4 ms·

I have to repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491963 again: My main problem with delphi: it is "too pro

I have to repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491963 again: My main problem with delphi: it is "too proprietary". It was a very productive IDE in the 90's or early 2000's but lost their path and never recovered. Some new versions broke compatibility with previous version's components. There was the case where you paid a good amount of money on some proprietary components and they simply wouldn't work in the next version: you were imprisoned in an obsolete IDE. By not being multi-platform (I heard it improved lately) you could only use it with/for win32 so it lost servers, embedded, cloud and mobile. By not being open-source nobody could improve it. Then it had to compete with "native tools". Whoever develops for windows wouldn't quit ms' tools to use it, whoever develops for mac wouldn't quit apple's tools to use it, whoever develops for android wouldn't quit google's tools to use it, whoever develops for linux was mostly ignored after kylix. Note that I didn't even mentioned price and license. They improved it later, I heard. But seems more like the old case of too little too late. Most successful programming languages today are open source and multi-platform. Delphi was dependent on win32 for too long and it still is "too proprietary". You do the world a favor by porting your project to lazarus.

DesiLurker 4y ago
what I want is terminal based turbo-C++ ide with the plugin architecture of vscode and solid integration of code browsing. & yes I can do it with vim or emacs but I dont wanna.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  Now people have more modern versions of the UI, it should be possible.
kogus 4y ago
I worked with Delphi for several years, and it was the first IDE I used professionally. It was truly brilliant for developing Win32 and WinForms applications. I can honestly say that Delphi 5 was a better tool for building Windows apps than the latest versions Visual Studio, at least in terms of usability, responsiveness, and debugging. But man are you ever right about the compatibility issues! Upgrading from Delphi 5 to the (then current) Delphi 2005 was a total nightmare. Our codebase was about 600k lines, and I will never forget the trauma of trying to get it to just build in the newer version. The comparison with .NET codebases that "just work" from version to version is night and day, and sadly it's worth putting up with a laggy beast of an IDE to have that security around your projects.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Try to make .NET Framework random enterprise application just work on .NET Core.
CRConrad 4y ago
> Then it had to compete with "native tools". Did anyone see it as “not native” in its native environment, Windows? Weird. It was a straight continuation of Turbo Pascal and Borland C++, both as native as anything could be since DOS and Windows 3. I think you're just plain wrong there. I don't know anyone who saw Delphi and C++ Builder as “not native”.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  There are a couple of telltale signs for Delphi in older apps: one is the use of TBitBtn control which adds an image to the buttons, the other is the use of icons in menus. While both can be done via "raw" Win32 (or MFC), they are much more cumbersome whereas with Delphi it is done by simply picking an icon from the visual designer - especially for the button one since Windows does not have a control like that (it is a custom control by Delphi). In general my first thought whenever i saw a GUI with lots of icons at the time was that it was made using Delphi. Other toolkits added this sort of functionality so it doesn't look as out of place nowadays, but especially icons on buttons was kind of a Borland sign. In Win3.1 times it was even more apparent since Borland OWL had its own sort of "theme" for dialogs that had a textured and chiseled look with large 3D controls, so these apps stood out more. This was toned down in 32bit versions of OWL though it still used custom controls (check the button shape here[0] and how it looks a bit off compared to other buttons). Also Borland had a tendency to make their own icons for stuff that other programs used standardized icons for, often with very different symbols which also made them stand out and look weird. For example in the screenshot i linked at the first two icons are for open and save and the bolt icon is for running - those are from OWL. In Delphi the save was different (but still not a floppy) and the new and open icons were identical, a shining page of paper, except the open had words on it. Their "undo" icon was a red circle with a crossed line that in other apps would be something like "delete". Also FWIW i noticed that Neverwinter Nights' editor was made in Borland C++ Builder (i wrote the linked post) because the arrow icons used in it (visible in the screenshot in the post below the 3d viewport) are straight out of Borland C++ Builder. Though Bioware did make their own icons for other stuff. Again, nowadays these things do not stand out much, but back in the 90s/early 2000s when the Windows world was more uniform and developers did care about making applications that had the "Win9x" look they did. [0] https://i.imgur.com/0KqRLuA.png https://i.imgur.com/0KqRLuA.png

DesiLurker 4y ago

what I want is terminal based turbo-C++ ide with the plugin architecture of vscode and solid integration of code browsing. & yes I can do it with vim or emacs but I dont wanna.

stuaxo 4y ago
Now people have more modern versions of the UI, it should be possible.

kogus 4y ago

I worked with Delphi for several years, and it was the first IDE I used professionally. It was truly brilliant for developing Win32 and WinForms applications. I can honestly say that Delphi 5 was a better tool for building Windows apps than the latest versions Visual Studio, at least in terms of usability, responsiveness, and debugging. But man are you ever right about the compatibility issues! Upgrading from Delphi 5 to the (then current) Delphi 2005 was a total nightmare. Our codebase was about 600k lines, and I will never forget the trauma of trying to get it to just build in the newer version. The comparison with .NET codebases that "just work" from version to version is night and day, and sadly it's worth putting up with a laggy beast of an IDE to have that security around your projects.

pjmlp 4y ago
Try to make .NET Framework random enterprise application just work on .NET Core.

CRConrad 4y ago

> Then it had to compete with "native tools". Did anyone see it as “not native” in its native environment, Windows? Weird. It was a straight continuation of Turbo Pascal and Borland C++, both as native as anything could be since DOS and Windows 3. I think you're just plain wrong there. I don't know anyone who saw Delphi and C++ Builder as “not native”.

badsectoracula 4y ago
There are a couple of telltale signs for Delphi in older apps: one is the use of TBitBtn control which adds an image to the buttons, the other is the use of icons in menus. While both can be done via "raw" Win32 (or MFC), they are much more cumbersome whereas with Delphi it is done by simply picking an icon from the visual designer - especially for the button one since Windows does not have a control like that (it is a custom control by Delphi). In general my first thought whenever i saw a GUI with lots of icons at the time was that it was made using Delphi. Other toolkits added this sort of functionality so it doesn't look as out of place nowadays, but especially icons on buttons was kind of a Borland sign. In Win3.1 times it was even more apparent since Borland OWL had its own sort of "theme" for dialogs that had a textured and chiseled look with large 3D controls, so these apps stood out more. This was toned down in 32bit versions of OWL though it still used custom controls (check the button shape here[0] and how it looks a bit off compared to other buttons). Also Borland had a tendency to make their own icons for stuff that other programs used standardized icons for, often with very different symbols which also made them stand out and look weird. For example in the screenshot i linked at the first two icons are for open and save and the bolt icon is for running - those are from OWL. In Delphi the save was different (but still not a floppy) and the new and open icons were identical, a shining page of paper, except the open had words on it. Their "undo" icon was a red circle with a crossed line that in other apps would be something like "delete". Also FWIW i noticed that Neverwinter Nights' editor was made in Borland C++ Builder (i wrote the linked post) because the arrow icons used in it (visible in the screenshot in the post below the 3d viewport) are straight out of Borland C++ Builder. Though Bioware did make their own icons for other stuff. Again, nowadays these things do not stand out much, but back in the 90s/early 2000s when the Windows world was more uniform and developers did care about making applications that had the "Win9x" look they did. [0] https://i.imgur.com/0KqRLuA.png https://i.imgur.com/0KqRLuA.png