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Was there ever a more productive GUI programming experience than Delphi? It's been more than twelve years since I used it (or developed on Windows for that matt

Was there ever a more productive GUI programming experience than Delphi? It's been more than twelve years since I used it (or developed on Windows for that matter), but it was so powerful and fast.

jdswain 9y ago
I thought Delphi was mostly dead. I saw a job listing recently and thought it would be kind of cool to go back to it. But when I checked the Tiobe index it's still quite popular at number 11, notably it's above Swift and Objective-C, so apparently it's far from dead.
- robocat 9y ago
  It isn't dead, but it should be: I sometimes support legacy Delphi code. We use the XE7 version of the IDE, which is excruciatingly slow on a laptop with an i7 7700HQ processor, fast nVME SSD, and 32GB RAM. Oh, the IDE is 32 bit so it runs out of memory. The IDE also crashes a lot (I have never heard of a stable release of any version of Delphi). Our codebase still compiles on Delphi 7 (from 2002) because it is a better developer experience than thier modern versions... Trying to find good components was easy in 2002, but it can be impossible now. All the good component developers moved on to more profitable targets. You can't find good open source components because no developer can afford the annual costs to get new versions of the compiler and compile components.
nixpulvis 9y ago
I was a fan of WoW's UI building APIs.
TimJYoung 9y ago
My first response was going to be to use Lazarus/Free Pascal, but then I saw the OCaml requirement. It's kind of funny, because one of the first things I wrote with Delphi when I first got my hands on it was a text editor. :-)
meredydd 9y ago
You're not misremembering. There was an enormous setback in the usability of GUI programming when the web was invented. The first reason is that the whole platform is built on the jagged rubble of the 90s/2000s platform war. But the second is just that, with so many different languages and systems in play, tool and library support just can't keep up. What made Delphi great was that there was one integrated framework that knew about everything from your visual design to your databases - you could integrate them all, get autocomplete, etc. These days, we write Python that generates SQL in order to generate HTML, then write Javascript to talk HTTP to the Python and then generate HTML that gets interpreted into the screen by CSS...and there is no way a tool can present the result of that in a coherent manner (let alone autocomplete it!). (I get an up-close view of this because I cofounded Anvil - https://anvil.works https://anvil.works - which does the complete opposite of this at every level. All in Python, one framework, all autocompleted - basically a modern Delphi for the web.)
romwell 9y ago
My first response to the article was Ctrl+F Delphi in the comments. Because everything the author was complaining about was solved in Delphi in mid-nineties. Heck, if he were to write for Windows, he could still use Delphi and get what they want! For that matter, VS.NET platform would be a pretty good tool for that job too (no surprise given that the head of the project was heading the development of Delphi before jumping ship to MS).
- vram22 9y ago
  >My first response to the article was Ctrl+F Delphi in the comments. He he, I did the same. >Because everything the author was complaining about was solved in Delphi in mid-nineties. Related: Delphi – why won't it die? (2013) (stevepeacocke.blogspot.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613543 I had commented a few times in that thread.
vram22 9y ago
Yes, Delphi was great. I'm talking about earlier versions, but current versions are good too. [Disclaimer: Only used them lightly.] The two cons I see are: 1) the trend towards greater and greater complexity and more features as time goes by and as version numbers increase. 2) the cost, of course. Edit: Also, as others point out in this thread, some versions of it were reportedly moderately to quite buggy. And as someone else said in this thread, Lazarus is an option.
jkmcf 9y ago
Sun DevGuide Beating a dead horse and outing myself to anyone that knows me!

Was there ever a more productive GUI programming experience than Delphi? It's been more than twelve years since I used it (or developed on Windows for that matter), but it was so powerful and fast.

jdswain 9y ago

I thought Delphi was mostly dead. I saw a job listing recently and thought it would be kind of cool to go back to it. But when I checked the Tiobe index it's still quite popular at number 11, notably it's above Swift and Objective-C, so apparently it's far from dead.

robocat 9y ago
It isn't dead, but it should be: I sometimes support legacy Delphi code. We use the XE7 version of the IDE, which is excruciatingly slow on a laptop with an i7 7700HQ processor, fast nVME SSD, and 32GB RAM. Oh, the IDE is 32 bit so it runs out of memory. The IDE also crashes a lot (I have never heard of a stable release of any version of Delphi). Our codebase still compiles on Delphi 7 (from 2002) because it is a better developer experience than thier modern versions... Trying to find good components was easy in 2002, but it can be impossible now. All the good component developers moved on to more profitable targets. You can't find good open source components because no developer can afford the annual costs to get new versions of the compiler and compile components.

nixpulvis 9y ago

I was a fan of WoW's UI building APIs.

TimJYoung 9y ago

My first response was going to be to use Lazarus/Free Pascal, but then I saw the OCaml requirement. It's kind of funny, because one of the first things I wrote with Delphi when I first got my hands on it was a text editor. :-)

meredydd 9y ago

You're not misremembering. There was an enormous setback in the usability of GUI programming when the web was invented. The first reason is that the whole platform is built on the jagged rubble of the 90s/2000s platform war. But the second is just that, with so many different languages and systems in play, tool and library support just can't keep up. What made Delphi great was that there was one integrated framework that knew about everything from your visual design to your databases - you could integrate them all, get autocomplete, etc. These days, we write Python that generates SQL in order to generate HTML, then write Javascript to talk HTTP to the Python and then generate HTML that gets interpreted into the screen by CSS...and there is no way a tool can present the result of that in a coherent manner (let alone autocomplete it!). (I get an up-close view of this because I cofounded Anvil - https://anvil.works https://anvil.works - which does the complete opposite of this at every level. All in Python, one framework, all autocompleted - basically a modern Delphi for the web.)

romwell 9y ago

My first response to the article was Ctrl+F Delphi in the comments. Because everything the author was complaining about was solved in Delphi in mid-nineties. Heck, if he were to write for Windows, he could still use Delphi and get what they want! For that matter, VS.NET platform would be a pretty good tool for that job too (no surprise given that the head of the project was heading the development of Delphi before jumping ship to MS).

vram22 9y ago
>My first response to the article was Ctrl+F Delphi in the comments. He he, I did the same. >Because everything the author was complaining about was solved in Delphi in mid-nineties. Related: Delphi – why won't it die? (2013) (stevepeacocke.blogspot.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613543 I had commented a few times in that thread.

vram22 9y ago

Yes, Delphi was great. I'm talking about earlier versions, but current versions are good too. [Disclaimer: Only used them lightly.] The two cons I see are: 1) the trend towards greater and greater complexity and more features as time goes by and as version numbers increase. 2) the cost, of course. Edit: Also, as others point out in this thread, some versions of it were reportedly moderately to quite buggy. And as someone else said in this thread, Lazarus is an option.

jkmcf 9y ago

Sun DevGuide Beating a dead horse and outing myself to anyone that knows me!