8 ms·

Delphi 11 and C++Builder 11 Community Editions Released

132 points by mariuz 4y ago

zabzonk 4y ago
well, this is good to see, although imho Embarcadero have been pretty disasterous owners of the delphi brand and technologies.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Yeah. They were way late on 64-bit support. Yeah, most of us didn't need 64-bit but it was devastating to those who did (note that integrating with a 64-bit application means you need 64-bit support.) That told us we couldn't count on them--from that point on I never started a new project in Delphi and I didn't even reinstall it the last time I rebuilt my machine. C# copied most of the good stuff from Delphi (and, unlike C++, didn't retain the minefield that is C) and since then has gotten almost everything Delphi had. The only thing that comes to mind that C# doesn't have arrays that aren't zero-based. (Delphi supports arrays with arbitrary bounds and supports arrays based on an enum. In C# I'm always casting enums to ints to use them.) Why would I look back??
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Minus the AOT compilation (NGEN was never taken seriously, and MDIL/.NET native were only for store apps) and we had to wait until C# 7 for the seeds from Midori to give back the low level programing capabilities from Delphi. On the AOT front, .NET 8 still won't be able to cover all .NET workloads.
  - t00 4y ago
    C# also does not have interface implementation delegation which would be a nice to have. Unfortunately both C# and Object Pascal do not support composition over inheritance paradigm well.
yazzku 4y ago
A windows-exclusive IDE for building GUIs for Windows and iOS. The community edition requires a phone number. If it weren't for the iOS bit, I'd say these guys are stuck in the 90s.
- nottorp 4y ago
  Last time something about the ghosts of Delphi/C++ Builder was posted here a few people mentioned very aggressive marketing and licensing. So I guess the phone number is there so they can threaten you into buying a license.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Ever heard of Visual Studio, XCode, Microchip,...?
zerr 4y ago
No x64 Android, no macOS and no Linux support in C++Builder, unfortunately. It could have been a nice solution for cross-platform open source apps, boosting its adoption.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  > It could have been a nice solution for cross-platform open source apps, boosting its adoption. I don't think anything "as proprietary as delphi" could be a "nice solution for cross-platform open source apps".
- ivanmontillam 4y ago
  I literally came here to write this comment. I don't want to be as severe as saying "they botched a release that otherwise could have been gamechanger," but it's very hard to deny x64 Android support is something I've been looking for in a long time from Embarcadero. I jumped straight into the Feature Matrix and got disappointed. Back in my childhood and teenage years I played with Delphi until Delphi 7 Enterprise, after that the IDE got too heavy for my old computer (the XE release days). Today I have more than enough capable laptop and I don't feel like playing with Delphi anymore because I just moved on, but C++ is a language I appreciate and I'd like to take seriously for mobile development[0]. I'll start to think they whether they are seriously behind in technology to advance the C++ libraries and compiler to these platforms (which makes them, incompetent in terms of market strategy? underfunded?) or that they are deliberately hindering C++Builder, which has always been 2nd-class in front of Delphi (which shoots themselves in the foot?). It's so unfortunate they couldn't/didn't release x64 Android support on this C++Builder release. I'm not saying Delphi should die, as I said previously: Delphi is the language that got me into programming, before it made me go away thanks to its heavy IDE back then... I loved Delphi, but I don't want to go back to it just to develop mobile apps. I guess I'll keep on my road to Flutter and reading this launch post was just a 5-minute distraction. -- [0]: I'm well aware I can use Java or Kotlin and then jump into Android NDK, yeah... I just miss using a RAD-type IDE.
  - IYasha 4y ago
    To be fair, C++ was never their primary focus. Everything from Borland was Pascal-oriented, even C++ Builder's GUI and components were Delphi-based. Quality of Builder vs. Delphi was worse, compiler performance too. Visual Studio 6 started beating Builder in every aspect except ease of GUI design.
shimonabi 4y ago
They should pay someone to create a good modern tutorial/book how to develop real commercial applications, not just include code of trivial examples. I'm using C++ Builder in my day job and the documentation is sparse, with very few examples and most recent books are from the early 2000's.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Alternatively try to look at C++/WinRT with WinUI, and you will get an appreciation for C++ Builder. Microsoft still hasn't managed to offer anything similar for C++ (other than the shortly lived C++/CX) in 25 years. Although I do agree the documentation is awful, specially when compared with the old Borland printed manuals.
blibble 4y ago
> You or your company must have revenues less than US$5,000. seems a bit low
- qorrect 4y ago
  Embarcadero is in the business of milking this dead product for all the juice that's left in it. I'd in no way _start_ a business using embarcadero, it's pretty much strictly for legacy products.
  - langfan 4y ago
    Idera
    - qorrect 4y ago
      Oh wow they have a bunch of stuff. I won a Sencha Mobile contest once, an eternity ago, and the website was hosted on the designers server (I met him on the sencha forums). We had a cron script to scrape twitter, and that cron job is still running and sending me emails, and I haven't been able to get a hold of him since. It's been sending me emails every 60 seconds for a decade with no way to for me to turn it off. Chris if you're reading this, please clear the cron job on blackspade.
      - mardifoufs 4y ago
        That's amazing! Is it still actually managing to scrape some data after all these years? Or do you just get emails with nothing in them?
        qorrect 4y ago
        Sorry that should have said the cron job is still sending me emails. No he uninstalled python at some point and it's just telling me that it's missing. I'll try to see how long it ran successfully though.
minsight 4y ago
Embarcadero was bought out by Idera, who has a long history of buying out niche-y software development companies and offshoring development while wringing every last possible dollar out of the now-declining carcass. If you're looking for relevance or innovation, look elsewhere.
- kej 4y ago
  To be fair it's not like Delphi saw a bunch of innovation under Embarcadero, either.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Embarcadero was bought out by Idera, who has a long history of buying out niche-y software development companies and offshoring development while wringing every last possible dollar out of the now-declining carcass. If you’re looking for relevance or innovation, look elsewhere. Not sure that differs from what Embarcadero’s been doing with the devtools unit it bought from Borland for the last 15 years by much, though.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  They're the people who killed Travis too, right?
  - minsight 4y ago
    Yep.
pascal_wizzard 4y ago
is v11 still 32 bit?
- shipit2030 4y ago
  it should support 64 bit
  - unnouinceput 4y ago
    it does
- unnouinceput 4y ago
  Yes. It has full 64 bit support though (both linker and debugger) + rest of major OS'es as compiling target.
FpUser 4y ago
If one is looking for "free" multiplatform (both - IDE and produced executables) Delphi they're much better off using open source counterpart - Lazarus. The debugger is not as good but it is free, runs on many platforms. I successfully used it on Windows, Linux (PC and Raspberry Pi) and no stupid terms attached (like this $5000 revenue).
mtkd 4y ago
A no-cruft Ruby backed version of Delphi with full cross-platform support would clean up right now
cultofmetatron 4y ago
embarcadero would make an absolute killing if they made something like c++ builder but for rust. They have the resources to make their own cross platform gui library and make it integrated into their IDE.
- bloblaw 4y ago
  THIS!! A high-quality cross-platform GUI toolkit that can be built using Delphi's RAD designer would be a huge hit in the market, IMHO. There is literally nothing that does this now.
- pipologist 4y ago
  Rust is a small blip in the radar compared to C/C++ even Pascal, and its adoption has stagnated. The hype surrounding it just gives the impression of a wide userbase. Yeah it’s used in the industry but mostly for niche security related things. But even there, if you really need safety-critical security, use spark or certified (misra, autosar, sei cert) C/C++.
  - cultofmetatron 4y ago
    > Rust is a small blip in the radar compared to C/C++ even Pascal, c++ sure, but Pascal? rust is being actively integrated into the linux kernel and windows libraries. Thats not even including surrealdb or any of the other crypto projects out there.
nenadst 4y ago
from their website ".... can now enjoy the milestone innovations of the 11 Alexandria Pro edition.." which means that you cannot use "Client-Server" databases (Mysql, Postgres, etc.), only localhost access is supported. you can use ZeosLib etc. but its just one more hurdle to take.
dvh 4y ago
If you want to use SQL then $4400 per seat and subsequent years $1000 per seat.
- omnibrain 4y ago
  If you want to use the built in stuff (FireDAC?). Depending on the DBMS you use there are open source components or you could license UniDAC starting from $300.
ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
"the robust and easy-to-learn Delphi language" Which is Pascal, isn't it?
- notimetorelax 4y ago
  Pretty much, with pointers and Objects. Delphi is actually surprisingly easy to learn and the environment allows to put something together very quickly.
  - ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
    That was my experience too. I inherited a non-trivial Delphi project in the mid-to-late '90s and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I could be productive in it. To be fair, I did have a Pascal class in college. Never thought I'd see it again, but it paid off. Can't say the same for COBOL, once I left Andersen Consulting and its aerospace & defense clients.
- olliej 4y ago
  It's object pascal, dating to before there were any other object pascals. These days just use free pascal if you want pascal, object or otherwise.[1] The primary historic benefit of Delphi was the vastly superior IDE and UI layout engine (the VCL in general) to most other environments of the era, coupled with apparently very good integration with oracle DBs (where it gets its name)[2]. I'm not super convinced those arguments still apply today. [1] Delphi has a few additional bits but mostly just support for the VCL, IDE, etc - in c compilers these would be attributes, whereas Delphi uses language level keywords. [2] There's also compile time I guess, but .NET basically got MS to the same ballpark with C# and VB.net (the latter also making "real" apps in VB possible, though I think the general dismissal of VB < VB.net isn't super fair).
  - jonsen 4y ago
    > It's object pascal, dating to before there were any other object pascals. "The language was originally developed by Apple Computer": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal
hosteur 4y ago
Why would I use this over Lazarus or CodeTyphon? Both are free and open source.
xony 4y ago
[dead]
dmitrybrant 4y ago
Like so many other programmers of a certain age, I cut my teeth on Borland IDEs in the late 90s, building software for Windows 9x, which was a time when Borland was absolutely crushing it with tools that were light years ahead of Microsoft's own offerings at the time. It makes me so sad that Borland tools are squarely in the dustbin of history, and are now maintained almost exclusively for legacy customers. I would love to read some kind of retrospective (a book, a series of blogs, etc) on the downfall of Borland and what exact business circumstances led to its irrelevance.
- yobbo 4y ago
  Probably technology shift; the apps that used to be delphi/visual basic became web apps in java, dotnet, or php, and those were free.
- dt3ft 4y ago
  As someone who got started with Delphi 2.0, I can tell you what killed it for me: the release of .net and visual studio. I looked back a few times, but always went back to visual studio.
- tabtab 4y ago
  There's always Lazarus, a more or less Delphi clone. Being open-source, it's harder for a greedy or incompetent vendor to yank the carpet out from under your org. I've considered abandoning web-dev for Delphi/Lazarus. The web is a lousy fit for CRUD/GUI. React etc. are Spruce Gooses. (We need a dynamic over-http markup standard, kind of like a friendlier and XML version of QML.)
  - dt3ft 4y ago
    I’m considering this too. I tried writing some test using react testing library and jest, but in order to debug my test and see actual html that the test was rendering, turns out you either have to log the output or use jest-preview which is in alpha to say the least. Documentation, getting started… all of it is so immature and working half-ways that I can’t help but wonder what are we doing with our lives?
- 4y ago
imagine99 4y ago
Finally, it's about time that Embarcadero remembers again what used to make Delphi great: Its community! I recently gave Delphi 11 a try again and it is eminently usable for both cross-plattform development and for web and Windows. Built a couple of quick & beautiful apps over a weekend and it got me determined to use Delphi more and more now. It has several ChatGPT plugins available for the IDE which work quite well and speed up development especially for someone like me who is a bit rusty, not having used it for some years. The component ecosystem is amazingly still thriving, with companies like TMS and others offering tons of great (and, for academia, free) ready-to-use components for everything you need these days, from HTML components, full SIP servers, WebView2 integration, SVG support to one-click AWS and Azure integration etc. Such an immense timesaver for anyone wanting to create beautiful GUI apps, too. I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed properties without scrolling (that would save so much time when naming a bunch of components, setting captions or adjusting height and width). Never understood why such an obvious and simple feature was never implemented. The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup, with GUI settings, installed components etc. (similar to how Adobe InDesign lets you package projects with all font files, graphics etc. included), so you can save them along with a project. I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again. Oh well, maybe one day. Anyway, so great to be able to do Rapid Application Development once again, the latest Delphi is a win, maybe Embarcadero finally saw the light again. Fingers crossed.
- unnouinceput 4y ago
  1: "I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed..." I recommend you install GExperts. It's a free, sources included, nifty utility that greatly improves Delphi IDE. 2: "The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup...." ... "....I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again" Those are 2 different things. For 1st part, get a docker container / VirtualBox / VMware machine and you can get everything in the snapshot way. I have a VMWare machine from 2007 with Delphi 7 and tons of components from that era, that works like a charm to this day. For 2nd part, to get latest version of components for latest version of Delphi - well, there is a GetIt package manager built in Delphi directly or you can just get the components from their vendors and use their installer. All major Delphi component vendors (TMS, DevExpress, ReportBuilder, etc) have that. Have fun, I know I do everyday in Delphi. I am a freelancer for 13 years already and 90% of my projects are in Delphi.
nazgulsenpai 4y ago
> The Community Edition license applies solely if Licensee cumulative annual revenue (of the for-profit organization, the government entity or the individual developer) or any donations (of the non-profit organization) does not exceed USD $5,000.00 (or the equivalent in other currencies) (the "Threshold"). If Licensee is an individual developer, the revenue of all contract work performed by developer in one calendar year may not exceed the Threshold (whether or not the Community Edition is used for all projects). For example, a developer who receives payment of $5,000.00 for a single project (or more than $5,000.00 for multiple projects) even if such engagements do not anticipate the use of the Community Edition, is not allowed to use the Community Edition. In addition, a developer building solely an app store application would not be allowed to use the Community Edition once the app store revenue reaches a revenue of $5,000.00 or more in a year. How generous.
- bguebert 4y ago
  For comparison, I think the visual studio community edition has a revenue limit of $1 million.
kernal 4y ago
>If you're a small company or organization with up to US$5,000 per year in revenue, you can also use the Delphi CE. Once your company's total revenue reaches US$5,000, or your team expands to more than five developers, you can move up to an unrestricted commercial license with Professional edition. OFFS.
MrAlex94 4y ago
My father has been developing a Delphi CRUD application for nearly 25 years now as a hobby. It’s quite fascinating—he never saw any reason to change languages or environments, as they have always done what he needed them to do. This release is great as he’s just moved over to a HiDPI screen and Delphi 11 automatically deals with the awkward sizing issues that come with that, but he was stuck on Delphi 10.3 manually updating every component (trying to anyway, the documentation is SO poor for it)! I called him when I read this with the good news, and he sounded quite excited by the prospect of not needing to do that anymore!
- copperx 4y ago
  Nice! What is the application about, if I might ask?
  - MrAlex94 4y ago
    He worked in the garment industry, for a company that would manufacture clothes for Inditex etc. The programme has a lot of sections. From what I recall: A records module for all the fabrics used, all the designs the designers would come up with, and all the trimmings. The styles module "compiles" the styles and garments; the orders module keeps track of the amounts of orders placed by the customer and starts the preparing to manufacture process. Then there are quite a few different report modules that deal with things in the manufacturing stages, such as truck loading (say a truck is on the way to Morocco, it has picked up the garments and is on the way back, etc.). Then it also deals with samples the customer requests (as you would get at a fabric or paint shop), and the list goes on! Essentially, it is a digital replacement for all the manual processes the company would have to go through (and as I recall, it was all quite manual!). Something bespoke but where the scope is actually quite huge for one person to do. Even though he’s retired now, he’s still working on it!
giancarlostoro 4y ago
Back in the 00s Delphi and VB6 were really popular especially with teens on the web such as myself at the time. I wanted to try Delphi back a few years because it seems to build reasonable UIs without me having to use Qt (not really excited at C++) or Electron. The dang price is several thousands of dollars, I have zero interest in paying thousands for a hobby tool.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  I remember a friend telling me that they'd learned Delphi or Pascal school in the 1990s - they didn't have anything bad to say about it but deep down they wondered what something like a game or web browser was written in as they didn't seem like they were written in Delphi or Pascal.
mise_en_place 4y ago
Not to be contrarian for the sake of it, but C++ might become a dead language too, if they don’t get their act together and modernize.
rgmerk 4y ago
While there is nothing inherently wrong with the language itself, nobody in their right minds would develop anything new in it. The dev environment and GUI builder are really nice for building desktop windows apps, 2002-style. But the world has moved on just a little from that. You’re also never going to get modern software engineering tools for it. To consider just the flavour of the month, GitHub Copilot is never going to be much use in Delphi.
locusm 4y ago
Shout out to anyone that worked on the Jedi Component Lib :) I think I left around C++ Builder 6 or 7 for the painfully slow performing world of .Net
- IYasha 4y ago
  > painfully slow performing world Builder 7 was getting there too :)
chadcmulligan 4y ago
For those who are Delphi curious you can use the wonderful skia4delphi [1] with firemonkey which gives you high quality graphics for all fire monkey components. So you can use all the existing components and commercial components and they'll render perfectly. Once you start using it you'll realise how awful and painful web development is. Fire monkey is the component library that works across windows (32 and 64 bit)/Mac/iOS/Android, replaces the old VCL windows only library. https://github.com/skia4delphi/skia4delphi https://github.com/skia4delphi/skia4delphi
foxylad 4y ago
Turbo C -> C++ Builder -> LAMP -> Appengine. A career in one line.
- OnlyMortal 4y ago
  Turbo C was great for DOS. I was very productive with it, way back when.

132 points by mariuz 4y ago

well, this is good to see, although imho Embarcadero have been pretty disasterous owners of the delphi brand and technologies.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
Yeah. They were way late on 64-bit support. Yeah, most of us didn't need 64-bit but it was devastating to those who did (note that integrating with a 64-bit application means you need 64-bit support.) That told us we couldn't count on them--from that point on I never started a new project in Delphi and I didn't even reinstall it the last time I rebuilt my machine. C# copied most of the good stuff from Delphi (and, unlike C++, didn't retain the minefield that is C) and since then has gotten almost everything Delphi had. The only thing that comes to mind that C# doesn't have arrays that aren't zero-based. (Delphi supports arrays with arbitrary bounds and supports arrays based on an enum. In C# I'm always casting enums to ints to use them.) Why would I look back??
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Minus the AOT compilation (NGEN was never taken seriously, and MDIL/.NET native were only for store apps) and we had to wait until C# 7 for the seeds from Midori to give back the low level programing capabilities from Delphi. On the AOT front, .NET 8 still won't be able to cover all .NET workloads.
- t00 4y ago
  C# also does not have interface implementation delegation which would be a nice to have. Unfortunately both C# and Object Pascal do not support composition over inheritance paradigm well.

yazzku 4y ago

A windows-exclusive IDE for building GUIs for Windows and iOS. The community edition requires a phone number. If it weren't for the iOS bit, I'd say these guys are stuck in the 90s.

nottorp 4y ago
Last time something about the ghosts of Delphi/C++ Builder was posted here a few people mentioned very aggressive marketing and licensing. So I guess the phone number is there so they can threaten you into buying a license.
pjmlp 4y ago
Ever heard of Visual Studio, XCode, Microchip,...?

zerr 4y ago

No x64 Android, no macOS and no Linux support in C++Builder, unfortunately. It could have been a nice solution for cross-platform open source apps, boosting its adoption.

marcodiego 4y ago
> It could have been a nice solution for cross-platform open source apps, boosting its adoption. I don't think anything "as proprietary as delphi" could be a "nice solution for cross-platform open source apps".
ivanmontillam 4y ago
I literally came here to write this comment. I don't want to be as severe as saying "they botched a release that otherwise could have been gamechanger," but it's very hard to deny x64 Android support is something I've been looking for in a long time from Embarcadero. I jumped straight into the Feature Matrix and got disappointed. Back in my childhood and teenage years I played with Delphi until Delphi 7 Enterprise, after that the IDE got too heavy for my old computer (the XE release days). Today I have more than enough capable laptop and I don't feel like playing with Delphi anymore because I just moved on, but C++ is a language I appreciate and I'd like to take seriously for mobile development[0]. I'll start to think they whether they are seriously behind in technology to advance the C++ libraries and compiler to these platforms (which makes them, incompetent in terms of market strategy? underfunded?) or that they are deliberately hindering C++Builder, which has always been 2nd-class in front of Delphi (which shoots themselves in the foot?). It's so unfortunate they couldn't/didn't release x64 Android support on this C++Builder release. I'm not saying Delphi should die, as I said previously: Delphi is the language that got me into programming, before it made me go away thanks to its heavy IDE back then... I loved Delphi, but I don't want to go back to it just to develop mobile apps. I guess I'll keep on my road to Flutter and reading this launch post was just a 5-minute distraction. -- [0]: I'm well aware I can use Java or Kotlin and then jump into Android NDK, yeah... I just miss using a RAD-type IDE.
- IYasha 4y ago
  To be fair, C++ was never their primary focus. Everything from Borland was Pascal-oriented, even C++ Builder's GUI and components were Delphi-based. Quality of Builder vs. Delphi was worse, compiler performance too. Visual Studio 6 started beating Builder in every aspect except ease of GUI design.

shimonabi 4y ago

They should pay someone to create a good modern tutorial/book how to develop real commercial applications, not just include code of trivial examples. I'm using C++ Builder in my day job and the documentation is sparse, with very few examples and most recent books are from the early 2000's.

pjmlp 4y ago
Alternatively try to look at C++/WinRT with WinUI, and you will get an appreciation for C++ Builder. Microsoft still hasn't managed to offer anything similar for C++ (other than the shortly lived C++/CX) in 25 years. Although I do agree the documentation is awful, specially when compared with the old Borland printed manuals.

blibble 4y ago

> You or your company must have revenues less than US$5,000. seems a bit low

qorrect 4y ago
Embarcadero is in the business of milking this dead product for all the juice that's left in it. I'd in no way _start_ a business using embarcadero, it's pretty much strictly for legacy products.
- langfan 4y ago
  Idera
  - qorrect 4y ago
    Oh wow they have a bunch of stuff. I won a Sencha Mobile contest once, an eternity ago, and the website was hosted on the designers server (I met him on the sencha forums). We had a cron script to scrape twitter, and that cron job is still running and sending me emails, and I haven't been able to get a hold of him since. It's been sending me emails every 60 seconds for a decade with no way to for me to turn it off. Chris if you're reading this, please clear the cron job on blackspade.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      That's amazing! Is it still actually managing to scrape some data after all these years? Or do you just get emails with nothing in them?
      - qorrect 4y ago
        Sorry that should have said the cron job is still sending me emails. No he uninstalled python at some point and it's just telling me that it's missing. I'll try to see how long it ran successfully though.

minsight 4y ago

Embarcadero was bought out by Idera, who has a long history of buying out niche-y software development companies and offshoring development while wringing every last possible dollar out of the now-declining carcass. If you're looking for relevance or innovation, look elsewhere.

kej 4y ago
To be fair it's not like Delphi saw a bunch of innovation under Embarcadero, either.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Embarcadero was bought out by Idera, who has a long history of buying out niche-y software development companies and offshoring development while wringing every last possible dollar out of the now-declining carcass. If you’re looking for relevance or innovation, look elsewhere. Not sure that differs from what Embarcadero’s been doing with the devtools unit it bought from Borland for the last 15 years by much, though.
Nullabillity 4y ago
They're the people who killed Travis too, right?
- minsight 4y ago
  Yep.

pascal_wizzard 4y ago

is v11 still 32 bit?

shipit2030 4y ago
it should support 64 bit
- unnouinceput 4y ago
  it does
unnouinceput 4y ago
Yes. It has full 64 bit support though (both linker and debugger) + rest of major OS'es as compiling target.

FpUser 4y ago

If one is looking for "free" multiplatform (both - IDE and produced executables) Delphi they're much better off using open source counterpart - Lazarus. The debugger is not as good but it is free, runs on many platforms. I successfully used it on Windows, Linux (PC and Raspberry Pi) and no stupid terms attached (like this $5000 revenue).

mtkd 4y ago

A no-cruft Ruby backed version of Delphi with full cross-platform support would clean up right now

cultofmetatron 4y ago

embarcadero would make an absolute killing if they made something like c++ builder but for rust. They have the resources to make their own cross platform gui library and make it integrated into their IDE.

bloblaw 4y ago
THIS!! A high-quality cross-platform GUI toolkit that can be built using Delphi's RAD designer would be a huge hit in the market, IMHO. There is literally nothing that does this now.
pipologist 4y ago
Rust is a small blip in the radar compared to C/C++ even Pascal, and its adoption has stagnated. The hype surrounding it just gives the impression of a wide userbase. Yeah it’s used in the industry but mostly for niche security related things. But even there, if you really need safety-critical security, use spark or certified (misra, autosar, sei cert) C/C++.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  > Rust is a small blip in the radar compared to C/C++ even Pascal, c++ sure, but Pascal? rust is being actively integrated into the linux kernel and windows libraries. Thats not even including surrealdb or any of the other crypto projects out there.

nenadst 4y ago

from their website ".... can now enjoy the milestone innovations of the 11 Alexandria Pro edition.." which means that you cannot use "Client-Server" databases (Mysql, Postgres, etc.), only localhost access is supported. you can use ZeosLib etc. but its just one more hurdle to take.

dvh 4y ago

If you want to use SQL then $4400 per seat and subsequent years $1000 per seat.

omnibrain 4y ago
If you want to use the built in stuff (FireDAC?). Depending on the DBMS you use there are open source components or you could license UniDAC starting from $300.

ShadowBanThis01 4y ago

"the robust and easy-to-learn Delphi language" Which is Pascal, isn't it?

notimetorelax 4y ago
Pretty much, with pointers and Objects. Delphi is actually surprisingly easy to learn and the environment allows to put something together very quickly.
- ShadowBanThis01 4y ago
  That was my experience too. I inherited a non-trivial Delphi project in the mid-to-late '90s and was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I could be productive in it. To be fair, I did have a Pascal class in college. Never thought I'd see it again, but it paid off. Can't say the same for COBOL, once I left Andersen Consulting and its aerospace & defense clients.
olliej 4y ago
It's object pascal, dating to before there were any other object pascals. These days just use free pascal if you want pascal, object or otherwise.[1] The primary historic benefit of Delphi was the vastly superior IDE and UI layout engine (the VCL in general) to most other environments of the era, coupled with apparently very good integration with oracle DBs (where it gets its name)[2]. I'm not super convinced those arguments still apply today. [1] Delphi has a few additional bits but mostly just support for the VCL, IDE, etc - in c compilers these would be attributes, whereas Delphi uses language level keywords. [2] There's also compile time I guess, but .NET basically got MS to the same ballpark with C# and VB.net (the latter also making "real" apps in VB possible, though I think the general dismissal of VB < VB.net isn't super fair).
- jonsen 4y ago
  > It's object pascal, dating to before there were any other object pascals. "The language was originally developed by Apple Computer": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Pascal

hosteur 4y ago

Why would I use this over Lazarus or CodeTyphon? Both are free and open source.

xony 4y ago

[dead]

dmitrybrant 4y ago

Like so many other programmers of a certain age, I cut my teeth on Borland IDEs in the late 90s, building software for Windows 9x, which was a time when Borland was absolutely crushing it with tools that were light years ahead of Microsoft's own offerings at the time. It makes me so sad that Borland tools are squarely in the dustbin of history, and are now maintained almost exclusively for legacy customers. I would love to read some kind of retrospective (a book, a series of blogs, etc) on the downfall of Borland and what exact business circumstances led to its irrelevance.

yobbo 4y ago
Probably technology shift; the apps that used to be delphi/visual basic became web apps in java, dotnet, or php, and those were free.
dt3ft 4y ago
As someone who got started with Delphi 2.0, I can tell you what killed it for me: the release of .net and visual studio. I looked back a few times, but always went back to visual studio.
tabtab 4y ago
There's always Lazarus, a more or less Delphi clone. Being open-source, it's harder for a greedy or incompetent vendor to yank the carpet out from under your org. I've considered abandoning web-dev for Delphi/Lazarus. The web is a lousy fit for CRUD/GUI. React etc. are Spruce Gooses. (We need a dynamic over-http markup standard, kind of like a friendlier and XML version of QML.)
- dt3ft 4y ago
  I’m considering this too. I tried writing some test using react testing library and jest, but in order to debug my test and see actual html that the test was rendering, turns out you either have to log the output or use jest-preview which is in alpha to say the least. Documentation, getting started… all of it is so immature and working half-ways that I can’t help but wonder what are we doing with our lives?
4y ago

imagine99 4y ago

Finally, it's about time that Embarcadero remembers again what used to make Delphi great: Its community! I recently gave Delphi 11 a try again and it is eminently usable for both cross-plattform development and for web and Windows. Built a couple of quick & beautiful apps over a weekend and it got me determined to use Delphi more and more now. It has several ChatGPT plugins available for the IDE which work quite well and speed up development especially for someone like me who is a bit rusty, not having used it for some years. The component ecosystem is amazingly still thriving, with companies like TMS and others offering tons of great (and, for academia, free) ready-to-use components for everything you need these days, from HTML components, full SIP servers, WebView2 integration, SVG support to one-click AWS and Azure integration etc. Such an immense timesaver for anyone wanting to create beautiful GUI apps, too. I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed properties without scrolling (that would save so much time when naming a bunch of components, setting captions or adjusting height and width). Never understood why such an obvious and simple feature was never implemented. The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup, with GUI settings, installed components etc. (similar to how Adobe InDesign lets you package projects with all font files, graphics etc. included), so you can save them along with a project. I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again. Oh well, maybe one day. Anyway, so great to be able to do Rapid Application Development once again, the latest Delphi is a win, maybe Embarcadero finally saw the light again. Fingers crossed.

unnouinceput 4y ago
1: "I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed..." I recommend you install GExperts. It's a free, sources included, nifty utility that greatly improves Delphi IDE. 2: "The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup...." ... "....I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again" Those are 2 different things. For 1st part, get a docker container / VirtualBox / VMware machine and you can get everything in the snapshot way. I have a VMWare machine from 2007 with Delphi 7 and tons of components from that era, that works like a charm to this day. For 2nd part, to get latest version of components for latest version of Delphi - well, there is a GetIt package manager built in Delphi directly or you can just get the components from their vendors and use their installer. All major Delphi component vendors (TMS, DevExpress, ReportBuilder, etc) have that. Have fun, I know I do everyday in Delphi. I am a freelancer for 13 years already and 90% of my projects are in Delphi.

nazgulsenpai 4y ago

> The Community Edition license applies solely if Licensee cumulative annual revenue (of the for-profit organization, the government entity or the individual developer) or any donations (of the non-profit organization) does not exceed USD $5,000.00 (or the equivalent in other currencies) (the "Threshold"). If Licensee is an individual developer, the revenue of all contract work performed by developer in one calendar year may not exceed the Threshold (whether or not the Community Edition is used for all projects). For example, a developer who receives payment of $5,000.00 for a single project (or more than $5,000.00 for multiple projects) even if such engagements do not anticipate the use of the Community Edition, is not allowed to use the Community Edition. In addition, a developer building solely an app store application would not be allowed to use the Community Edition once the app store revenue reaches a revenue of $5,000.00 or more in a year. How generous.

bguebert 4y ago
For comparison, I think the visual studio community edition has a revenue limit of $1 million.

kernal 4y ago

>If you're a small company or organization with up to US$5,000 per year in revenue, you can also use the Delphi CE. Once your company's total revenue reaches US$5,000, or your team expands to more than five developers, you can move up to an unrestricted commercial license with Professional edition. OFFS.

MrAlex94 4y ago

My father has been developing a Delphi CRUD application for nearly 25 years now as a hobby. It’s quite fascinating—he never saw any reason to change languages or environments, as they have always done what he needed them to do. This release is great as he’s just moved over to a HiDPI screen and Delphi 11 automatically deals with the awkward sizing issues that come with that, but he was stuck on Delphi 10.3 manually updating every component (trying to anyway, the documentation is SO poor for it)! I called him when I read this with the good news, and he sounded quite excited by the prospect of not needing to do that anymore!

copperx 4y ago
Nice! What is the application about, if I might ask?
- MrAlex94 4y ago
  He worked in the garment industry, for a company that would manufacture clothes for Inditex etc. The programme has a lot of sections. From what I recall: A records module for all the fabrics used, all the designs the designers would come up with, and all the trimmings. The styles module "compiles" the styles and garments; the orders module keeps track of the amounts of orders placed by the customer and starts the preparing to manufacture process. Then there are quite a few different report modules that deal with things in the manufacturing stages, such as truck loading (say a truck is on the way to Morocco, it has picked up the garments and is on the way back, etc.). Then it also deals with samples the customer requests (as you would get at a fabric or paint shop), and the list goes on! Essentially, it is a digital replacement for all the manual processes the company would have to go through (and as I recall, it was all quite manual!). Something bespoke but where the scope is actually quite huge for one person to do. Even though he’s retired now, he’s still working on it!

giancarlostoro 4y ago

Back in the 00s Delphi and VB6 were really popular especially with teens on the web such as myself at the time. I wanted to try Delphi back a few years because it seems to build reasonable UIs without me having to use Qt (not really excited at C++) or Electron. The dang price is several thousands of dollars, I have zero interest in paying thousands for a hobby tool.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
I remember a friend telling me that they'd learned Delphi or Pascal school in the 1990s - they didn't have anything bad to say about it but deep down they wondered what something like a game or web browser was written in as they didn't seem like they were written in Delphi or Pascal.

mise_en_place 4y ago

Not to be contrarian for the sake of it, but C++ might become a dead language too, if they don’t get their act together and modernize.

rgmerk 4y ago

While there is nothing inherently wrong with the language itself, nobody in their right minds would develop anything new in it. The dev environment and GUI builder are really nice for building desktop windows apps, 2002-style. But the world has moved on just a little from that. You’re also never going to get modern software engineering tools for it. To consider just the flavour of the month, GitHub Copilot is never going to be much use in Delphi.

locusm 4y ago

Shout out to anyone that worked on the Jedi Component Lib :) I think I left around C++ Builder 6 or 7 for the painfully slow performing world of .Net

IYasha 4y ago
> painfully slow performing world Builder 7 was getting there too :)

chadcmulligan 4y ago

For those who are Delphi curious you can use the wonderful skia4delphi [1] with firemonkey which gives you high quality graphics for all fire monkey components. So you can use all the existing components and commercial components and they'll render perfectly. Once you start using it you'll realise how awful and painful web development is. Fire monkey is the component library that works across windows (32 and 64 bit)/Mac/iOS/Android, replaces the old VCL windows only library. https://github.com/skia4delphi/skia4delphi https://github.com/skia4delphi/skia4delphi

foxylad 4y ago

Turbo C -> C++ Builder -> LAMP -> Appengine. A career in one line.

OnlyMortal 4y ago
Turbo C was great for DOS. I was very productive with it, way back when.