5 ms·

Seems you never had the pleasure of using Delphi then. It was by far the most pleasurable experience I've ever had writing code - in generations to come it will

Seems you never had the pleasure of using Delphi then. It was by far the most pleasurable experience I've ever had writing code - in generations to come it will be remembered as the peak of coding ease and efficiency.

laumars 8y ago
I had the opposite experience as I love(d) Pascal but I never did warm to Delphi quite as much. Borland's IDEs were amazing though - for a long time I preferred Delphi's IDE over Visual Studio. And as for Turbo Pascal; even now I look upon that as one of the greatest IDEs ever released.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Turbo Vision on MS-DOS was already a good framework, even if it was targeted for TUI applications. Many modern frameworks still aren't as nice to use.
  - mschaef 8y ago
    Turbo Vision (and the entire TP6 package) was an amazing environment. I think TurboVision in particular was helped by the fact it was Borland's productized version of the framework they used for the IDE itself. As a point of contrast, Microsoft shipped a similar sort of TUI framework with its Microsoft BASIC 'Professional Development System'. The PDS was Microsoft's original BASIC compiler (BASCOM) that'd had been integrated with the QuickBASIC (4.5?) IDE. In addition to the compiler, the PDS had direct ISAM support and a few other higher end features targeted at people writing enterprise line of business apps. The TUI framework was their attempt to allow developers using the PDS to write applications in the same visual style as the IDE itself. However, due to the fact that the underlying BASIC language had neither objects nor function pointers, there was no way to implement any sort of callback model in the API. The net result was a framework that required huge amounts of boilerplate code to get anything done and was virtually impossible to use. So, while TurboVision was a bit harder to wrap your head around, it at least had the benefit of being actually commercially useful once you did. This is a big part of why I tend to strongly prefer development tools that are actually used by their developers. The incentives are aligned.
    - laumars 8y ago
      I couldn't agree more. This is also the reason some programming languages eventually write their compiler in their own language. The phrase 'eating your own dog food' often gets used to describe the process.
      - mschaef 8y ago
        That phrase came to my mind as I was writing. My first exposure to the term came in the context of Dave Cutler's requirement that Windows NT developers 'eat their own dogfood'... so it's a little ironic to me that one of my big complaints about the MS BASIC PDS is that they seemingly didn't.
JdeBP 8y ago
It's over a grand and a half a pop just for the cheapest flavour, nowadays. C++ Builder is the same. * https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi * https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/cbuilder https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/cbuilder There are lower-cost "starter" editions, that however have restrictions on use. * https://embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/info https://embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/info The feature matrix is 37 pages long. There's all sorts of stuff in there. For examples: UML is Delphi-only. Some tools for debugging multi-threaded programs aren't in the "starter" flavours. Nor is the ability to debug any process; nor to run until function return; nor for targetting Win64. * https://embarcadero.com/features/feature-matrix https://embarcadero.com/features/feature-matrix
- askvictor 8y ago
  Don't know what it's like nowadays; I suspect it's fallen from it's former glory. Nevertheless, if you consider that $1500 is less than a week's salary for a programmer, you just need to work out whether a $1500 tool is going to save you a week of programming time. Back in the day I was using the heavily discounted education edition as I was a poor student; many products still have something like this (for example JetBrains' suite is free for students and OSS projects). But the price itself isn't really that much in the scheme of things.
- askvictor 8y ago
  Don't know what it's like nowadays; I suspect it's fallen from it's former glory. Nevertheless, if you consider that $1500 is less than a week's salary for a programmer, you just need to work out whether a $1500 tool is going to save you a week of programming time. Back in the day I was using the heavily discounted education edition as I was a poor student; many products still have something like this (for example JetBrains' suite is free for students and OSS projects). But the price itself isn't really that much in the scheme of things. There's also Lazarus - an OSS delphi clone
  - JdeBP 8y ago
    > $1500 is less than a week's salary for a programmer It is pounds, not dollars. And no it isn't.

laumars 8y ago

I had the opposite experience as I love(d) Pascal but I never did warm to Delphi quite as much. Borland's IDEs were amazing though - for a long time I preferred Delphi's IDE over Visual Studio. And as for Turbo Pascal; even now I look upon that as one of the greatest IDEs ever released.

pjmlp 8y ago
Turbo Vision on MS-DOS was already a good framework, even if it was targeted for TUI applications. Many modern frameworks still aren't as nice to use.
- mschaef 8y ago
  Turbo Vision (and the entire TP6 package) was an amazing environment. I think TurboVision in particular was helped by the fact it was Borland's productized version of the framework they used for the IDE itself. As a point of contrast, Microsoft shipped a similar sort of TUI framework with its Microsoft BASIC 'Professional Development System'. The PDS was Microsoft's original BASIC compiler (BASCOM) that'd had been integrated with the QuickBASIC (4.5?) IDE. In addition to the compiler, the PDS had direct ISAM support and a few other higher end features targeted at people writing enterprise line of business apps. The TUI framework was their attempt to allow developers using the PDS to write applications in the same visual style as the IDE itself. However, due to the fact that the underlying BASIC language had neither objects nor function pointers, there was no way to implement any sort of callback model in the API. The net result was a framework that required huge amounts of boilerplate code to get anything done and was virtually impossible to use. So, while TurboVision was a bit harder to wrap your head around, it at least had the benefit of being actually commercially useful once you did. This is a big part of why I tend to strongly prefer development tools that are actually used by their developers. The incentives are aligned.
  - laumars 8y ago
    I couldn't agree more. This is also the reason some programming languages eventually write their compiler in their own language. The phrase 'eating your own dog food' often gets used to describe the process.
    - mschaef 8y ago
      That phrase came to my mind as I was writing. My first exposure to the term came in the context of Dave Cutler's requirement that Windows NT developers 'eat their own dogfood'... so it's a little ironic to me that one of my big complaints about the MS BASIC PDS is that they seemingly didn't.

JdeBP 8y ago

It's over a grand and a half a pop just for the cheapest flavour, nowadays. C++ Builder is the same. * https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delphi * https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/cbuilder https://embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/cbuilder There are lower-cost "starter" editions, that however have restrictions on use. * https://embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/info https://embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/info The feature matrix is 37 pages long. There's all sorts of stuff in there. For examples: UML is Delphi-only. Some tools for debugging multi-threaded programs aren't in the "starter" flavours. Nor is the ability to debug any process; nor to run until function return; nor for targetting Win64. * https://embarcadero.com/features/feature-matrix https://embarcadero.com/features/feature-matrix

askvictor 8y ago
Don't know what it's like nowadays; I suspect it's fallen from it's former glory. Nevertheless, if you consider that $1500 is less than a week's salary for a programmer, you just need to work out whether a $1500 tool is going to save you a week of programming time. Back in the day I was using the heavily discounted education edition as I was a poor student; many products still have something like this (for example JetBrains' suite is free for students and OSS projects). But the price itself isn't really that much in the scheme of things.
askvictor 8y ago
Don't know what it's like nowadays; I suspect it's fallen from it's former glory. Nevertheless, if you consider that $1500 is less than a week's salary for a programmer, you just need to work out whether a $1500 tool is going to save you a week of programming time. Back in the day I was using the heavily discounted education edition as I was a poor student; many products still have something like this (for example JetBrains' suite is free for students and OSS projects). But the price itself isn't really that much in the scheme of things. There's also Lazarus - an OSS delphi clone
- JdeBP 8y ago
  > $1500 is less than a week's salary for a programmer It is pounds, not dollars. And no it isn't.