20 ms·

Delphi, as technology, is amazing. But the company controlling it operates on the model of locking-in existing customers and ratcheting up prices. It's a bad de

Delphi, as technology, is amazing. But the company controlling it operates on the model of locking-in existing customers and ratcheting up prices. It's a bad deal for everyone not already stuck in the ecosystem with things they need to maintain. Look up Lazarus for the open source I-can't-believe-it's-not-Delphi

mobilio 5y ago
Well - once upon a time they WAS amazing. But later they become CodeGear and later their R&D division is moved to Romania. Products become unstable and unreliable.
- FpUser 5y ago
  They had flops, meh versions / releases and good ones stability wise. Just as any other major IDE (or product for that matter). I own Delphi and still nothing beats it productivity wise for desktop applications. I successfully used Lazarus as well to develop Raspberry Pi based GUI software that controls various electronic gizmos(debugging on Pi was unstable but I've managed). For products that do not have GUI (or using browser for front end) I stick to C++. Embarcadero's pricing / marketing though does suck big time. Well, the only product that comes close to Delphi for GUI development is QT and their licensing and pricing sucks even more.
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    Are they still extending the language? I remember that working with strings was somewhat frustrating, for example RegExes were not a thing without external libraries...
    - FpUser 5y ago
      >"Are they still extending the language" Yes they are. I do find it strange though to base language acceptance criteria on regex when there are tons of libs. But yes Delphi has its own as well
    - bmn__ 5y ago
      > Are they still extending the language? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22328219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22328219
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    I wonder if The Qt Company is looking at them for inspiration the past couple of years...
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    > their licensing and pricing sucks even more. Does Delphi even have a LGPL option ? Because with Qt's LGPL you can use it in a lot of proprietary systems without having to pay for a license
    - FpUser 5y ago
      I've already said elsewhere that having read their licensing terms and limits on what parts and how it can be used I would not touch QT with the wooden pole. Not interested in discussing those either. Others might disagree but hey each of us makes their own choices. I heard Delphi has free version. I did not go into detail as I own commercial version and keep it up to date. But from what I understand you can use their community edition for free as long as you do not make more than $5000 per year.
      - jcelerier 5y ago
        > I've already said elsewhere that having read their licensing terms and limits on what parts and how it can be used I would not touch QT with the wooden pole. the OSS licensing terms are the LGPL or GPL. - https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 - https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 - https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 - https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 they can add whatever separate licensing scheme they want in addition to that but if a repo has LICENSE.LGPLv3 in it, you can use it under LGPL like every other OSS project (and those two repos cover by far most of Qt, you can pretty much build an entire OS userspace out of them).
    - Kliment 5y ago
      Delphi does not have an LGPL option. Lazarus, however, does.
  - shp0ngle 5y ago
    > the only product that comes close to Delphi for GUI development is QT Wait isn't QT free?
    - easytiger 5y ago
      Dual licensed
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hvis 5y ago
    > I own Delphi Do you?
    - FpUser 5y ago
      Well, the license is perpetual and I maintain VMs with it installed so for all intents and purposes it is no different. Way better than paying monthly fee.
57844743385 5y ago
Maybe that’s the only viable business model.
- jonathanstrange 5y ago
  You can see the same pricing scheme with all of these "batteries included" niche products, from Xojo to LispWorks. It looks like the sweetspot is around $1,500/year, sometimes lower, sometimes higher. I still think they are wrong, though, and these companies would make way more money if they'd cater to the masses at a price range of $30 to $100 per major version (depending on the version/features). In the VST plugin market, price ranges were comparably high until companies figured out that the mass of hobby musicians is more lucrative. Now products are basically on eternal sale, prices reduced from 50% to 95%. In the VST market increased competition forced companies to lower prices during sales. Maybe the lack of competition prevents the same from happening to IDE companies.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    I am not sure that this is fair to LispWorks. I think that I initially paid $3000 for a license and the yearly maintenance fee is about $500. Their support is amazingly good and CAPI is good for UI development.
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      Still, this is just out of range for most non-professionals. Several times I have considered to buy a LispWorks license for personal usage, but couldn't quite justify the costs. I am pretty sure they might even sell more professional licenses if they had a wider userbase of enthusiast users.
      - caslon 5y ago
        For anyone curious, a hobbyist license for LispWorks is $500 for a 32-bit version that works on a single operating system, then $250 every year after that. If you actually want to release software other people can use, then it's $1000 and $500 every year after that. If you want to sell software other people can use, double that. Want the ability to use a database? Double it again! Oh, and if you want to release anything but 32-bit software? Double that, too. All of this is per-seat, too. It's really "Our company and or university gives us enough money to blow on software that we don't have to look at the prices"-oriented pricing. LispWorks is amazing software from a development standpoint (though SBCL is significantly faster if you're actually using what you write), but it's also one of the best examples of predatory proprietary software.
lmilcin 5y ago
Delphi was my first real programming environment circa 1998. At least at the time it allowed me to build professionally looking applications with practically nil experience and with little effort.

mobilio 5y ago

Well - once upon a time they WAS amazing. But later they become CodeGear and later their R&D division is moved to Romania. Products become unstable and unreliable.

FpUser 5y ago
They had flops, meh versions / releases and good ones stability wise. Just as any other major IDE (or product for that matter). I own Delphi and still nothing beats it productivity wise for desktop applications. I successfully used Lazarus as well to develop Raspberry Pi based GUI software that controls various electronic gizmos(debugging on Pi was unstable but I've managed). For products that do not have GUI (or using browser for front end) I stick to C++. Embarcadero's pricing / marketing though does suck big time. Well, the only product that comes close to Delphi for GUI development is QT and their licensing and pricing sucks even more.
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  Are they still extending the language? I remember that working with strings was somewhat frustrating, for example RegExes were not a thing without external libraries...
  - FpUser 5y ago
    >"Are they still extending the language" Yes they are. I do find it strange though to base language acceptance criteria on regex when there are tons of libs. But yes Delphi has its own as well
  - bmn__ 5y ago
    > Are they still extending the language? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22328219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22328219
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I wonder if The Qt Company is looking at them for inspiration the past couple of years...
- jcelerier 5y ago
  > their licensing and pricing sucks even more. Does Delphi even have a LGPL option ? Because with Qt's LGPL you can use it in a lot of proprietary systems without having to pay for a license
  - FpUser 5y ago
    I've already said elsewhere that having read their licensing terms and limits on what parts and how it can be used I would not touch QT with the wooden pole. Not interested in discussing those either. Others might disagree but hey each of us makes their own choices. I heard Delphi has free version. I did not go into detail as I own commercial version and keep it up to date. But from what I understand you can use their community edition for free as long as you do not make more than $5000 per year.
    - jcelerier 5y ago
      > I've already said elsewhere that having read their licensing terms and limits on what parts and how it can be used I would not touch QT with the wooden pole. the OSS licensing terms are the LGPL or GPL. - https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 - https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 - https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3 - https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 https://github.com/qt/qtdeclarative/blob/dev/LICENSE.LGPLv3 they can add whatever separate licensing scheme they want in addition to that but if a repo has LICENSE.LGPLv3 in it, you can use it under LGPL like every other OSS project (and those two repos cover by far most of Qt, you can pretty much build an entire OS userspace out of them).
  - Kliment 5y ago
    Delphi does not have an LGPL option. Lazarus, however, does.
- shp0ngle 5y ago
  > the only product that comes close to Delphi for GUI development is QT Wait isn't QT free?
  - easytiger 5y ago
    Dual licensed
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hvis 5y ago
  > I own Delphi Do you?
  - FpUser 5y ago
    Well, the license is perpetual and I maintain VMs with it installed so for all intents and purposes it is no different. Way better than paying monthly fee.

57844743385 5y ago

Maybe that’s the only viable business model.

jonathanstrange 5y ago
You can see the same pricing scheme with all of these "batteries included" niche products, from Xojo to LispWorks. It looks like the sweetspot is around $1,500/year, sometimes lower, sometimes higher. I still think they are wrong, though, and these companies would make way more money if they'd cater to the masses at a price range of $30 to $100 per major version (depending on the version/features). In the VST plugin market, price ranges were comparably high until companies figured out that the mass of hobby musicians is more lucrative. Now products are basically on eternal sale, prices reduced from 50% to 95%. In the VST market increased competition forced companies to lower prices during sales. Maybe the lack of competition prevents the same from happening to IDE companies.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I am not sure that this is fair to LispWorks. I think that I initially paid $3000 for a license and the yearly maintenance fee is about $500. Their support is amazingly good and CAPI is good for UI development.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Still, this is just out of range for most non-professionals. Several times I have considered to buy a LispWorks license for personal usage, but couldn't quite justify the costs. I am pretty sure they might even sell more professional licenses if they had a wider userbase of enthusiast users.
    - caslon 5y ago
      For anyone curious, a hobbyist license for LispWorks is $500 for a 32-bit version that works on a single operating system, then $250 every year after that. If you actually want to release software other people can use, then it's $1000 and $500 every year after that. If you want to sell software other people can use, double that. Want the ability to use a database? Double it again! Oh, and if you want to release anything but 32-bit software? Double that, too. All of this is per-seat, too. It's really "Our company and or university gives us enough money to blow on software that we don't have to look at the prices"-oriented pricing. LispWorks is amazing software from a development standpoint (though SBCL is significantly faster if you're actually using what you write), but it's also one of the best examples of predatory proprietary software.

lmilcin 5y ago

Delphi was my first real programming environment circa 1998. At least at the time it allowed me to build professionally looking applications with practically nil experience and with little effort.