4 ms·

Delphi was a wonderful language in the late 90's for desktop application development. It was easy to build desktop applications quickly and was very fast for bo

by hvs 3y ago

Delphi was a wonderful language in the late 90's for desktop application development. It was easy to build desktop applications quickly and was very fast for both compiling and the executables it generated. Definitely a product of its time, but I look back on it fondly.

netule 3y ago
I got started in QBASIC as a kid, but it wasn’t until Delphi 4 that programming became something that I wanted to pursue as more than just a hobby. Though it’s been over 20 years since I touched Pascal, I owe my entire career to Borland and Delphi.
simpaticoder 3y ago
It turned out the distribution (and to some extent, ownership) problems eclipsed every other problem in software. This is why the web won, because it solves distribution and ownership immediately. The trade-off was/is that building software as easily as late 90's desktop applications is extremely difficult to do on the web; in fact, we're still not there. Surprisingly, no-one has made a Delphi (or Access) clone that runs on the web. It seems like we're getting there, but incredibly slowly and only asymptotically approaching that experience. On the bright-side, webapps have invented some novel and useful ways of writing applications that are in some ways superior to the old ways - the ideas behind React (in particular, rendering application state as a single function), or Redux (modeling application state as a monolithic, immutable object against which reducers run) may not have arisen if not for this shift. I'd also credit JavaScript with making functional programming mainstream, a great example of "worse is better". Another part of the issue may be that younger programmers are simply not aware of the DX of building with tools like Delphi or Access. And in turn, older programmers have forgotten the headaches of dealing with closed-source tools and the distribution headaches that came with them. (And the ones who are aware are themselves unaware of the DX of building with Smalltalk.) You cannot miss what you never experienced or do not know about.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  > Surprisingly, no-one has made a Delphi (or Access) clone that runs on the web. There have been a couple attempts but they were all closed source from small developers that died (the projects) once the developers couldn't convince anyone to pay for them. Ironically one of these attempts used Pascal too (IIRC it was using a fork of Free Pascal). There was also Microsoft's Web Forms which kinda did something similar in the early 2000s or so, though AFAIK it wasn't as "drop an exe and have it work" as programs made in Delphi for the desktop were.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    To note that Blazor is the new Web Forms.
- expazl 3y ago
  > It turned out the distribution (and to some extent, ownership) problems eclipsed every other problem in software. I have a different perspective. I see it more as a question about runtime environment. We still have 20y old Delphi applications in production, and distribution is trivial, corporate machines have software that just installs the apps the users need based on their roles, and they autoupdate etc. My team still hates them and want to replace them with webapps, even with no distribution or ownership issues. For us the big issue is the "it's not working for me, what could be wrong?" cases where you have to dedicate half a day or more of expert time trying to figure out which absurd corner of microsoft windows is causing issues on the particular intersection of that one application on that one entirely unique computer configuration (even after corporate management of software/policies etc), and of cause that one particular user, because what could they have done? Web apps have the benefit that they don't run on microsoft windows, they run on chrome (even if you use edge), and chrome is a much better operating system than windows will ever dream of being. It even fulfilled java's pipedream of being cross platform (well effectively from a user perspective anyway).
  - nogridbag 3y ago
    We've had a similar issue even with our sass webapp. It started with one user at one client where a single UI in our large SPA started encountered odd bugs. And then other employees in the same department started having the same exact issue. We spent a considerable amount of time investigating the issue with our company pushing back claiming it was an issue on their side. Eventually it escalated and we did a call with their users and management. I was able to successfully debug the issue, but their management was not that happy! The issue: Fantasy football Chrome extension their employees had installed which their IT department obviously did not authorize!

by hvs 3y ago

netule 3y ago

I got started in QBASIC as a kid, but it wasn’t until Delphi 4 that programming became something that I wanted to pursue as more than just a hobby. Though it’s been over 20 years since I touched Pascal, I owe my entire career to Borland and Delphi.

simpaticoder 3y ago

It turned out the distribution (and to some extent, ownership) problems eclipsed every other problem in software. This is why the web won, because it solves distribution and ownership immediately. The trade-off was/is that building software as easily as late 90's desktop applications is extremely difficult to do on the web; in fact, we're still not there. Surprisingly, no-one has made a Delphi (or Access) clone that runs on the web. It seems like we're getting there, but incredibly slowly and only asymptotically approaching that experience. On the bright-side, webapps have invented some novel and useful ways of writing applications that are in some ways superior to the old ways - the ideas behind React (in particular, rendering application state as a single function), or Redux (modeling application state as a monolithic, immutable object against which reducers run) may not have arisen if not for this shift. I'd also credit JavaScript with making functional programming mainstream, a great example of "worse is better". Another part of the issue may be that younger programmers are simply not aware of the DX of building with tools like Delphi or Access. And in turn, older programmers have forgotten the headaches of dealing with closed-source tools and the distribution headaches that came with them. (And the ones who are aware are themselves unaware of the DX of building with Smalltalk.) You cannot miss what you never experienced or do not know about.

badsectoracula 3y ago
> Surprisingly, no-one has made a Delphi (or Access) clone that runs on the web. There have been a couple attempts but they were all closed source from small developers that died (the projects) once the developers couldn't convince anyone to pay for them. Ironically one of these attempts used Pascal too (IIRC it was using a fork of Free Pascal). There was also Microsoft's Web Forms which kinda did something similar in the early 2000s or so, though AFAIK it wasn't as "drop an exe and have it work" as programs made in Delphi for the desktop were.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  To note that Blazor is the new Web Forms.
expazl 3y ago
> It turned out the distribution (and to some extent, ownership) problems eclipsed every other problem in software. I have a different perspective. I see it more as a question about runtime environment. We still have 20y old Delphi applications in production, and distribution is trivial, corporate machines have software that just installs the apps the users need based on their roles, and they autoupdate etc. My team still hates them and want to replace them with webapps, even with no distribution or ownership issues. For us the big issue is the "it's not working for me, what could be wrong?" cases where you have to dedicate half a day or more of expert time trying to figure out which absurd corner of microsoft windows is causing issues on the particular intersection of that one application on that one entirely unique computer configuration (even after corporate management of software/policies etc), and of cause that one particular user, because what could they have done? Web apps have the benefit that they don't run on microsoft windows, they run on chrome (even if you use edge), and chrome is a much better operating system than windows will ever dream of being. It even fulfilled java's pipedream of being cross platform (well effectively from a user perspective anyway).
- nogridbag 3y ago
  We've had a similar issue even with our sass webapp. It started with one user at one client where a single UI in our large SPA started encountered odd bugs. And then other employees in the same department started having the same exact issue. We spent a considerable amount of time investigating the issue with our company pushing back claiming it was an issue on their side. Eventually it escalated and we did a call with their users and management. I was able to successfully debug the issue, but their management was not that happy! The issue: Fantasy football Chrome extension their employees had installed which their IT department obviously did not authorize!