascal was $49. And they gave free support.

Making money in that business with competition from Microsoft on one side and free software on the other must be so difficult. I never try to second-guess the pricing decisions of these firms. Microsoft can decide to lose money on langauages, because languages make the OS business possible. They give away dotnet to anyone who will commit to develop products for it. Last I heard they had over 100 people creating and maintaining one of their language products.

Do the math. It takes 10 to 200 people to keep one of these full-reatured IDE products in good shape. You need about $500k of revenue each year per employee to make this work. It's a dismal business. If selling to corporations at high prices is the only way Borland can see, I'm not anyone to say that I know better.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[b1t r0t]

But then Borland quietly upped the price and changed the licensing.

They also never seemed to grasp the concept of bundling trial versions into books. I never saw a book+CD about Delphi that had anything resembling a trial version of Delphi. This meant you already had to have a copy just to try the examples from the book.

The main reason I never used Delphi was that I was pretty much all-Mac at the time, but the #2 reason was that the price of entry was too steep for just trying it out. Pascal was never the problem, because I used that on the Mac for years, and Turbo Pascal used a UCSD dialect similar to what the Mac used.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[michaelas]

I agree 100%. I am not sure they would have done any better charging less, but my impression is they locked too many hobbiest out.

After all, that's how linux started.

They should have licensed it based on third party add-ins. For example. $100 buys you the full version of Delphi. All components, all database clases, etc.

You want to connect to Starbase? (their version of CVS) That's an extra $400. Oh you want data modeling, that's $500, etc.

This way even the hobbiest can pump out quality apps that can be used up and down the Delphi chain. Current the stanard version of Delphi is so stripped that vendors have to ship multiple versions of their product for each version of Delphi. ...Michael...

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[approximation]

Gone. (Watcom, Symantec, JPI, Utah, Marshall, Oregon, Stoney Brook, ...)

Most of those companies did command line or text IDE compilers for DOS. Just doing a DOS compiler wasn't too bad in terms of effort since DOS is a simple OS and the languages 20 years ago tended to be simpler. Today you have to add in Windows API support, a new version of Windows every couple of years, OOP, evolving language standards, and an IDE which is a major Windows application itself. The difficulty level has one through the roof.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[killjoe]

Borland seems to be getting away from being a language vendor. They are now into being a tools vendor since the purchase of several development tool companies. They have a nice stack of tools if you want to drink the cool aid but it will cost you about 3K.

Maybe they will open source Deplhi (the language). That would be pretty cool. They sell the IDE not the language. Since their IDE works with C#, C/C++ neither of which they own anyway why not "give away the language".

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[Teancum]

Borland did make a half-hearted attempt at a "Trial Version" of Delphi a while back. Basically a stripped down version that had some size constraint and other annoying features, but it would compile full source code. I Believe it was a trial version of Delphi 3.

It certainly could have been thrown onto a book, but Borland had the restrictions on it so tight that you could only download it from their website, and even then you felt like you were signing away your firstborn to the devil after going through the survey questions to get it.

I agree: Borland messed up a very successful business model they had with even their earlier compilers and should have marketed their products better.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[StrawberryFrog]

Delphi is some kick-ass technology.

Or rather, it was when it was released about 10 years ago. Since then, a lot has happened to other languages, and not much to Delphi. Java (and C#) have garbage collection and metadata in a simpler type system. Perl and python have other advantages.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[Junks Jerzey]

Or rather, it was when it was released about 10 years ago. Since then, a lot has happened to other languages, and not much to Delphi. Java (and C#) have garbage collection and metadata in a simpler type system. Perl and python have other advantages.

You're comparing apples and oranges. Delphi is essentially a low-level language. It's higher-level than C, but it's not in the same class as C# and Python. In terms of a language that pulls few tricks behind your back, but still gives you close-to-the-machine power and cleanliness, Delphi is spectacularly well-designed. Delphi compiles on the order of 100x faster than C++, plus doesn't have perceptible link times, for example. That's enough reason to make it a viable alternative to C++ for Windows-oriented projects.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[StrawberryFrog]

You're comparing apples and oranges

I disagree. Delphi is mostly used for writing database connected and/or GUI applications for business or personal use. I should know, I've written enough of them in Delphi.
Java and C# are aimed squarely at this market (apples vs. apples), and frankly they do it better.

I'm not saying that Delphi is badly designed, far from it, but this is only to be expected given that these languages came later to the party, with the benefit of more hindsight and a cleaner slate.

Delphi is an extremenly cluttered language - stuff from Turbo Pascal 3 still compiles, with keywords like "forward" and "absolute" that are not much used nowadays. Not to mention Delphi's byzantine memory management and type system, which contains the major different categories of:
simple stack-based var,
pointer,
string,
object ref,
interface ref,
object owned and managed by a TComponent

Clearly this system was not designed like that, it got that way over a long time. 15+ major versions of time.

That's enough reason to make it a viable alternative to C++ for Windows-oriented projects.

Whilst I agree, that's not the point. C++ is a an open standard. If you've going to venture away from that, and need a tool for "Windows-oriented projects", typically connecting a GUI to a database, then Delphi has been superceded.

Re:Price and licensing killed Delphi

[ynohoo]

The freebie I got was Delphi 6 Personal Edition (you may still find it hiding on their ftp site) - missing a bunch of features from the commercial edition (mostly DB stuff), but still damned useful. Yes you have to re-register everytime you load it onto a new machine, but thats just an email to their support dept.

I'd like to freeware the tools I've created with it, but my employers may think they own a piece :(

Still the best damn RAD IDE I've worked with!

Delphi great but....

[dogen]

Delphi has always been great but.. Vendor Lockin and Platform lockin - yek. And they definately need GC to stay contemporary.

As a Unix/Linux guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

who has also written Windows programs under Delphi for years, I can state that Delphi is the most versatile RAD oriented to desktop apps ever made.
Its winning features are the excellent GUI builder and the extremely well designed VCL library. Whoever felt their feet glued together by the ugly design of GTK or that plethora of K-dependencies knows what I mean. Kylix, the Linux port, unfortunately was too slow to accomplish any serious tasks other than writing forms for DB queries.

Please note that I'm not referring to the languages used: the point is not whether Pascal is better than C or C++, but, given a general purpose middle level programming language, the Delphi approach to desktop programming and its library and objects implementation are the ones to learn from.

The sad truth is that a working native port of the Delphi paradigm under Linux cannot be written without throwing away most current desktop widgets toolkits.

Re:As a Unix/Linux guy...

[IamTheRealMike]

Oh come on. Rose tinted glasses anybody? Delphi was great, and I used it for years, but let's not be blind to its faults. In many areas the GTK+/Glade/[Python|GtkMM] combination beats the snot out of it:

• Proper containment based layout. Later in its life Delphi got "anchors" but these never worked well for me, and were hard to get right.
• Great stock artwork: sorry, the Delphi stock icons and artwork was incredibly limited, and what was there sucked balls. You can spot a Delphi app miles off by its Windows 3.1 era graphics.
• Event handling model. Delphi events were simply fancy function pointers, but you could only connect one method/function to an event. In GTK+ (and Qt) you have more flexible signals, which allow multiple connections.
• Language limitations. Yes, Object Pascal had a lot of upsides, for instance its properties system, but it lacked support for things like templates and AFAIK they were never added. Delphi required you to use Pascal. GTK+ supports nearly every language going, even obscure ones like Haskell or Lisp. About the only one it doesn't support AFAIK is Visual Basic.
• IDE limitations. Delphi worked great as long as you only used Delphi. Forget about trying to use emacs to write Object Pascal code, it just wasn't happening. The IDE did a lot of magic behind the scenes to avoid ugly generated code and it worked well, but tied you to the Delphi editing component which was, and still is, a crude childs toy compared to emacs. About the only feature it has which emacs lacks is great symbolic completion, and they're even working on adding that now.
• COM integration was ropey. I dunno about you but I often wasted a great deal of time trying to figure out WTF was going on underneath the hood. Delphis abstractions and wizards were well designed but if they messed up you were SOL.
• Online help. This worked well in earlier versions and progressively got worse with later versions in Delphi. GTK+ has rather poor online help as well, but it's all available on the web and is indexed by Google, and DevHelp can be used if you want an interactive indexer/help viewer.

GTK+ has a ton of annoying quirks but if I really try and remember Delphi well as opposed to simply recalling the best bits, I remember stupid stuff about the VCL too. GTK+ is also more portable, Kylix/Qt never worked well.

Re:As a Unix/Linux guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soo.... You just don't know how to do it, so it's bad? All the things you described as being faults simply aren't. Use the tool for more then a few days and you'd see this.

Re:As a Unix/Linux guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Great stock artwork
Strange point. No problem changing this. There are masses of icons on the net.
Is there anything as fully featured as the free TBX-components for Delphi in GTK. You can do all kind of docked panels menus and toolbars as seen in Visual Studio or Office in your app. For free!

>Event handling model
granted, but I very very seldom ran into this problem. (.Net Delphi allows multiple handlers btw)

>IDE limitations
Comparing the Delphi IDE with emacs is ridiculous, if you compare then with Eclipse.

>Forget about trying to use emacs to write Object >Pascal code, it just wasn't happening
That's no problem at all. Its at least a easy as writing with GTK GUI apps, rather ways easier.
VCL is a fully object oriented framework. You can do everything in code.
You could even make the form-files by hand (they can be text-only).

>COM integration was ropey
GTK ???

>Language limitations
You can use it with C++.
Or any language when using .Net
Qt has also language-limitations.
This limitation is more a plus because it makes it fit like a glove.
I prefer that to patchwork solutions were you need to use many different tools to get your code done. Delphi can be extended by Delphi-code which is very comfortable.

>Online help
It is by far better than what you get in nearly all free programming tools. It is even translated to your native language (a great plus).
Even described how to extend the IDE.

>online help as well, but it's all available on >the web and is indexed by Google
Well that definitely is not a problem for Delphi.
There are pdf-files on borlands website and many many websites explaining various subjects of programming specific to Delphi.

GTK has some overhead compared to Qt or VCL and I pretty much dislike all its quirks and addmitedly ugly appearance.
It is surely not a more productive alternative.
If I am developping a program I want it to look professional and I very much dislike all the quirks then. Qt has many too, I found myself fixing them all the time.

I am not saying Delphi is perfect, but if I compare to other tools, the issues are way less important.

Delphi gives you total control when you need it which is much harder to get in GTK or Qt.
Try to implement a Office like toolbar docking and so on using GTK. But one that really works.

Is there hope...

[Garabito]

...for Kylix renaissance as well ?

Re:Is there hope...

[shutdown -p now]

Let's hope not.

Re:Is there hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope not.

You misspelled: "and pray that it is so"

Just thought you should know.

--Kehvarl AC/CD

Delphi

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely loved Delphi for many years, I've been using it since version 2.0 (which in fact, was the first version for a 32 bits OS).

Now, there are a few problems:

1) Borland sucks at marketing, seriously.
Their products have always deserved a lot more marketshare than they managed to acquire.
They haven't fought for mindshare, and since C is the rule in Unix and most OSes (Pascal being almost the enemy) there's few places where Pascal feels at home.

2) The language has been showing its age when compared to languages such as Ruby and Python.
Performance is good, we love efficiency, but whilst silicon and iron keep obeying Moore's law, our focus increasingly shifts to paying attention on productivity, getting the work done easier, faster, reliably, cleanly.
Dynamic languages excel there... Delphi, Java, C# and the likes have been catching up... but only catching up, not leading the trend.

3) Borland is a relatively small company compared to Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and even Novell.
Not a year passes without red alarms touting Microsoft will be buying Borland.
Python and Ruby are opensource, close to be reaching maturity and in a year or so, comparable performance to the old schoool languages.
Borland has an awful, awful, awful track record at backing up their projects.
Upgrades are infrequent and scarce.
They've dropped dBASE, Paradox, Firebird and Kylix hasn't seen a decent upgrade in almost 3 years now, and Delphi 8 was released only for the .NET framework (not Delphi win32, which is by large the user base that literally feeds Borland)
That's lukewarm support, they don't believe firmly in their products.

I hate to say this, but look at Microsoft... they are still supporting Visual Foxpro even today.
Even Microsoft, the world champion of consumer anger instigation.

Delphi was great. Delphi may be catching up, but facing fierce competition from all sides.
The Borland company, with its CEO and marketing department plainly suck.

I'm not a nostalgic guy, I keep maintaining some apps in Delphi, but for new projects I'm starting to consider Ruby for the next years when it reaches its full maturity.

Re:Delphi

[3terrabyte]

"I hate to say this, but look at Microsoft... they are still supporting Visual Foxpro even today."

Barely. I'm sure the team that made Clippy was bigger than the Foxpro team. Foxpro is also not even in the new schema, The Common Object, or whatever the hell they called it when they did their rewrite back in 7.0 when C## & .NET came in, etc.

I agree with what you're saying though. Borland has long had amazing products. But, even when changing their name to Inprise (heh) they couldn't pull ahead. I wouldn't blame their poor marketing, as much as I would blame the endless billions in the bank MS has.

Re:Delphi

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Destructor Destroy; Virtual;
No destructors ???

PascalScript?

[Tablizer]

I'm using it. :-) And I've evaluated a lot of other IDEs. The nice thing about Delphi is that it supports the code-to-the-metal kind of developer and the RAD developer. You have the power and the ease-of-use, and that's not just a marketing blurb.

Maybe if they create PascalScript and merge it into OOPascal we can have both. If you don't supply a type, then a scriptish dynamic variable/object is assumed. VB allowed this (although they did it in a kind of ugly way).

Anyhow, one nice thing about Pascal's syntax is that the type and scope declarations comes *after* the variable declaration. The variable name is more important than the type, and thus easier to spot if it comes before type declarations. The giant list of types and keywords preceding the variable name has always bothered me in C-derived languages, such as Java.

I hope the next generation of languages learns this lesson and incorporates it. (Although some people prefer the types before for whatever reason, I should point out.)

Borland and .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear that Borland's infatuation w/ .NET may be the mistake that finally ruins them in the desktop market. They've taken Microsoft's bait and wasted huge amounts of effort producing tools targeting a platform that has no relevance on the desktop. I've spent the last year repeatedly convincing our management that we don't want to turn out .NET versions because:

- It's immature, and a rapidly moving target;
- It eliminates our download market (or limits it to those willing to download 20+ MB of .NET in addition to our "hefty" 3-4MB products);
- .NET apps are s-l-o-w starting up: NO advantage over Javax except the spiffy, Windows-native GUI layer;
- The VS .NET IDE pretty much sucks except for being so well integrated (but it's still nowhere near as good as any Borland IDE.) There are much better IDE's, of course, but not on Windows and certainly not from Microsoft;
- It is and always will be Windows only (Mono et. al. have too much legal vulnerability to use for commercial products, and have nowhere near the features and polish needed for commercial Mac apps. Linux... well, no one _pays_ for Linux apps anyway, and we all got families.)

Re:Borland and .NET

[AndroidCat]

.NET does take a huge download/install, and might require keeping multiple versions around like VBRUNx00.EXE. (I'm hoping that when .NET 2.0 ships, that it replaces .NET 1.1 unlike the beta. Maybe.)

However, it's not so bad if you're the second .NET app that someone installs. :^P

Re:Borland and .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

well, no one _pays_ for Linux apps anyway, and we all got families.)

Learning the free software basics:

Software industry is about services, not products. That's why IBM is betting on linux for its server family.

And that's why ultimately MS will succumb to free software unless they change their business orientation (see "if you chinese people go for linux, _someone_ is gonna sue you..." - Steve Ballmer).

Re:Borland and .NET

[kupci]

- .NET apps are s-l-o-w starting up: NO advantage over Javax except the spiffy, Windows-native GUI layer;

But with SWT Java has the Windows-native GUI look also. Also check out Eclipse. In fact, Borland is using Eclipse for TogetherJ perhaps they will use it for Delphi too...

Re:Borland and .NET

[PizzaFace]

Borland isn't infatuated with .NET. Borland just pointed Delphi toward .NET because no one was buying Delphi's Linux version (Kylix) and Microsoft had essentially deprecated the Win32 API in favor of .NET. Since Microsoft was taking Windows to .NET, Borland had to take Delphi there if it wanted to remain current on the Windows platform. And besides, new features and new APIs can sell compiler upgrades. Moreover, Borland thought that .NET's promise of language neutrality could help potential customers overcome their fear of buying a non-Microsoft language tool. (Indeed, maybe that's part of why Delphi sales are up.)

Borland's other big language tool, JBuilder, is its cross-platform offering. Delphi, on the other hand, is designated to stay close to native Windows APIs, and according to Microsoft's roadmap, that means .NET.

Me, I'm still using Delphi to develop Win32 apps, and I've saved a few thousand bucks by not upgrading Delphi since version 5. Meanwhile, Borland and the early adopters of .NET are working out the kinks, so when I eventually need to develop .NET apps, Delphi will be ready for me. I can't complain about that.

Delphidiary.com

[SpaceKow]

If anyone is interested http://delphidiary.com is a nice place to search for code and anything about Delphi.

Re:Delphidiary.com

[ynohoo]

well it might have been once, but now it cant find its script directory :( But there's plenty of info to be found searching the delphi newsfroups tho...

Still missing the boat

[eric.t.f.bat]

I've been a Delphi programmer since version 1.0 (or earlier, if you consider Turbo Pascal to be its ancestor). I hate the way Borland has turned into a Pointy Haired company. They used to be the tech-driven company that all true geeks loved; they sold a blindingly fast, full-featured Pascal compiler for fifty bucks when Micro$oft was futzing around with a slow old piece of crap for ten times the price. But then they kicked out their geeks and turned into gods-know-what: a pack of clueless managers who changed the company's name, gave up on marketing its best products, bought a whole lot of useless add-on software that they can't even describe let alone sell, and fell into a quagmire from which they'll never return.

And now: the fifty-buck Pascal company is selling Delphi, complete with brand-new features that have been around in Python for years ("for...in"? good grief!), for three thousand dollars???!!!

Borland: Used To Be Good; Now Couldn't Sell Raw Meat To Wolves

Re:Still missing the boat

[DigitalTechnic]

for...in was introduced because of for each in .NET So Borland added it for Win32 version too. The reason in was used is so another keyword did not have to be created. in is already a reserved keyword in Delphi so it was sane to do so. As for your bitching about $3000. Now you're talking apples & oranges. You're a single person, you have no business looking at a product geared at Enterprise business. Second, if you looka the price of VS.NET Architect to Delphi 2005 Architect. Tell me the difference. At least Delphi 2k5 offers more languages worth using and tools. VS.NET on the other hand...

Language Loyalty

[Undefined Tag]

What is it about some development languages that causes such devout loyalty? I'm a huge fan of Delphi, and have been for some time. If you're selling shrink-wrapped software, Java and VB are way too difficult to support. Ditto for the various "database development systems". C++ is too costly in terms of development headaches (unless you're doing high-end games or some such). If you're developing shrink-wrapped user-targetted software (ala Quicken or some such), Delphi is definitely the way to go. This isn't to say I have anything against other languages/development environments - even VB has its place.

Re:Language Loyalty

[Anonymous Coward]

even VB has its place

Yes, I can tear out pages of the manual to wipe my ass with.

Delphi is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that set Turbo Pascal and Delphi apart was the "fastest" compiler.
Now they shell/port to Microsoft's compiler in the background.
The fact still is that Delphi enthusiasts were more concerned with getting updates to bugs in Delphi 7 for win32 than for the .Net functionality of Delphi 8. Most who wanted to use .Net used Visual Studio.
And Kylix was discontinued because Borland got no sales. The business model was flawed.
So...Delphi is dead...

Re:Delphi is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

but lukilly there is http://lazarus.freepascal.org

after years of naysaying and false starts they have finally pulled together a usable delphi clone

It appears entry level is now 399

[Shivetya]

and for that they can keep it.

I wrote them a nice long LETTER about their pricing before finally giving up and switching to MS products for PC development.

For around a 100 bucks I get a great editor, debugger, and good libraries to start from with MS products. Why Borland would not provide the entry level product with an install wizard I will never understand, you had to go up to the professional package to get that functionality.

I love Pascal, it was my first hobby language and I moved from the TP3.0 all the way to Delphi 4 before giving up as Borland priced themselves out of the market.

The enthusist (sp) made Borland yet they turned their back on us. They now "bind" together disparate functions to force the user to buy crap they don't need for the stuff they do. I guess the found a surefire way to reduce their market.

Long live Pascal and Delphi, DIE DIE DIE Borland.

Oh, as for compilers, the guy who wrote C# was from Borland's Delphi group and in many ways it shows. C# is highly type restrictive.

Re:It appears entry level is now 399

[DarkEdgeX]

$399 is the upgrade price. $999 is the entry level for anything that you want to deploy. $99 gets you the tricycle edition with so many limitations that it'd pass for a demo from any other company.

Re:It appears entry level is now 399

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if you want to buy VC++, VC#, VB.NET. If you want just one language and the IDE: VC# $109

Re:It appears entry level is now 399

[Ronin Developer]

Actually, Borland did try the $99 personal version a couple of years ago. Like Kylix, it wasn't a profitable revenue stream and so it was dropped for something more lucrative - .Net

With Kylix, I think they erred by not doing a true native port and, instead, used WINE. Their compiler is very good. And, they tried to create (and succeeded) a cross platform library (CLX) that would run on both Win32 and Linux (they used Qt). And, they offered Kylix Personal for free. But, the end product (the IDE) was just too slow.

So, in the end, the market just wasn't there for the product. I have to wonder if they got a whiff of the SCO lawsuit and realized that until IT is resolved, corporations may be less willing to invest money in development tools for Linux.

RD

Re:It appears entry level is now 399

[DarkEdgeX]

I was talking about Delphi. I know that you can buy the individual Microsoft products on the cheap and that was my point-- with that $109 copy of VC# you listed you can do commercial development. With the $99 edition of Delphi you can't do commercial development. Not even donationware.

Borland is the wrong answer altogether if you're a hobbyist.

.NET was designed by Anders.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many people know that Anders Heljbeg was "hired away" from Borland to Microsoft as the chief architect of .NET. While its true that traditionally MS offerings were never as good as Borland offerings, they fixed all that by hiring all the brains away from Borland.

I dont know if I am remembering correctly, but didnt MS hire 30 Borland Employees over 18 months, and Borland sued over it? At any rate, Delphi and Object Pascal are still great. I wonder to this day why Java's beans specification has no syntax elements like OP's Properties keyword. Oh well.

DODB.

maybe you forgot what REALLY happened to Delphi?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised nobody remembers.

Here's a blast from the past for you then.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-279561.htm

IIRC, soon after all their programmers left for MS, Borland announced a "realignment," developing for AS/400's instead.

Some of you are trying to make Delphi's fate out to be due to some lack of quality, or perhaps due to a better product on MS's part. Sorry, but no. It was just foul play as usual.

I just wish they'd

[advocate_one]

keep Kylix up to date with Delphi and not let it wither...

Better yet, why have Kylix, when you could just have Delphi with a Linux runtime to support the environment.

Reaching for the light switch

[MarkedMan]

I used Delphi for a number of years. With it, we created really useful, truly OO design, really beautiful stuff that substantially simplified everything. As an example, we designed a GUI for industrial ink jet printers. (These printers resemble the 24 pin dot matrix printers of two decades ago in print quality, but can print at 750 ft/min from 1 inch away on the bottom of an aluminum soda can.) They have all kinds of weirdness such as text can only be 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 or 24 dots high, and vertical position must "snap" to the next available slot. Dates, serial counters and so forth are done with special control codes. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, these are strange rangers. We made message objects with field sub-objects. When these were handed to the On-screen display stuff, they created and drew themselves with special bolderization and colors for the date (and other) fields. When they were handed to the printer, they formatted themselves appropriately and chatted merrily away through an assigned serial port.
I can hear you all saying that you can do that with any OO language, but all I can say was that everything in Delphi (or rather, most everything) just felt logical and right. I never felt I was shoe-horning or forcing things. Have you ever gone into a room and the light switch is exactly where you put out your hand, the window latch turns in the way you expect it, the desk is just the right height and you reach down to adjust the chair and your hand falls exactly on the lever? That's what Delphi felt like. God, I miss it.
As for C or C++, god-as-my-witness, C WAS MEANT AS A HIGHER LEVEL ABSTRACTION FOR ASSEMBLER! The idea of taking a wonderful, elegant assembler-abstraction language and writing a word processor in it just gives me the screaming-nightmares. It's like building a mechanical clock out of legos; amazing when done once, masochistic when done repeatedly.

Re:Reaching for the light switch

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear !

Another ex Delphi-er here. Missing the old girl myself. Im a C/C++ and java coder and spend 5 years with Deplhi also. One of the best class libs ever written. Nothing compares because everything is as you say just where it should be.

To compare with, say, the java libs... they cant even get a goddamn date class right ??!! What the hell is up with Date(now becoming deprcated... but painfully slowly), Calandar(which is arkward to use) and of course then the sql time stuff is all seperate classes... why for gods sake. In Delphi you had good old TDateTime and that applied to a Date/Time for getting the current timeto putting a timestamp in a DB. Come back Delphi !

Re:Reaching for the light switch

[the quick brown fox]

I personally think the design of Java's DateTime/Calendar is widely misunderstood and highly underrated.

Java's DateTime represents an unambiguous instant in time. Delphi's TDateTime doesn't, as it has no information about timezones. This is, to me, a serious omission (and one that Microsoft's .NET DateTime class shares).

The design of Java's DateTime/Calendar was clearly meant to accomodate other calendars--while Gregorian may be what 99.99% of the programming world needs today, it's just like Sun to try for 99.99999%. You may not agree with the inconvenience it causes to those who just want to work with dates using Gregorian, but at least recognize that there is a flexibility/ease-of-use tradeoff equation here. You could take an instant in time (DateTime), manipulate it with a GregorianCalendar, then pass it off to a LunarCalendar (if you have one) and manipulate it some more.

Delphi is Fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a programmer for years and learned Pascal for the AP test way back then. Since then, I have coded in about every known language, well maybe not. But I always seem to come back to Delphi. My code compiles small, makes sense, works, and is fast. Need I say more. C, C++ suck, too obscure, Java is the same as C, and VB -DLL hell- need I say more. For those of you looking for somthing to do, give Delphi a spin and you will not go back. One more thing... There are tons of nice eastern block delphi programmers that write incredible VCL libraries. They have excellent support, cost effective and also fun to code. TRY IT!

Stats that show Delphi is not surging ahead

[StrawberryFrog]

Delphi revival? Are you sure? The UK job market stats are as follows:

C# : still ramping up - here
Java: Recovered well in the last year - here

Delphi - flat as a pancake. Much smaller market, and has failed to recover when the others did, which means it is losing market share to them - here

Re:maybe you forgot what REALLY happened to Delphi

[Space_Soldier]

This is what happens when you see employees as robots in the cubicle. If you want your employees to stay put, even if the competitor will pay more money, make your employees interact with each other. Make them all feel like a part of a big family. Make them feel needed. Make them feel like army budies feel. They won't trade those bonds for a little more $.

I suck, got it

[skintigh2]

So, if I think that typing something twice when it only needs to be typed once is bad, then I suck. Personally, I prefer to leave brainless, repetitive tasks to computers because I hear they are good at that stuff, but then again I suck. Sometimes I even use them to calculate things, or use floating point instead of using fixed point in assembly, or make fire without use of flint nor steal, but that's probably because I suck.

Re:I suck, got it

[roadrunnerro]

Besides the fact the there is a Code Explorer thingy where you can just declare the method (more than one thingy actually - and that's not even counting ModelMaker) there is a shortcut (Ctrl-Shift-C)that expands the declarations you write in the interface part into functions (with begin... end too). This has been in there for ages - as other very useful stuff...

In closing: yes you suck - learn to use the IDE before complaining repetitively like a brainless automaton... <g,d,r>

Supporting Delphi programs are expensive

[nyc_paladin]

The problem I face is that there is not enough good delphi developers out there for a fair market price. We have a consultant that built a program completely in Delphi. Unfortunantely, he wants $200/HR to do anything. Finding someone else is difficult and training internal staff is impossible. I can't find a decent delphi class to speak of. I'm not a huge microsoft development fan, but there are more people who know how to use it and I can get my money's worth. The kicker is that our auditors want us to get rid of Delphi because of the difficulty it is to find good people for support. I looked online and I can see that there are many benefits that Delphi has over VB.NET, C#, etc. But for me those benefits don't outweigh the fact that if I cannot support it then it's a liability. Just my two cents from experience

Re:Supporting Delphi programs are expensive

[MrBandersnatch]

Heh thats so funny. Totally agree.

Back when I left Uni I had 2 years (academic) development experience with Delphi and was HUGELY fanatical about it as a development environment. Could I get a job using it? NO!!

A couple of years later I got a position as "lead developer" at a small start-up (1 other developer heh). I jumped at using C++ Builder for development since it was so close to Delphi in so many ways. Spent 2 years developing with it (and it was great apart from all those little bugs that Borland would take ages to fix). Then the other developer left and could we get ANYONE with more than casual experience with C++ Builder/Delphi? NO!!! And we were offering WAY over market rates.

THEN the company folded and with 2 years C++ builder experience under my belt I found myself TOTALLY out of the job market because 99% of the C++ jobs out there were for VC++ or Unix and the fact that I didnt know (and to be honest didnt WANT to know) MFC meant I hardly ever made it past the HR/Agency desks.

Today, I find myself in a lead position for a start-up again and I would LOVE to return to using Borland tools for so many reasons....but I have a wife and kids to feed, and while technically I know Borland STILL produce a superior RAD tool; my job doesnt pay me enough to risk spending a year+ retraining again after it finishes.

I can justify .Net and/or OS/Lamp solutions career wise and technically...Borland is just too much of a personal risk and a potential liability to the company in the cost of hiring/training additional developers. Such a pity that it was once THE tool of choice for many small development houses :(

Re:Supporting Delphi programs are expensive

[vanners]

Are you kidding me? I've got 8 years worth of solid Delphi experience and I'd work for half that! There must be a real shortage of Delphi programmers where you are - but its not like that everywhere. If you have a constant need, it may be worth looking further afield for tallent and bring them in or telecommute. As for my 2c worth on Delphi - The IDE is easy and intuitive, the library is rich, the speed is great for both development and execution, the debugger is direct and easy to understand and the deployment is easy. If there is a problem in some minds because it is Pascal based then wake up! Results should mean more than heritage, especially to the bottom line.

Re:Supporting Delphi programs are expensive

[websvcsmgr]

If you are looking for delphi talent for less than $200/hr, see www.microdatabase.com.

Re:Supporting Delphi programs are expensive

[AtheM]

I've had almost the same experience. Now I'm an independent LAMP developer. Yesterday I had a potential windows client database project come my way. I spent last night researching architectural alternatives. I hate to admit it, but it seems like C# .NET is the best alternative for the client. wxPython w/Boa just doesn't measure up, and who knows if Delphi will continue to be supported by Borland in the long run. M$ has the monopoly, and I feel completely trapped into using C# and .NET. Ugh!!!

Poxy download Manager

[blackpaw]

Tried to downlaod the 250mb demo of 2005 and what do I find ?

"Borland is providing a download manager on all HTTP downloads in order to improve your download experience"

What a load of bollocks. I can't use my own perfectly good download manager to schedule a download for later tonight now ! we don't have the bandwidth to do this during the work day. And the stupid java applet crashed Firefox. I had to kill the process before doing any more browsing.

Improve my down load experience my ass - all its done is create a pain in the ass and remove a perfectly ok functionality that existed previously. Its a classic example of borland beauracracy.

Re:Poxy download Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

wget ftp://ftpd.borland.com/download/delphi/Delphi_2005 _Trial/Delphi2005ArchitectTrial.exe

Re:Poxy download Manager

[blackpaw]

Thanks !

shameless plug

[hsoft]

You don't need to pay 200$/hour to have an *awesome* delphi developer at your service :).

$999 for a professional license ?

[GreggBert]

I guess the good old days of that $49.95 Turbo Pascal are long gone. Yeah, I know it's not the same thing but I really wish someone would put out good, commercial, no-nonsense development environments at a very reasonable price again like back in Phillipe Kahn's days at Borland.
At those prices, a fledgling developer could afford to get their feet wet in fringe platforms like Prolog, C, C++, Pascal, etc. Even Utah COBOL (at $19.95) was worth a look at those prices when mainframe software houses like CA and IBM were charging very big bucks for thier compilers and environments.

Please do not lecture me on open source alternatives. I love open source like a fat kid loves cake but what I'd really like to see is a commercial vendor bring their prices back to earth and win over some new programming fans along the way. More specifically, someone other that Micro$oft.

greece?

[the_non_geek]

Whats this? Glue sniffing prophets?

You must be new here...

[truth_revealed]

Your sane view of reality is not welcome on Slashdot. You must repeat only slight variations of what the others are saying.

Re:Supporting Delphi programs are expensive: NOT

[CyberBeach]

Amazing facts - from this branch of the thread we learn two things:

1 - It is impossible to find and hire Delphi programmers.

2 - it is impossible to get a job if you are a Delphi programmer.

Hmmmm... if only you had each known each other back then, eh?

killer app???

[torrents]

but it's probably still too little to late for borland

Unmanaged Code

[dameatrius]

Pointers are available in C# and C++.Net

OK be honest now...

[jbuilder]

Dale Fuller, is that you?? :)

Re:OK be honest now...

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! What makes your comment funny is that Dale Fuller probably doesn't really care about Delphi. I get the impression that the current Borland execs love the Java side of the business because it delivers their marketing promises. However, Delphi is still the mainstay business. It has always had a loyal following.

I saw a recent interview where Dale Fuller talked about Delphi 10 as if it was the next release in development, and back then Delphi 9 (now called Delphi 2005) was in development. I guess version 10 could be in R&D labs back then (a few months back) but it just looked odd based on what the public knew at the time. I think he was thinking about JBuilder 10 (called "X"). ;-)

The TIOBE index is broken

[onlyconnect]

I don't think you should take this index seriously. The guy explains his method, which is to search the web and newsgroups for references. He excludes "tv" in an effort to focus on software programming. He then gives a huge weighting to newsgroups, which I assume is further bolstered by the fact that there are websites out there which simply represent newsgroup content. So it's a (dubious) index of which languages are most discussed, nothing more, nothing less. The bit that is objectionable is that the index presents itself as: "The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors" which is complete rubbish. Tim

Been using it since '86

[KlausBreuer]

Yes, in 1986 I first got into contact with 'Turbo Pascal'. And Turbo it was, with integrated debugger (showed you the line where your error was - in the editor!), graphics support, LOGO add-on - and dirt cheap.

I switched to them, and never went back. Followed them through Borland Pascal into Delphi, and still love it.
Every time I see people use the MS compilers, I'm surprised. Slooooow. Stupid. Lots of irritating edges and meat hooks.
Delphi ist just screamingly fast (I rebuild my entire app - well over 80.000 lines - in a few seconds), tight, exceptionally good, and it's used in Europe quite a lot. Heck, they even made a Linux version: Kylix.

The problem Borland has is their Sales & PR Dept. Always been like that. Try visiting their site (http://www.borland.com) and try to guess what they are producing. Managers? Yuppie-toys? Expensive consultants?
You'd never believe that they make anything useful at all, judging from their pages.

Maybe not a revival, but an improvement

[delphigreg]

I've been running a free Delphi jobs website, http://www.delphiworld.com/ since 1997. Starting in 1999 I've noticed a steady decline in both the number of jobs listed and visitors to the website.

However, numbers have gone up this past year (more jobs, more visitors). This isn't due to any particular webmastering action on my part (I don't advertise--- its there for the community to use or not, as they wish). Wouldn't exactly call this upswing in activity a revival, but at least a few more companies are hiring and there are still Delphi developers looking for work.

Re:Supporting Delphi programs are expensive: NOT

[shane_rimmer]

I am a Delphi programmer, and I am willing to consider any offers. :)

Go to Brazil

[The MESMERIC]

Delphi is ever so big there.
And you will get top rates of $4 per hour
yee-haa !!

Commodore School of Marketing

[plover]

[ Setting: ordinary classroom, whiteboards on front walls, clock over teacher's head, etc. There is a TEACHER standing at the front of the room. ]

TEACHER

Hi, welcome to the Commodore School of Marketing. This is Marketing 101. Have any of you ever heard of the 'Amiga'? [ a STUDENT raises his hand ] Oh, you have? OK, you're in the wrong room, you need to go back to admissions building to get your schedule sorted out.

[ STUDENT gathers his notebooks and leaves. ]

All right, class, first we're going to go over some Commodore marketing basics. Can someone identify this food in front of me?

STUDENT [ raises hand ]

Sushi?

TEACHER

That's close, but this is the Commodore School of Marketing. You must learn to call it "raw cold dead fish." Next, we have this food here. Anyone want to give it a try?

STUDENT

Cheese.

TEACHER

Good, but what kind of cheese is it?

STUDENT

Parmesan?

TEACHER

No, we call this "cheese that smells like other people's feet." OK, can someone identify this plant?

STUDENT

That's a rose.

TEACHER

Oh, dear, I'm afraid you're just not picking up on the Commodore school of marketing. This is a "sharp scratching prickly-stem bush." Let's try a different approach, shall we? [ TEACHER fiddles with a keyboard and mouse ] Can someone identify this program on this computer screen?

STUDENT [ wincing in expectation of the backlash ]

Is that an I.D.E?
[ TEACHER remains silent ]
A "development studio?" An editor?
[ a chorus of STUDENTs call out suggestions ]
"Visual developer"
"WYSIWIG GUI generator"
"turboPascal"
"Borland Delphi"

[ TEACHER loudly shushes the class ]

The first rule about Borland products is, "We don't talk about Borland products"

WordStar-like keybindings?

[mirabilos]

Although they are no longer documented, I
accidentally hit ^Qc in Borland C++ 5 or so
while hacking (at work), and it took me to
the end of the file. So they still worked.

Do these still work in modern Delphi?

For anyone who wants a simple, free text
editor for Unices (and DOS and Win and...)
which has got these keybindings, can optio-
nally do syntax highlighting and is configu-
rable, check out my "jupp" modifications to
the JOE's Own Editor at
http://wiki.mirbsd.de/JuppEditor
(there are binaries for Mac OSX 10.3.5 I
compiled on my shell acct. at
http://users.mirsolutions.de/~tg/binaries/
availa ble). It does various character sets
(almost any single-byte charset, including a
custom Klingon one, and UTF-8 - no DBCS such
as EUC-JP yet though), even on non-locale-aware
operating systems such as OpenBSD or my own
project MirOS.