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...for the enterprise. Which is okay, there's plenty of mixed quality software for that sector. It's just that Delphi used to be a lot more oriented towards beg
by mhd 4y ago
...for the enterprise. Which is okay, there's plenty of mixed quality software for that sector. It's just that Delphi used to be a lot more oriented towards beginner to small-business developers.
And note that this happened before the web pillow-smothered decent desktop UIs. If it was all about a reduced audience for desktop-based applications and then supporting that, I would understand it more.
I haven't been following Delphi itself, but the parent company also manages ExtJS, which is aimed/priced similarly, yet with support/quality that doesn't justify this.
Weird that outside of the BCPL or ML families, it's Ada that seems to be the one with the most momentum these days.
- alyandon 4y agothe web pillow-smothered decent desktop UIs Application development has gone backwards so much compared to the RAD tooling from the 90s. I really can't even properly describe it to the younger generation. :(
- saiya-jin 4y agoah the GUI designers from Borland, light years ahead of everything else... it just worked and looked nice (compared to Microsoft shitshow that was Visual Studio back then), was very easy to learn and its the only thing in software I've seen in 20 years which deserved the title RAD.
- vbezhenar 4y agoDelphi cut the corners with their fixed positioning. It will not work for web and it works very poorly for localization (labels change their lengths and can overlap over each other). As soon as you introduce layouts to your UI, all the Delphi simplicity goes out of the window. This is an interesting challenge to invent a way for UI to be pixel-fixed, yet work in web and with localization. If someone would do that, you could rebuild Delphi for web. I guess one way is to build a pixel-fixed form for English language and let AI to build a layout for this form.
- alyandon 4y agoWe had things like expandable container groups for UI controls that could auto-resize the child controls as necessary to fit their content back in the 90s. Granted, it wasn't as easy to set up properly vs modern web layout engines - but there is so much more to RAD applications than the UI layout by itself.
- hankman86 4y agoSo? Many apps don’t need localisation. Responsive UIs weren’t all that important in the mid 1990s when monitors and their resolutions were all in a relatively small corridor. I remember 20 inch CRTs to be the absolute high-end that few could afford. Most PCs came with 14 or 15 inch monitors, 17 inch later.
- jacquesm 4y agoTotally agreed. I have done both a lot of work with the Borland tools and over the years with various web based libraries and languages, Borland wins hands down, in spite of the underlying horrible mess.
- a-dub 4y agoi think it's probably coming back with this whole low-code/no-code thing.
- hankman86 4y agoThis. How easy was it to put together a well-functioning Windows desktop app in Delphi, compared with the complexity of developing a Web app these days?
- tdeck 4y agoI love using these RAD tools but I think part of what we're forgetting is how much lower the standards were (both visual and functional) for UIs back then. Sure you could throw together a professional UI in a lot less time, but part of that was that the definition of "professional" was "looks exactly the same as every other Windows application and uses the same 5 form elements". We've just come to expect more variety so the RAD approach doesn't take you as far these days.
- CRConrad 4y ago> I love using these RAD tools but I think part of what we're forgetting is how much lower the standards were (both visual and functional) for UIs back then. They weren't lower then, they're lower now. > Sure you could throw together a professional UI in a lot less time, but part of that was that the definition of "professional" was "looks exactly the same as every other Windows application and uses the same 5 form elements". Yup. That's still the correct definition. > We've just come to expect more variety so the RAD approach doesn't take you as far these days. Yes, unfortunately users have been conditioned to expect myriad variations of something like Kai's Fucking "Power Tools". And most of them have even been deluded into thinking of that as a good thing. They're wrong.
- fomine3 4y agoYeah they tend to have no variable window size support.
- CRConrad 4y agoWhat??? WTF are you talking about?
- kwanbix 4y agoI think they really screwed up after Delphi 7, when they did the horrible Delphi.NET. Also, they should have had some better pricing, something like: Personal use: Free. Commercial use: Free until you are making $x a year, like Unity I think, and then different prices. Note: I might remember wrong, as this was so long ago. I started with Delphi 1.0!
- badsectoracula 4y agoI think their original pricing scheme for the first 5 or 6 versions of Delphi was fine. The cheapest version was just $100, which even a student could buy by saving for a few weeks (get them hooked while young, etc :-P). The versions that added features focused on enterprises were more expensive but these wouldn't be needed by a lot of people (a lot of Delphi programmers were making small shareware utilities instead of big database applications).
- CRConrad 4y agoAfter a while they got greedy and fucked up that scheme, moving stuff that had been in the Professional edition (most importantly, client-server DB connections) into Enterprise, and other stuff (three-tier app development) from Enterprise into a new Architect edition. And then steady substantial price hikes for all editions from version to version. Shot themselves in the foot, AFAICS.
- kwanbix 4y agoExactly, that was my point :)
- mhd 4y agoI have a "Delphi for Kids" book which included a free version of the lowest Delphi tier. And yes, sure, I guess you can do the same with the current community version, but it does show how broadly Delphi was aimed and received. Which is the sad thing. Even if Idera were to change their tack, it wouldn't matter anymore, as there's no broad appeal for a "desktop full stack" solution anymore. Right now, it doesn't matter anyway. They're in that enterprise tier along with commercial Smalltalks and APLs, even if they'd give away everything for free tomorrow it wouldn't change the world of computing.
- runjake 4y agoDelphi has a free community edition. The free version only targets Windows, though. https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-download https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-dow...
- sigzero 4y agoThat's kind of "too bad" it's Windows only. I would try it on Linux and/or macos.
- unnouinceput 4y agoDelphi IDE is available for Windows only, regardless of its version. I suspect @runjake meant is that the free version only targets Windows, while the architect edition of Delphi can target all of the major OS'es out there.
- runjake 4y agoYep, this is what I meant. Updated original comment, thanks.
- gduke 4y agoThe free Community Edition supports targeting Windows, Android, iOS and macOS. From a feature point of view, it is similar to what you get with the unrestricted Professional version. Enterprise and Architect also has the Linux compiler. On Windows you can use the tried and battle tested VCL framework, and for multi platform there's FireMonkey. The IDE's are, however only runs on Windows (Or Wine if you're brave, YMMV).
- stuaxo 4y agoThat's a shame, I guess Kylix just died in the end ?
- unnouinceput 4y ago