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That's not how I remember it. An empty statically linked VCL GUI application used to weigh about 700 KB. Just as stupid edgy kids usually do, we were looking at

That's not how I remember it. An empty statically linked VCL GUI application used to weigh about 700 KB. Just as stupid edgy kids usually do, we were looking at other "C++ applications" a dozen KBs in size and were ranting about Delphi being so bloated and terrible. Of course, it was due to them being built on top of pure Win32 API, or being dynamically linked to a similar "bloated" runtime. It's not like we had an internet connection to learn from. At least that's how I learned the difference between static and dynamic linking.

badsectoracula 7y ago
Depends on the Delphi version. Delphi 2 (what i used and still use sometimes) creates a VCL app at around 200KB. Later versions added a bit, but i think it wasn't until after Delphi 7 that sizes ballooned. However i have a feeling that MrGilbert refers to using the Windows API directly without VCL in which case you can create very small executables.
- MrGilbert 7y ago
  Yes, exactly - sorry I didn't clarify. There were folks out there who created stripped down versions of Systems32 classes, so you had a basic skeleton running. Maybe I should write a progam like that, just for the fun of it. It still works nowadays. I might even get away with FreePascal. I'll give it a try. :)
  - badsectoracula 7y ago
    Yeah it should work. A few years ago i reimplemented in Free Pascal most of the OWL 1.0 API that shipped with Turbo Pascal for Windows and you can create some very small executables with it: https://i.imgur.com/bFGIVSU.png https://i.imgur.com/bFGIVSU.png (that 82KB executable uses almost all of the API's functionality, including type registration, dynamic instantiation and object streaming) Though i never did anything with it, i mainly wrote it for fun. The OWL 1.0 API isn't really that better than using raw Win32 :-P. But perhaps now that Free Pascal added support for Win16 in the trunk i could port it there.

badsectoracula 7y ago

Depends on the Delphi version. Delphi 2 (what i used and still use sometimes) creates a VCL app at around 200KB. Later versions added a bit, but i think it wasn't until after Delphi 7 that sizes ballooned. However i have a feeling that MrGilbert refers to using the Windows API directly without VCL in which case you can create very small executables.

MrGilbert 7y ago
Yes, exactly - sorry I didn't clarify. There were folks out there who created stripped down versions of Systems32 classes, so you had a basic skeleton running. Maybe I should write a progam like that, just for the fun of it. It still works nowadays. I might even get away with FreePascal. I'll give it a try. :)
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  Yeah it should work. A few years ago i reimplemented in Free Pascal most of the OWL 1.0 API that shipped with Turbo Pascal for Windows and you can create some very small executables with it: https://i.imgur.com/bFGIVSU.png https://i.imgur.com/bFGIVSU.png (that 82KB executable uses almost all of the API's functionality, including type registration, dynamic instantiation and object streaming) Though i never did anything with it, i mainly wrote it for fun. The OWL 1.0 API isn't really that better than using raw Win32 :-P. But perhaps now that Free Pascal added support for Win16 in the trunk i could port it there.