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C++Builder 11 Community Edition
- DaOne256 3y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520504
- pjmlp 3y agoThe only VB like development experience for C++. Microsoft completely messed up the XAML / C++/CX development experience with internal politics, only to have the team responsible for C++/WinRT going on to have fun in Rust/WinRT, leaving the former in maintenance state.
- sirwhinesalot 3y agoI can definitely understand them wanting to drop custom C++ extensions, but it's a shame they can't figure out how to provide a nice development experience for their newer UI platforms. If only .NET actually works reasonably well with it (and there's a huge managed<->native overhead) maybe it should have just been WPF 2.0? Not that I would use WinUI anyway, microsoft cannot be trusted with UI frameworks anymore.
- pjmlp 3y agoThe custom C++ extensions argument is a very bad lame excuse, it isn't as if WinRT was ever going to be cross platform, or not every single C and C++ compiler used in production (not toy compilers) doesn't have their own set of extensions anyway. I also don't consider anything related to WinUI/UWP trustworthy for production development, and I used to advocate for it. Stuff like how .NET Native, C++/CX => C++/WinRT transition, UWP => WinUI were managed, is how they lost most of us that really liked WinRT.
- sirwhinesalot 3y agoAll of that is fair, it's not like C++/CX was all that different from needing to use Obj-C on macOS. I'm just saying I can accept their reasoning. Using only standard C++ is better in a vacuum, but only if nothing is lost in the transition. May I ask what your plan is regarding UI at this moment? I've given up and gone the web route (with Avalonia on my pocket in case my sanity gets dangerously low).
- pjmlp 3y agoSimilar plan, in 2019 I went back going to distributed systems/Web, where Microsoft technologies are one among many others that get used on a polyglot agency, the usual "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but often times better than a master of one.". For doing Windows stuff, I would rather advocate for Win32, Forms/WPF. In regards to C++ stuff, either C++ Builder if it fits the budget, or Qt. It is quite tragic that even MFC has a better development story than WinUI/C++.
- avodonosov 3y agoHow about .NET MAUI?
- pjmlp 3y agoThey decided to rewrite Xamarin.Forms, it uses WinUI on Windows, Catalyst on macOS, and VS4Mac is now officially dead and one has to use VSCode instead, and they are all into this Blazor Hybrid as well, with Web views. Take your own conclusions on its future.
- jahnu 3y agoSame. The previous company I worked for we went all in on UWP for our Windows SDK. An almost complete waste of time as Microsoft failed to deliver on their promises.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt is baffling to watch community calls and have them talk about rewrites and dropped tooling features as if it wasn't a big deal, being asked for the n-th time since Windows 8.
- ok123456 3y agoJust use MFC 4.2 imho.
- sitzkrieg 3y agohonestly using plain win32api or mfc is the most stable bet on the planet
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoThanks to Wine, it is probably the most stable way to make a Linux GUI program as well.
- rbanffy 3y agoCOBOL, CICS and 3270 interfaces. That's where the action isn't, which is great if you want APIs that remain stable for decades.
- pjmlp 3y agoAs noted in some of my comments, the way C++/WinRT have messed up the development with total disrespect for paying customers is incredible. To come back to your point, the aging MFC has better Visual Studio tooling than C++/WinRT will ever have, specially now after being deprecated. I would have fired the whole team responsible for C++/WinRT.
- rbanffy 3y agoI really, really, am baffled at how difficult it seems to have a GUI builder tool that outputs a description of the UI that a program can just load (or a compiler transform into a structure inside the program) as objects the program can use, handling events and pushing presentation information into it. That was pretty much what VB did, with immense success.
- dleslie 3y agoIt was easy to do in Win95 through to Win2k because the interface was consistent throughout. Then they started changing the interface guidelines, and toolkit, for every major release of windows; and sometimes several times during the life of a major release.
- rbanffy 3y agoThis is also baffling. A button, a text input, a checkbox, a drop list, a combo - they all have a "default" look in every Windows version since 2.0 (1 didn't have the drop list, IIRC). It shouldn't be difficult to make an abstract description of a dialog box look at home with a new version of the OS and, yet, digging through Windows 10's built-in apps you sometimes find things that you recognize as skinned versions of Windows NT 4 dialogs. That they look like NT 4 dialogs with the Windows 7 skin applied is disconcerting, at best.
- wolpoli 3y agoThe Office team used to pioneer (hard-code) the look and feel for the UI, and then the Windows team goes and implement the look and feel system wide in a generic way. Then somewhere along the way, the Windows team decided to hard-code the look and feel that you could now do an archeological dig through decades of UI.
- rbanffy 3y agoI find it revolting that it is hardcoded this way. A button should look like a button.
- germandiago 3y agoHow good is C++ Builder? Ever tried? I Saw It a couple of years ago and it looked good actually but noone seems to use it.
- pjmlp 3y agoLike I described, is like using VB for the GUI stuff, coupled with the C++ capabilities. Additionally it has a symbiotic relationship with Delphi, similarly to how C# and C++/CLI are integrated, only much better. Nowadays the compiler backend is based in clang.
- georgehaake 3y agoHistorically a great tool along with Delphi, with poor subsequent management/ownership since the very early 2000's.
- deaddodo 3y agoImagine classic Visual C++ with it's form builder (versus the modern WinRT stuff) and hooks...it's much like that. I would say the experience is a little smoother. I do remember the version I used to use had issues with the form builder to where getting exactly what you wanted was finicky (the rendered/preview version was never quite what the compiled version ended up as).
- pjmlp 3y agoIf only VC++ ever had a form builder for C++ like C++ Builder has been doing for 30 years.
- gavinray 3y ago> Come in thread > Ctrl+F "pjmlp" I was not disappointed.
- blinkingled 3y agoBorland's C++ compiler was _fast_. And I mean eye wateringly fast on crappy pre-AMD64 hardware. I wonder if it supports modern C++ today and is still faster than other compilers. (If I am not mistaken this new edition is a offshoot of that?) (Yeah I am not downloading the "Community" edition if I have to provide my name address and phone number. Really if your product needs mindshare and you offer community edition the least you can do is make it easily downloadable.)
- kwanbix 3y agoYou don't have an email for spam? And put any phone number.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blinkingled 3y agoI keep forgetting my spam email address/passwords lol I have a Google voice number for when I need to use it on forms but I have seen some websites don't accept it - there's ways to determine that it's VOIP it seems.
- ndiddy 3y agoI've downloaded one of their past community editions, their sales team will call and email you. They back off when you tell them you're not evaluating the product for your work, but it's still kind of annoying.
- kwanbix 3y agoSo you give them your real email, and not a for-all-the-registration-crap email? And you also give them your real phone number?
- blinkingled 3y agoYeah I figured as much
- 3y ago
- cfn 3y agoYou can only use this edition if you make less than 5000 USD and/or have less than 5 devs. If you do, licenses start at 1000 USD per year. Assuming a commercial app, of course.
- keepamovin 3y agoHow does this compare to developing in Obj-C or Swift for iOS? Is this like a cross-platform thing?
- coliveira 3y agoThe main problem with Borland C++ is that it is still a 32bit compiler.
- peterhull90 3y agoBorland C++ is a 32-bit compiler, I believe the latest version is 5.5 and it came out in about 2000. There is a newer version from Embarcadero, 7.20 from 2016[1]. The compiler in C++Builder is more modern and it will target 64-bit for Windows at least.[0] [0]: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/C%2B%2BBuilder_64-bit_Windows_Application_Development https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/C%2B... [1]: https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler
- kwanbix 3y ago"C++Builder includes compilers for Win32, Win64 and iOS" https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler
- deaddodo 3y agoThey say right on the release announcement that they have a clang-based compiler and that the system supports 64-bit binaries.
- pjmlp 3y agoWhich is why there is a new clang based compiler now.
- Narishma 3y agoThis is C++ Builder, not Borland C++.
- set_of_integer 3y ago[flagged]
- marcodiego 3y agoMy 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.
- georgehaake 3y agoDelphi 7, that was a lovely vintage...
- codewritinfool 3y agoDelphi 7 was / is fantastic. Soon after that, they went .NET and the wheels came off.
- msh 3y agoI think it was C# with winforms that broke the last oppotunity delphi had.
- anta40 3y agoI don't mind trying Delphi again since they support mobile targets (Android & iOS). Too bad the IDE itself only runs on Windows...
- notpushkin 3y ago
- matt3210 3y agoWhy this instead of clion?
- pjmlp 3y agoVB like development experience for C++.
- phendrenad2 3y agoI understand why there isn't a Mac version, but it's still a bit disappointing.
- nurettin 3y agoThe "community edition" version of delphi had no visual editor, no way to build a bpl and it was 32bit only. I don't know thos c++11 compiler's features, it isn't immediately apparent in the mobile site.
- sproketboy 3y ago[dead]
- aetherspawn 3y agoDoes this support macOS for apps? The website is a little unclear and “Windows and iOS” is a really odd combination of platform support. Aside, I have used this in the past for GUI on windows and it was amazing. Like .NET but native and better.