An interesting career so far...
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Java? pshaw. back in my day, we used Modula2, and we liked it.
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Phannon wrote:
So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi?
Actually Delphi was created by the same person who created C#, so C# in many ways resembles a more advanced Delphi. The Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/?? Delphi IDE is pretty decent -- in the past it was MUCH better than any version of Visual Studio, but VS finally caught up. As far as language, Delphi's Object Pascal is very similar in many respects to C#, other than the syntactical differences. You'll catch on to those pretty quickly. It's strongly typed, etc. In fact I used TP, BP and Delphi for many years with few regrets. Only recently have I pretty much dumped it, except for supporting some of my older apps, due to my perceived instability in the language support. After all, it was a product of Borland, then Inprise, then Borland again, then CodeGear and now some other outfit. At any rate, it's not so bad and there's plenty of info out on the web concerning Delphi, 3rd party components, etc.
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Java? pshaw. back in my day, we used Modula2, and we liked it.
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Phannon wrote:
So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi?
Actually Delphi was created by the same person who created C#, so C# in many ways resembles a more advanced Delphi. The Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/?? Delphi IDE is pretty decent -- in the past it was MUCH better than any version of Visual Studio, but VS finally caught up. As far as language, Delphi's Object Pascal is very similar in many respects to C#, other than the syntactical differences. You'll catch on to those pretty quickly. It's strongly typed, etc. In fact I used TP, BP and Delphi for many years with few regrets. Only recently have I pretty much dumped it, except for supporting some of my older apps, due to my perceived instability in the language support. After all, it was a product of Borland, then Inprise, then Borland again, then CodeGear and now some other outfit. At any rate, it's not so bad and there's plenty of info out on the web concerning Delphi, 3rd party components, etc.
Walt Fair, Jr. wrote:
it was a product of Borland, then Inprise, then Borland again, then CodeGear and now some other outfit.
Embarcadero is their new name apparently... cheers for your input :)
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
You'll probably enjoy it. I haven't used Delphi, but I believe it's the descendant of Pascal, which is the last language I really mastered. Once upon a time each generation of languages got more powerful, easier to understand, and more maintainable. Pascal was the end of the line in that trend. Everything since is harder to use, harder to maintain, and more difficult to master. A lot of that is the event-driven orientation of programming that has supplanted the original paradigm, but Pascal survived the evolution into object orientation, so I suspect that the Delphi product has probably survived the transition away from procedural programming. Keep an open mind and have fun with it. And report back when you've got a good handle on it; we might have users here who would like to give it a try. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
You should enjoy Delphi. I've read game developers love it for doing tools development since its much faster to develop with than C++/MFC. I would probably miss C# if I had to switch over to Delphi.
Todd Smith
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Walt Fair, Jr. wrote:
it was a product of Borland, then Inprise, then Borland again, then CodeGear and now some other outfit.
Embarcadero is their new name apparently... cheers for your input :)
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Yeah, thanks for refreshing my memory. At any rate, Delphi is a nice language and I hope you enjoy it.
The PetroNerd
Walt Fair, Jr. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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You'll probably enjoy it. I haven't used Delphi, but I believe it's the descendant of Pascal, which is the last language I really mastered. Once upon a time each generation of languages got more powerful, easier to understand, and more maintainable. Pascal was the end of the line in that trend. Everything since is harder to use, harder to maintain, and more difficult to master. A lot of that is the event-driven orientation of programming that has supplanted the original paradigm, but Pascal survived the evolution into object orientation, so I suspect that the Delphi product has probably survived the transition away from procedural programming. Keep an open mind and have fun with it. And report back when you've got a good handle on it; we might have users here who would like to give it a try. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
Keep an open mind and have fun with it. And report back when you've got a good handle on it; we might have users here who would like to give it a try
Will do and will do :)
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
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Delphi Rocks! It is/was (I no longer use it, so perhaps it's gone downhill since earlier versions) my favorite language and IDE. It was simple to use, it was fast as hell, and the language tends to promote reasonably clear syntax. The VCL source code also helps here because it's a great example of extremely clear coding, and in my experience is probably some of the clearest, cleanest code I've ever seen in any language. You'll probably recognize a number of ideas from .Net/C#. The concepts of properties, property editors, components, component editors, callbacks, alot of this stuff borrows *heavily* from Borland's VCL design. This is no surprise since Microsoft hired away many of Borland's top folks, like Anders Hejlsberg (you may have heard of him :) ). It used to be alot of fun to work in. I don't know if that's still the case, but I have *extremely* fond memories of it. One other thought - there are are a number of tools that get mentioned here that people tend to like alot and they are written in Delphi. Specifically: StarUML[^] Inno Setup[^] HTML-Kit[^] So you may not be quite as alone as you think :) I believe it's *alot* more popular in Europe than in the States (that was my experience).
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Phannon wrote:
Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi!
Up until 2004, at which time I thought Borland were going t*ts up, I did Delphi. Liked it, Liked it a lot! Then I discovered C# and only occasionaly look back.:) IMHO Delphi is a quicker Prototype RAD tool but C#/VS is slightly better for the full blown app. Good luck and remember you now have better employability (more languages), should the need arise.
Henry Minute If you open a can of worms, any valid solution *MUST* involve a larger can!
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Phannon wrote:
So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. Cheers.
You should expect to get use to job boards and other means of finding a real job while pretending to like delphi, but hopefully only for a short period of time. I would since "mergers = layoffs" most of the time (at least the 3 I've been thru). Good luck regardless.
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So going from having never programmed before in my life, then after completing a 3 year uni course in computer science, getting my 2:1 in what may as well have been a Java degree (it was heavily based on Java, but there were other aspects to it) I got a job just over a year ago doing app development, largely using C#, and a touch of MFC. These last couple of months I've felt like I finally got a grasp of it all, got some nice apps in the field now and BOOM! All change again. Long story short, after a merger, our suite of apps is no longer being sold and we're taking up the other company's lot. Resulting in me having to learn... Delphi! So... what can I expect to enjoy/get frustrated by/claw my eyes out, whilst learning and using Delphi? Never used it before, so I have no idea what I'm in for. :cool:Cheers.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
Phannon wrote:
Never used it before
I have never used Visual COBOL I have never used Visual FORTRAN . . I have never used Visual Pascal can't answer your question ;P
MrPlankton
(bad guy)"Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go."
(good guy)"Which is where?"
(bad guy)"To a responsible future in a properly managed world."
Dean Koontz, The Good Guy