5 ms·

> I won't touch commercial situation with a ten feet pole either. Why? I mean, Delphi seems a good language... what prevent you from developing with it?

nicklecompte 6y ago
I think the parent commenter’s issue with Delphi wasn’t technological but rather the “commercial situation” - that Delphi is proprietary and a bit expensive, which is both an annoyance and potentially a serious liability. Especially given that Delphi, while far from dead, is in a tenuous market position.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  Lazarus is pretty good, although somewhat unstable
  - mikewarot 6y ago
    >Lazarus is pretty good, although somewhat unstable The most serious problem I have with it (I can't afford Delphi, or I would buy my way out) is the lack of actual documentation. Sure, there is a wiki, but it is just the output of a program stripping docstrings, nothing actually useful when you just need to use a part from a given library. There are no working code examples, or tips about corner cases, etc. Turbo Pascal had very good documentation, and it got better over time.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      I still keep my Turbo Pascal manuals, and some generous souls have uploaded most of them to bitsavers.
- wdb 6y ago
  The community version of are Remobjects Elements is a joy to use. I am using it in a professional/commercial manner to write closed source libraries for iOS, Android and Wasm all written in Swift.
narag 6y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean not programming with it, but entering the discussion of why I don't trust the company management anymore. Free Pascal + Lazarus is a fine free alternative if the language suits you.
- sigzero 6y ago
  There is also the Delphi Community Edition for developing free stuff.
  - narag 6y ago
    The punchline. That's exactly the reason I didn't want to get involved in this thread.
dmitriid 6y ago
Borland was eventually bought by Embarcadero which was eventually bought by Idera. Idera specializes in extending a very thin lifeline to technologies which can still be milked for licenses and support. There's no real development or innovation behind products gobbled by Idera. Prior to that Borland was already severely lagging behind in dev tools.
rahoulb 6y ago
I invested years of my time into delphi and that was pretty much devalued because of choices Borland made.
- mjul 6y ago
  “In Search of Stupidity” has a chapter on Borland if I remember correctly. Basically they decided that they did not want to serve millions of developers that loved their product but to instead focus on fewer, bigger enterprise accounts. This left the market open for Jetbrains to take over the loved-by-devs position and they learned that the books were right: in tech, the low end always eats the high end.

nicklecompte 6y ago

I think the parent commenter’s issue with Delphi wasn’t technological but rather the “commercial situation” - that Delphi is proprietary and a bit expensive, which is both an annoyance and potentially a serious liability. Especially given that Delphi, while far from dead, is in a tenuous market position.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
Lazarus is pretty good, although somewhat unstable
- mikewarot 6y ago
  >Lazarus is pretty good, although somewhat unstable The most serious problem I have with it (I can't afford Delphi, or I would buy my way out) is the lack of actual documentation. Sure, there is a wiki, but it is just the output of a program stripping docstrings, nothing actually useful when you just need to use a part from a given library. There are no working code examples, or tips about corner cases, etc. Turbo Pascal had very good documentation, and it got better over time.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I still keep my Turbo Pascal manuals, and some generous souls have uploaded most of them to bitsavers.
wdb 6y ago
The community version of are Remobjects Elements is a joy to use. I am using it in a professional/commercial manner to write closed source libraries for iOS, Android and Wasm all written in Swift.

narag 6y ago

Sorry, I didn't mean not programming with it, but entering the discussion of why I don't trust the company management anymore. Free Pascal + Lazarus is a fine free alternative if the language suits you.

sigzero 6y ago
There is also the Delphi Community Edition for developing free stuff.
- narag 6y ago
  The punchline. That's exactly the reason I didn't want to get involved in this thread.

dmitriid 6y ago

Borland was eventually bought by Embarcadero which was eventually bought by Idera. Idera specializes in extending a very thin lifeline to technologies which can still be milked for licenses and support. There's no real development or innovation behind products gobbled by Idera. Prior to that Borland was already severely lagging behind in dev tools.

rahoulb 6y ago

I invested years of my time into delphi and that was pretty much devalued because of choices Borland made.

mjul 6y ago
“In Search of Stupidity” has a chapter on Borland if I remember correctly. Basically they decided that they did not want to serve millions of developers that loved their product but to instead focus on fewer, bigger enterprise accounts. This left the market open for Jetbrains to take over the loved-by-devs position and they learned that the books were right: in tech, the low end always eats the high end.