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Turbo Vision/Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS. Borland put together one of the best instances of an object oriented library that just worked. The follow up with Delphi f

Turbo Vision/Turbo Pascal for MS-DOS. Borland put together one of the best instances of an object oriented library that just worked. The follow up with Delphi for Windows was the most productive environment I have ever experienced, until I was priced out of it in their pivot to "Enterprise" customers. Nothing since is anywhere near as productive. Lazarus is ok, but the documentation is horrible, (almost non-existent, only doc-strings in many cases) which makes the system far less useful.

rlf_dev 5y ago
It's been an absolute joy toying with TV after all this years for some TUI side-projects. https://github.com/magiblot/tvision https://github.com/magiblot/tvision
munificent 5y ago
Related: I did a lot of WinForms programming in C# when I was a tools programmer at EA and I don't know if I've ever been as productive as during that time. The whole API was really well thought out, Visual Studio was fast, C# was a beautiful language.
- gwbas1c 5y ago
  > C# was a beautiful language It still is. (And Blazor is pretty cool, too.)
  - munificent 5y ago
    Yes, definitely! I put it in the past tense only because I don't use it these days.
- arwhatever 5y ago
  Every UI technology is unbearably cumbersome after starting my career in WinForms.
archielc 5y ago
There's Lazarus project (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/) - which is a Delphi compatible IDE. I've used it once to build a simple UI app, and it was a real nostalgic look back in time. Not to mention that it was extremely simple to build the app.
spacemanmatt 5y ago
I cut my teeth on Borland Pascal and later launched my career with Borland C/C++ tools. I love JetBrains these days but not as much as I remember loving Borland!
legalcorrection 5y ago
I never used those older environments, but I've heard that Windows Forms + C# captures most of the same magic. Do you disagree?
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  WinForms did, it's extremely similar to Delphi's VCL. Microsoft's even changing newer UI libraries do not.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    They stole Delphi's designer from Borland (not sure if it had already renamed or not) and that fixed things for a while. It didn't last though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

rlf_dev 5y ago

It's been an absolute joy toying with TV after all this years for some TUI side-projects. https://github.com/magiblot/tvision https://github.com/magiblot/tvision

munificent 5y ago

Related: I did a lot of WinForms programming in C# when I was a tools programmer at EA and I don't know if I've ever been as productive as during that time. The whole API was really well thought out, Visual Studio was fast, C# was a beautiful language.

gwbas1c 5y ago
> C# was a beautiful language It still is. (And Blazor is pretty cool, too.)
- munificent 5y ago
  Yes, definitely! I put it in the past tense only because I don't use it these days.
arwhatever 5y ago
Every UI technology is unbearably cumbersome after starting my career in WinForms.

archielc 5y ago

There's Lazarus project (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/) - which is a Delphi compatible IDE. I've used it once to build a simple UI app, and it was a real nostalgic look back in time. Not to mention that it was extremely simple to build the app.

spacemanmatt 5y ago

I cut my teeth on Borland Pascal and later launched my career with Borland C/C++ tools. I love JetBrains these days but not as much as I remember loving Borland!

legalcorrection 5y ago

I never used those older environments, but I've heard that Windows Forms + C# captures most of the same magic. Do you disagree?

CodesInChaos 5y ago
WinForms did, it's extremely similar to Delphi's VCL. Microsoft's even changing newer UI libraries do not.
- nottorp 5y ago
  They stole Delphi's designer from Borland (not sure if it had already renamed or not) and that fixed things for a while. It didn't last though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]