5 ms·

Delphi comes with the full RTL and VCL source code. You don't get the source for the compiler, but this is useless for anyone than a 0.0000001% of the people wh

by Crinus 8y ago

Delphi comes with the full RTL and VCL source code. You don't get the source for the compiler, but this is useless for anyone than a 0.0000001% of the people who use GCC or Clang. Also all the tools you mentioned were incredibly productive and with way better documented than any equivalent open source solution today - assuming there is an equivalent open source solution (especially for something like dbase where the best you can find is somewhere between the awful joke that is LibreOffice Base and the plain awfulness of Harbour). Honestly you used the worst examples you could come up with if you wanted to paint a "proprietary software bad, open source software good" image. Those were excellent tools (yes, including Visual Basic, which like any user friendly tool with a very low barrier to entry was abused to hell and beyond, thus - again like any user friendly low barrier tool - got a bad name for itself).

wazoox 8y ago
I was specifically speaking of the many proprietary libraries that you had to buy for many advanced tasks (or in the vain hope to save yourself time by not writing a video encoder, etc). Delphi and VB and VC++ and the C Compiler suites for Solaris, AIX and IRIX were mostly fine by themselves, but cost money. Particularly the latter. Nowadays you see people closing the nagbox in SublimeText to save 10 bucks (or whatever amount this is); back then nothing was free (as beer) and even less free (as speech).
- Crinus 8y ago
  My reaction was due to the "And boy, were they awfully buggy. And you didn't have access to the source to understand why it didn't work" part. They were not buggy, especially if you compare the equivalents of today and most of the source you would care about was there. The main thing that modern open source tools do better is the performance of the produced executable by modern compilers is better. But everything else, especially when you go into UI and UX, is much much worse (and most programmers increasingly treating their computers' UIs like terminals from the 70s doesn't help). I'll agree that the majority of developers today do not want to pay for their tools, but of course with the proliferation of free (as in beer) tools it is expected that the value that people see in their tools (especially when they are surrounded by free tools, like programmers are) will drop dramatically.
kbenson 8y ago
> but this is useless for anyone than a 0.0000001% of the people who use GCC or Clang. I get that it's exaggerated for effect, but that's 1 in a billion....
- Crinus 8y ago
  It rounds up :-P.

by Crinus 8y ago

wazoox 8y ago

I was specifically speaking of the many proprietary libraries that you had to buy for many advanced tasks (or in the vain hope to save yourself time by not writing a video encoder, etc). Delphi and VB and VC++ and the C Compiler suites for Solaris, AIX and IRIX were mostly fine by themselves, but cost money. Particularly the latter. Nowadays you see people closing the nagbox in SublimeText to save 10 bucks (or whatever amount this is); back then nothing was free (as beer) and even less free (as speech).

Crinus 8y ago
My reaction was due to the "And boy, were they awfully buggy. And you didn't have access to the source to understand why it didn't work" part. They were not buggy, especially if you compare the equivalents of today and most of the source you would care about was there. The main thing that modern open source tools do better is the performance of the produced executable by modern compilers is better. But everything else, especially when you go into UI and UX, is much much worse (and most programmers increasingly treating their computers' UIs like terminals from the 70s doesn't help). I'll agree that the majority of developers today do not want to pay for their tools, but of course with the proliferation of free (as in beer) tools it is expected that the value that people see in their tools (especially when they are surrounded by free tools, like programmers are) will drop dramatically.

kbenson 8y ago

> but this is useless for anyone than a 0.0000001% of the people who use GCC or Clang. I get that it's exaggerated for effect, but that's 1 in a billion....

Crinus 8y ago
It rounds up :-P.