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> If Delphi had a better focus on cross-platform development I’d wager it’d probably be a lot more relevant today. I thought they did do this? I never tried bu

> If Delphi had a better focus on cross-platform development I’d wager it’d probably be a lot more relevant today. I thought they did do this? I never tried but I got a lot of emails about iOS & Android next to Desktop from them up until a few years ago when unsubscribed to their mailing list. Quick check; FireMonkey is apparently for writing cross platform apps on Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Linux & Windows. Or you mean; actual IDE on Mac & Linux? Indeed without that I wouldn't touch it either. I'd wager that if they did not do the 'interesting' pricing model, it'd be a lot more relevant. They should have free versions for open source / private use and 'sane' pricing for companies. They have none of that. E1700,- for the first year for 1 dev and if you want to build desktop apps for Linux it's more than double? Not a big deal for big corps, however, for anyone wanting to play around and write some small applications for their startup it makes no sense. > FreePascal and Lazarus are also worth checking out At least on Mac it is not very stable for me, I try it every year before christmas (when I have some time to test new things) and after 1-2 days I usually pass it on. From it actually not even starting (crashing on startup), to not compiling, to it just messing up the windows completely at random times... I hope they get it stable or that it is just me, because it would be great to have something like that for someone like me who made his first years of money creating products in Delphi (starting with 1 on 3.11) where Delphi was a secret weapon against people using C++.

Svip 7y ago
> I thought they did do this? I never tried but I got a lot of emails about iOS & Android next to Desktop from them up until a few years ago when unsubscribed to their mailing list. Indeed they do, but that's assuming those cross-platform features are any good. No one I've heard of uses Delphi for Android and iOS development. As a Delphi house, when we actually needed to develop an Android app, we went with Java and Google's Android Studio, because Delphi's offering simply wasn't mature enough. Nor was it useful to use any advance third-party libraries in your app. Similarly, their MacOS and Linux offerings (not the IDE, because that's Windows only) aren't particularly good either. It's only really the Windows verion that gets official improvements, and FreePascal basically handles the Linux compiler. Which is fine, I guess. But it's rather a hassle to maintain a codebase for cross-platform clients, since you actually need to fiddle with your code between Delphi and FreePascal.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  Ah yeah, that sounds bad. Shame, it could've been nice, theoretically. I tried Kylix back in the day and hoped that would be the way forward (I actually bought shares in Borland/Inprise based on the Kylix announcement; it made me a lot of money, but I was young and naive, I now understand that it was a lottery and I got in and out in time by cheer chance). They really messed it all up...

Svip 7y ago

> I thought they did do this? I never tried but I got a lot of emails about iOS & Android next to Desktop from them up until a few years ago when unsubscribed to their mailing list. Indeed they do, but that's assuming those cross-platform features are any good. No one I've heard of uses Delphi for Android and iOS development. As a Delphi house, when we actually needed to develop an Android app, we went with Java and Google's Android Studio, because Delphi's offering simply wasn't mature enough. Nor was it useful to use any advance third-party libraries in your app. Similarly, their MacOS and Linux offerings (not the IDE, because that's Windows only) aren't particularly good either. It's only really the Windows verion that gets official improvements, and FreePascal basically handles the Linux compiler. Which is fine, I guess. But it's rather a hassle to maintain a codebase for cross-platform clients, since you actually need to fiddle with your code between Delphi and FreePascal.

tluyben2 7y ago
Ah yeah, that sounds bad. Shame, it could've been nice, theoretically. I tried Kylix back in the day and hoped that would be the way forward (I actually bought shares in Borland/Inprise based on the Kylix announcement; it made me a lot of money, but I was young and naive, I now understand that it was a lottery and I got in and out in time by cheer chance). They really messed it all up...