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In any discussion about Delphi, you really should also mention Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/). It's more mature (i.e. more

In any discussion about Delphi, you really should also mention Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/). It's more mature (i.e. more cross platform) than Delphi, and fully open source. It's based on the Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) (https://www.freepascal.org/ https://www.freepascal.org/) (also open source).

FpUser 6y ago
It is more cross platform but integrated debugger kind of sucks. I am doing some project for Raspberry Pi 4 and had to resort to debugPrint() as on some breakpoints it reports gdb error and terminates debugging.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  Indeed, i always have issues with gdb and Lazarus (under Windows) with the debugger randomly deciding to stop working or not stepping through code (even with zero optimizations) or other stuff. However the new debugger written specifically for Free Pascal seems to work much better - just not available everywhere ATM.
justin66 6y ago
Has anyone published a good comparison of the two compilers building the same project? It’d be interesting to know how compile times compare.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  The original Delphi compiler which was in use until some versions ago (and might still be available, dunno) was much faster than Free Pascal while producing more or less the same quality code (in terms of performance) but could only target Windows. Free Pascal targets a bunch of other CPUs and OSes though. I haven't tried any of the recent versions, but AFAIK they're based on LLVM so i'd expect compilation times to have went up but produced executables to be a bit faster. FWIW Free Pascal's developers have mentioned at the past that fast compiler performance isn't really something that they care much about (though in practice FPC is among the faster compilers, just not as fast as Delphi used to be).
  - justin66 6y ago
    > FWIW Free Pascal's developers have mentioned at the past that fast compiler performance isn't really something that they care much about That's an interesting evolution. It had a lot of nice features, but compile time was the only thing about Delphi that was really magical.
    - badsectoracula 6y ago
      Well, Free Pascal was never as fast as Delphi and i doubt its feature set would allow it to be as fast anyway. Delphi only supported a single platform for a single CPU for the largest majority of its lifetime whereas Free Pascal supported a ton of different CPUs and platforms while also adding support for a variety of different Pascal dialects at the same time and often extending the language beyond what you'd see in Delphi - all that adds up quickly. Still, as i wrote, in practice FPC is quite fast. Lazarus itself is almost two million lines of code and yet it compiles and links in seconds.
gramie 6y ago
"It's more mature" Usually that implies that bugs and rough patches have been ironed out. I would have to say that Delphi is far more polished than Lazarus. Not that I'm complaining about Lazarus, it's an amazing accomplishment and I play around with it every now and then to see how far it's come.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  Well... in a perfect universe where bad decisions are never made, sure. But a few years after the turn of the century someone at Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/whatever decided to rewrite the IDE while chasing .NET when under a company that by that time had completely lost any interest in development tools. I've only tried the trial/free Delphi versions sporadically and TBH 'polished' isn't something i'd use to describe them. Then again neither is something i'd use to describe Lazarus (which i'm using much more often), however that is for completely different reasons.

FpUser 6y ago

It is more cross platform but integrated debugger kind of sucks. I am doing some project for Raspberry Pi 4 and had to resort to debugPrint() as on some breakpoints it reports gdb error and terminates debugging.

badsectoracula 6y ago
Indeed, i always have issues with gdb and Lazarus (under Windows) with the debugger randomly deciding to stop working or not stepping through code (even with zero optimizations) or other stuff. However the new debugger written specifically for Free Pascal seems to work much better - just not available everywhere ATM.

justin66 6y ago

Has anyone published a good comparison of the two compilers building the same project? It’d be interesting to know how compile times compare.

badsectoracula 6y ago
The original Delphi compiler which was in use until some versions ago (and might still be available, dunno) was much faster than Free Pascal while producing more or less the same quality code (in terms of performance) but could only target Windows. Free Pascal targets a bunch of other CPUs and OSes though. I haven't tried any of the recent versions, but AFAIK they're based on LLVM so i'd expect compilation times to have went up but produced executables to be a bit faster. FWIW Free Pascal's developers have mentioned at the past that fast compiler performance isn't really something that they care much about (though in practice FPC is among the faster compilers, just not as fast as Delphi used to be).
- justin66 6y ago
  > FWIW Free Pascal's developers have mentioned at the past that fast compiler performance isn't really something that they care much about That's an interesting evolution. It had a lot of nice features, but compile time was the only thing about Delphi that was really magical.
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    Well, Free Pascal was never as fast as Delphi and i doubt its feature set would allow it to be as fast anyway. Delphi only supported a single platform for a single CPU for the largest majority of its lifetime whereas Free Pascal supported a ton of different CPUs and platforms while also adding support for a variety of different Pascal dialects at the same time and often extending the language beyond what you'd see in Delphi - all that adds up quickly. Still, as i wrote, in practice FPC is quite fast. Lazarus itself is almost two million lines of code and yet it compiles and links in seconds.

gramie 6y ago

"It's more mature" Usually that implies that bugs and rough patches have been ironed out. I would have to say that Delphi is far more polished than Lazarus. Not that I'm complaining about Lazarus, it's an amazing accomplishment and I play around with it every now and then to see how far it's come.

badsectoracula 6y ago
Well... in a perfect universe where bad decisions are never made, sure. But a few years after the turn of the century someone at Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/whatever decided to rewrite the IDE while chasing .NET when under a company that by that time had completely lost any interest in development tools. I've only tried the trial/free Delphi versions sporadically and TBH 'polished' isn't something i'd use to describe them. Then again neither is something i'd use to describe Lazarus (which i'm using much more often), however that is for completely different reasons.