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Far superior... at making basic 90s UIs that nobody else wants today. For better or worse, but the reality is nobody wants them anymore. Branding is a thing.

Far superior... at making basic 90s UIs that nobody else wants today. For better or worse, but the reality is nobody wants them anymore. Branding is a thing. When a client wanted something different you used to tell them "You can't have that" and they had to take it, because there was no other option. The instant web enabled and normalized arbitrary UIs, "You can't have that" Delphi people simply went out of business. Because it turned out Delphi was far inferior at doing what people actually wanted.

rayiner 4y ago
> The instant web enabled and normalized arbitrary UIs, "You can't have that" Delphi people simply went out of business. Because it turned out Delphi was far inferior at doing what people actually wanted. What people think they want and what would make them happier and productive in the long run are different things. They buy junk food and complain they don't feel well. They buy Marvel movies, but in the long run stop going to the theater because movies aren't interesting anymore. Modern web apps are basically the incarnation of that principle. Are people really happier and more productive with shitty web apps? Because it seems like everyone complains about Slack, Teams, etc. Google Docs certainly doesn't have the die-hard fans Word Perfect still has. Apple still collects quite a premium remembering that people don't know what they want and need people with judgment to make decisions for them.
blub 4y ago
“Far superior... at making basic 90s UIs that nobody else wants today. For better or worse, but the reality is nobody wants them anymore. Branding is a thing. When a client wanted something different you used to tell them "You can't have that" and they had to take it, because there was no other option.” Were you actually there in the 90s and 00s or are you just imagining how things could have been? I personally developed fully skinned UIs in Delphi’s cousin, C++ builder on Windows in the late 90s and in the 00s. In addition to that, VCL apps had a rich palette of drag & drop widgets, including commercial products that were better than anything the competition was offering, including Microsoft. I used a lot of Windows apps over the years and literally everything from custom windows shapes, colors and background, to custom widgets and cursors, etc I’ve ever seen was possible to develop in Delphi or C++ builder. ”The instant web enabled and normalized arbitrary UIs, "You can't have that" Delphi people simply went out of business. Because it turned out Delphi was far inferior at doing what people actually wanted.” Delphi was mismanaged by Borland, sabotaged by Microsoft and they charged a ton of money for the software. Starting with WinForms and C# MS finally had a reasonably competitive alternative to offer. The web had nothing to do with Delphi’s decline. In the 00s we used a combination of back-end languages with some JS for enhancement and Flash for special cases or multimedia-heavy sites. Macromedia Flash remained the most capable web-based technology for a long time after Delphi was already in decline. As a former Flash developer, I can say confidently that Flash and Delphi/C++ Builder served different use-cases and were not competing with each-other.
bitL 4y ago
It's not about styling, it was about how quickly one could develop a complete app by just following a few simple examples in docs. VCL + IDE literally guided you with very few things to learn. So a person uninterested in building UI but in the core of an app could build one in an afternoon, which is not possible unless somebody is an expert in web frontend development, wasting time/effort that could have been spent better elsewhere. I am glad I escaped frontend hell (I used to work on some web standard myself) and pivoted over to ML.
int_19h 4y ago
Speaking for myself as a user, I want more basic 90s UIs that work in boringly predictable ways throughout, and less "branded" apps with weird colors and weird UX patterns because the designers (or whoever is ordering them around) are showing off for no good reason. On top of that, this trend killed a lot of customizability in UX that we took for granted for so long, like the ability to change UI colors and fonts system-wide - i.e. it took freedom away from the users. None of that is positive. So, no, it's not "nobody". I don't think you can even meaningfully say it's the majority of app users without polling them, since they generally have to use whatever is available to solve their problem, which all too often means picking the least crappy of 10 different web-style apps.

rayiner 4y ago

> The instant web enabled and normalized arbitrary UIs, "You can't have that" Delphi people simply went out of business. Because it turned out Delphi was far inferior at doing what people actually wanted. What people think they want and what would make them happier and productive in the long run are different things. They buy junk food and complain they don't feel well. They buy Marvel movies, but in the long run stop going to the theater because movies aren't interesting anymore. Modern web apps are basically the incarnation of that principle. Are people really happier and more productive with shitty web apps? Because it seems like everyone complains about Slack, Teams, etc. Google Docs certainly doesn't have the die-hard fans Word Perfect still has. Apple still collects quite a premium remembering that people don't know what they want and need people with judgment to make decisions for them.

blub 4y ago

“Far superior... at making basic 90s UIs that nobody else wants today. For better or worse, but the reality is nobody wants them anymore. Branding is a thing. When a client wanted something different you used to tell them "You can't have that" and they had to take it, because there was no other option.” Were you actually there in the 90s and 00s or are you just imagining how things could have been? I personally developed fully skinned UIs in Delphi’s cousin, C++ builder on Windows in the late 90s and in the 00s. In addition to that, VCL apps had a rich palette of drag & drop widgets, including commercial products that were better than anything the competition was offering, including Microsoft. I used a lot of Windows apps over the years and literally everything from custom windows shapes, colors and background, to custom widgets and cursors, etc I’ve ever seen was possible to develop in Delphi or C++ builder. ”The instant web enabled and normalized arbitrary UIs, "You can't have that" Delphi people simply went out of business. Because it turned out Delphi was far inferior at doing what people actually wanted.” Delphi was mismanaged by Borland, sabotaged by Microsoft and they charged a ton of money for the software. Starting with WinForms and C# MS finally had a reasonably competitive alternative to offer. The web had nothing to do with Delphi’s decline. In the 00s we used a combination of back-end languages with some JS for enhancement and Flash for special cases or multimedia-heavy sites. Macromedia Flash remained the most capable web-based technology for a long time after Delphi was already in decline. As a former Flash developer, I can say confidently that Flash and Delphi/C++ Builder served different use-cases and were not competing with each-other.

bitL 4y ago

It's not about styling, it was about how quickly one could develop a complete app by just following a few simple examples in docs. VCL + IDE literally guided you with very few things to learn. So a person uninterested in building UI but in the core of an app could build one in an afternoon, which is not possible unless somebody is an expert in web frontend development, wasting time/effort that could have been spent better elsewhere. I am glad I escaped frontend hell (I used to work on some web standard myself) and pivoted over to ML.

int_19h 4y ago

Speaking for myself as a user, I want more basic 90s UIs that work in boringly predictable ways throughout, and less "branded" apps with weird colors and weird UX patterns because the designers (or whoever is ordering them around) are showing off for no good reason. On top of that, this trend killed a lot of customizability in UX that we took for granted for so long, like the ability to change UI colors and fonts system-wide - i.e. it took freedom away from the users. None of that is positive. So, no, it's not "nobody". I don't think you can even meaningfully say it's the majority of app users without polling them, since they generally have to use whatever is available to solve their problem, which all too often means picking the least crappy of 10 different web-style apps.