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Delphi 13 Florence Released
- brightball 1y agoI was surprised to see Delphi still getting pretty solid use in some circles. I had no idea. Talked to a dev who was an advocate for it some years back.
- ivan_gammel 1y agoIf you build for a small number of professional users with a known target platform and you know how to solve distribution, then RAD tools (or any platforms supporting desktop targets) are the best choice and they offer superior UX compared to browser-based apps. I myself now prefer to build admin tools on Java/Swing, because it’s much faster and easier than building a web app (Claude Code does that job quite well). Delphi probably offers even better dev.speed/quality/UX.
- johannes1234321 1y agoYeah, getting a webapp up and running for small amount of users is tedious. Either complicated install or permanent hosting cost and permanent cost for keeping maintained. A desktop tool has a lot less security vectors as it's all local. Of course there is electron, but that has its own set of complications. For simple tools RAD is great.
- zeroc8 1y agoSince Firemonkey draws on Skia anyway, they could also provide something similar to Flutter/WASM. I love the Flutter/WASM idea, but cannot get warm with the widget in widget approach flutter uses. Having a designtool like Delphi's would be nice.
- Tobias42 1y agoHave you tried Vaadin? It's like writing a Swing application that compiles to the web. Or at least it was when I used it last, about 7 years ago.
- drob518 1y agoIt’s the COBOL of the 1990s.
- gramie 1y agoNot a good sign when the website (granted it's the blog website, not the main one) for a commercial development tool is unreachable. Sad, because I still have a soft spot in my heart for Delphi.
- drob518 1y agoYea, well said. Me too.
- nunobrito 1y agoDelphi was the only compiler where the Help documentation was really helpful and used without needing internet. For each library they provided real-world examples on the documentation so we could learn how to use them. I've never found bettern tool for building desktop GUI apps so easily. I've dropped Delphi back in 2010, moved to Java and tried the web/mobile world but nothing comes close to that top-notch quality. Irony of destiny: Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.
- innocentoldguy 1y agoMy first programming job was writing Delphi code. Their documentation was excellent. All of the documentation I've used since then has been sad and disappointing.
- andsoitis 1y ago> Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there. Delphi can compile native apps for Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.
- nunobrito 1y agoThanks for that info. Was reading and seems to be available since edition 10 upwards with the enterprise license: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76356995/how-to-target-linux-platform-on-delphi https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76356995/how-to-target-l... Fantastic toolchain.
- runjake 1y agoHere's the summary snippet from the post because the server is dead: "Embarcadero is very happy to announce RAD Studio 13 Florence along with Delphi 13 and C++Builder 13 is available to customers starting today. The RAD Studio 13 Florence release offers a 64-bit version of the RAD Studio IDE, an updated C++Builder Clang compiler, Delphi language extensions, AI components, an AI companion, along with a number of enhancements of existing features, and a significant focus on quality."
- kev009 1y agoSome interesting trivia, Netflix' cofounder Marc Randolf spent time at Borland. RAD Studio is kind of the closet experience to VB6 where you simply drop controls on a form and can easily wire it up.. with a much better language. The tools were/are too expensive and Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily, and it's been extractive rather than growth oriented since. There is the Lazarus/FreePascal project which offers an alternative.
- tylerflick 1y ago> Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily And hiring Anders Hejlsberg
- selectnull 1y agoMicrosoft did a lot of bad things over the years, but Borland drove themselves over the cliff on their own. Instead of focusing on developer tools, they wanted to reinvent (and rename) Borland every few years in the 90s. Bad management, bad decisions, bad products (Delphi 7 was peak). MS had nothing to do with that. And I'm sure Anders made a right move to abandon the sinking ship. I'm still pissed at Borland for all those bad moves.
- elzbardico 1y agoBorland decided that they should target management instead of the developers as their focal point of product development. They ignored the Web for Delphi and decided that web development front would be covered by JBuilder, a paid and slow evolving product that could not compete against the fast iterating and free Eclipse.
- elzbardico 1y agoAnd yes, naming themselves inprise was peak 90's wallstreet cringe.
- drob518 1y agoIt’s very difficult to make money in developer tools. Microsoft could easily squeeze Borland by simply making MSDN tools free. Borland tried to diversify with databases, word processors, and spreadsheets, but Microsoft countered with Office, trying them altogether, and it became the default in every single business. Borland had great technology and was super innovative and I used Turbo C++ and TASM for years. But in the end, they just couldn’t find a cash cow market to keep them afloat.
- zenlot 1y agoDelphi is still great, even though the usage declined and not many people, especially newcomers know about it (or C++ Builder). It is still probably the best drag and drop experience for UI components, with Qt Creator being a runner up. A bit shame, as most likely the popularity declined due to draconial licencing model at the time. Now they have Delphi Community edition, which is free. If you have some free time, try it, you won't regret it. Especially good for hobby projects.
- _zamorano_ 1y agoI don't think any of those are better than WinForms. After all these years, I still use WinForms for prototyping, nothing faster comes to mind. If I need a mockup to show to my manager in 15 minutes, nothing beats WinForms.
- kwanbix 1y agoWhat do you mean by WinForms? I understand it is a framework/library? does it come with its own IDE? Delphi is great for this, how is WinForms better?
- benjiro 1y agoNever mind ... clearly i am the issue.
- breve 1y ago> literally memory segfault on not even complex code. Memory pointer issue or something That sounds like your own misunderstanding of Object Pascal.