5 ms·

Pascal (and then Delphi) was the first non-interpreted programming language I learned and I used it for a few years for pretty much everything - party because i

by Udo 14y ago

Pascal (and then Delphi) was the first non-interpreted programming language I learned and I used it for a few years for pretty much everything - party because it provided a sane wrapper to the Win32 API, but mainly because it was a lot of fun to program with. Compared to pretty much any GUI/code-behind editor the Delphi concept is an absolute joy to use. Sadly it's been a long time since the components have been updated (it's still pretty much a Win32 clone from what I can tell and today the Lazarus component palette feels extremely outdated). I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. It's nice to see this environment lives on in Free Pascal/Lazarus. I sometimes think the Pascal idea could be rediscovered some day, maybe with a syntax addition or two.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
> I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. Indeed. Delphi was clearly influenced by NeXT/Interface Builder, but even back in 1995 it was miles ahead of today's Xcode. For those not familiar with it, Delphi's UI editor was always live. You could create a data source object, enter the database connection info, then create a table view and point it at the data source, and the table would be filled with real data -- all within the editor. Like Interface Builder, the editor was running the real visual components (the equivalent of Cocoa's NSView), but unlike Interface Builder, Delphi focused on providing a true WYSIWYG experience, making it very easy to build new visual components that would be rendered live in the editor. Apple has moved away from this, in fact, with the latest Xcode no longer supporting plugins, and so custom views can no longer be rendered inside Interface Builder. It's incredibly weird and sad that 18 (!) years later, current GUI tools are worse than Delphi was in 1995.
- eli 14y ago
  Delphi was the first "real" platform I used (version 1.0 on Windows 3.11) and it wasn't until much later that I realized how good I'd had it. In addition to the rather obvious idea that the GUI should be designed graphically, it also had a fast compiler and a good integrated debugger. If I remember correctly the entire Delphi IDE was itself developed in Delphi.
  - haddr 14y ago
    At some point of time there was an open source delphi IDE, and it was developed in Delphi, but I think the official one wasn't (at least at the beginning).
    - eli 14y ago
      I'm pretty sure at least most versions of the official IDE were written in Delphi (the IDE--not the compiler, of course). I remember trying to hack plugins into it and it was clearly Delphi code. Random person on SO seems to agree http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766753/what-ide-is-the-delphi-ide-developed-in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766753/what-ide-is-the-d...
      - daven11 14y ago
        indeed. The strangest thing is you can debug the delphi ide in the delphi ide. I do this from time to time to debug components that have start up problems
- haddr 14y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I remember Delphi as beeing de facto choice for rapid software development. I'm regretfull about the fall and demise of the overall platform. Even now many tools are not yet so good as deplhi was around 1997. I remember it outperforming MS Visual Basic. I don't know what has happened that Borland stopped beeing the best place to work for great engineers, but that could be probably some great case studies for contemporal tech companies. Really pity that we have to reinvent again where we've been 15 years ago...
dualogy 14y ago
> I sometimes think the Pascal idea could be rediscovered some day, maybe with a syntax addition or two. Used to have exactly the same opinion (grew up with Pascal too), but haven't looked back ever since I discovered Go..
- Flow 14y ago
  It's the same for me. Google Go seems to me like a Pascal in C's clothes with some refreshing things added.
clamattack 14y ago
Next to my first Basic attempts on the ZX81 and AMOS on the Amiga, Delphi was the most fun I've ever had programming. Oh to have something like that again!
haddr 14y ago
Not to mention great documentation that came together with the Delphi IDE! I remember it helped a lot when i was making my first steps in programming. I remember when later I had to use Java, and their javadoc documentation, the switch was a big pain in the ass.
arocks 14y ago
Actually the .Net world has benefited from Delphi. Anders Hejlsberg, the chief architect of Delphi, moved to Microsoft and became the chief architect of C#.
- brass9 14y ago
  And incidents like these have contributed to the sad, long decline of Delphi/FP. Ever since the large exodus of talented former Borland engineers, Borland, Inprise, CG and Embarcadero management had been exploiting Delphi as a cash cow and milking it FWIW.
mhd 14y ago
Improvements to the ARM code was mentioned in the release notes, and I would think that apart from "practical" mobile development, reintroducing Pascal as a teaching language for Raspberry Pi's is a motivation for that. I just wish they had more dialects to choose from, a highly optimizing Oberon compiler would be nice to have (although the code size of the project would give Prof. Wirth chills). And, well, Modula-3… There's also a new standard for Ada out, so fans of the Algol/Pascal family would have their weekend research/projects cut out for them this year.
daven11 14y ago
It's worth looking at Delphi again if you haven't for a while http://www.codegear.com http://www.codegear.com. They've made your syntax addition or two - even has closures now, generics, components...new version (out soon) compiles to iOS/OSX/Windows. I've seen a beta and it works :-)
- chappi42 14y ago
  Worth looking if you like a close minded secretive attitude and living in the past. Profit from a technically bad & boring forum, report bugs in a home grown issue tracker which sucks and get example code through subversion. The syntax of closures (they had to invent their own name, anonymous methods) is very long-winded. And generics? Only useable after several versions. Which leads to the most important point: quality is s*it (I'd suppose because they cannot tame the complexity any more). Hello 'it works' likely won't get you far :-) It's a pity, but the sooner they bankrupt the better. Something more focussed and contemporary might emerge or people invest and switch to FreePascal. Would love to have a native Pascal based ecosystem which would be innovative and friendly, like let's say, Xamarin!
  - cristiantincu 14y ago
    Anonymous methods and closures are not the same thing. You may have anonymous methods that don’t access outside scopes, so they’re not creating any lexical closures. The syntax of anonymous methods is consistent with the overall language syntax. Yes, Pascal has strict types and `begin`… `end` instead of curly braces. It tends to be more verbose than, say, JavaScript.

by Udo 14y ago

lobster_johnson 14y ago

> I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. Indeed. Delphi was clearly influenced by NeXT/Interface Builder, but even back in 1995 it was miles ahead of today's Xcode. For those not familiar with it, Delphi's UI editor was always live. You could create a data source object, enter the database connection info, then create a table view and point it at the data source, and the table would be filled with real data -- all within the editor. Like Interface Builder, the editor was running the real visual components (the equivalent of Cocoa's NSView), but unlike Interface Builder, Delphi focused on providing a true WYSIWYG experience, making it very easy to build new visual components that would be rendered live in the editor. Apple has moved away from this, in fact, with the latest Xcode no longer supporting plugins, and so custom views can no longer be rendered inside Interface Builder. It's incredibly weird and sad that 18 (!) years later, current GUI tools are worse than Delphi was in 1995.

eli 14y ago
Delphi was the first "real" platform I used (version 1.0 on Windows 3.11) and it wasn't until much later that I realized how good I'd had it. In addition to the rather obvious idea that the GUI should be designed graphically, it also had a fast compiler and a good integrated debugger. If I remember correctly the entire Delphi IDE was itself developed in Delphi.
- haddr 14y ago
  At some point of time there was an open source delphi IDE, and it was developed in Delphi, but I think the official one wasn't (at least at the beginning).
  - eli 14y ago
    I'm pretty sure at least most versions of the official IDE were written in Delphi (the IDE--not the compiler, of course). I remember trying to hack plugins into it and it was clearly Delphi code. Random person on SO seems to agree http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766753/what-ide-is-the-delphi-ide-developed-in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766753/what-ide-is-the-d...
    - daven11 14y ago
      indeed. The strangest thing is you can debug the delphi ide in the delphi ide. I do this from time to time to debug components that have start up problems
haddr 14y ago
My thoughts exactly. I remember Delphi as beeing de facto choice for rapid software development. I'm regretfull about the fall and demise of the overall platform. Even now many tools are not yet so good as deplhi was around 1997. I remember it outperforming MS Visual Basic. I don't know what has happened that Borland stopped beeing the best place to work for great engineers, but that could be probably some great case studies for contemporal tech companies. Really pity that we have to reinvent again where we've been 15 years ago...

dualogy 14y ago

> I sometimes think the Pascal idea could be rediscovered some day, maybe with a syntax addition or two. Used to have exactly the same opinion (grew up with Pascal too), but haven't looked back ever since I discovered Go..

Flow 14y ago
It's the same for me. Google Go seems to me like a Pascal in C's clothes with some refreshing things added.

clamattack 14y ago

Next to my first Basic attempts on the ZX81 and AMOS on the Amiga, Delphi was the most fun I've ever had programming. Oh to have something like that again!

haddr 14y ago

Not to mention great documentation that came together with the Delphi IDE! I remember it helped a lot when i was making my first steps in programming. I remember when later I had to use Java, and their javadoc documentation, the switch was a big pain in the ass.

arocks 14y ago

Actually the .Net world has benefited from Delphi. Anders Hejlsberg, the chief architect of Delphi, moved to Microsoft and became the chief architect of C#.

brass9 14y ago
And incidents like these have contributed to the sad, long decline of Delphi/FP. Ever since the large exodus of talented former Borland engineers, Borland, Inprise, CG and Embarcadero management had been exploiting Delphi as a cash cow and milking it FWIW.

mhd 14y ago

Improvements to the ARM code was mentioned in the release notes, and I would think that apart from "practical" mobile development, reintroducing Pascal as a teaching language for Raspberry Pi's is a motivation for that. I just wish they had more dialects to choose from, a highly optimizing Oberon compiler would be nice to have (although the code size of the project would give Prof. Wirth chills). And, well, Modula-3… There's also a new standard for Ada out, so fans of the Algol/Pascal family would have their weekend research/projects cut out for them this year.

daven11 14y ago

It's worth looking at Delphi again if you haven't for a while http://www.codegear.com http://www.codegear.com. They've made your syntax addition or two - even has closures now, generics, components...new version (out soon) compiles to iOS/OSX/Windows. I've seen a beta and it works :-)

chappi42 14y ago
Worth looking if you like a close minded secretive attitude and living in the past. Profit from a technically bad & boring forum, report bugs in a home grown issue tracker which sucks and get example code through subversion. The syntax of closures (they had to invent their own name, anonymous methods) is very long-winded. And generics? Only useable after several versions. Which leads to the most important point: quality is s*it (I'd suppose because they cannot tame the complexity any more). Hello 'it works' likely won't get you far :-) It's a pity, but the sooner they bankrupt the better. Something more focussed and contemporary might emerge or people invest and switch to FreePascal. Would love to have a native Pascal based ecosystem which would be innovative and friendly, like let's say, Xamarin!
- cristiantincu 14y ago
  Anonymous methods and closures are not the same thing. You may have anonymous methods that don’t access outside scopes, so they’re not creating any lexical closures. The syntax of anonymous methods is consistent with the overall language syntax. Yes, Pascal has strict types and `begin`… `end` instead of curly braces. It tends to be more verbose than, say, JavaScript.