Delphi GUI Programming in 2021?
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For it's time, Pascal was pretty good - way better than the other "pointer based" language that was big at the time: Algol (C didn't come out until two years after Pascal, and took more years to gain real traction). Yes, COBOL had pointers, but ... X| The problem is that Pascal is nearly 50 years old, and really shows it's age when you compare it to modern languages, though it's been extended pretty well over the years. I don't use it - C# these days!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Some later versions of Algol (maybe W and 68R / 68S ?) could emulate pointers but they weren't a feature of 58 or 60. The nearest Algol-60 came to pointers were 'thunks' - functions passed as parameters, which 'modern' languages think that they invented. C is notorious for pointers. I found Pascal cumbersome - so many meanings of the word END. It's only useful feature was ATFs (anonymous tag fields). Admittedly, my experience of it was mostly porting the P-Code compiler and optimising its expression evaluators.
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Just stumbled upon this book and I'm shocked that it was just published in Nov. 2020. Maybe, Microsoft will release a new Petzold, Programming Windows 10, next. :rolleyes: Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey: Unleash the full potential of the FMX framework to build exciting cross-platform apps with Embarcadero Delphi[^] Are people out there still using Delphi? My company used the technology before 2000 and around 2005 started converting to .NET. We do have some old code in Delphi but most has been rewritten.
Why are you so surprised? Delphi was and still is IMHO the (one of the) best Windows development environment and programming languages. The only downside is that the current owners of it made it a pretty much enterprise level tool by raising the price to astronomic levels. Mainly because of that, beside an easier cross development between Windows, Linux and macOS, I switched years ago to FreePascal, with the Lazarus IDE (and library). Lazarus/FreePascal is mostly Delphi compatible and both are very viable tools for programming in Object Pascal...
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Just stumbled upon this book and I'm shocked that it was just published in Nov. 2020. Maybe, Microsoft will release a new Petzold, Programming Windows 10, next. :rolleyes: Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey: Unleash the full potential of the FMX framework to build exciting cross-platform apps with Embarcadero Delphi[^] Are people out there still using Delphi? My company used the technology before 2000 and around 2005 started converting to .NET. We do have some old code in Delphi but most has been rewritten.
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I have read online that the language is not dead, but dying. Delphi is losing more programmers than gaining. Delphi is primarily used still for legacy apps.
Kind of nonsense. It is neither dead nor dying, nor are only legacy apps developed in Delphi. Or Object Pascal in general (including FreePascal & Lazarus here)...
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For it's time, Pascal was pretty good - way better than the other "pointer based" language that was big at the time: Algol (C didn't come out until two years after Pascal, and took more years to gain real traction). Yes, COBOL had pointers, but ... X| The problem is that Pascal is nearly 50 years old, and really shows it's age when you compare it to modern languages, though it's been extended pretty well over the years. I don't use it - C# these days!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Well, you're answer shows that you haven't had a look at current Pascal for at least 30 years...
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Kind of nonsense. It is neither dead nor dying, nor are only legacy apps developed in Delphi. Or Object Pascal in general (including FreePascal & Lazarus here)...
Bitbeisser wrote:
Kind of nonsense.
:confused: Delphi Is Dying, TIOBE Index Insists[^] index | TIOBE - The Software Quality Company[^]
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Bitbeisser wrote:
Kind of nonsense.
:confused: Delphi Is Dying, TIOBE Index Insists[^] index | TIOBE - The Software Quality Company[^]
Well, not sure what is so confusing here. Just check the comments to the article you are linking to. TIOBE is utter nonsense by itself. Having nonsense like "Groovy" or even Objective-C ahead of it shows that rather clearly. The "popularity" is a rather hard to measure factor, specially when considering the real world rather than wishful thinking...
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MFC was better than Borland OWL, by far. But not even close to Delphi. Delphi was VB done right (with component developers, users, and extenders all using the same tools/language), but too late to steal the market. Delphi was/is all the power of a full blown native language, with a lightning fast single pass compiler, inline assembler, and easy access to the entire Windows API. It has(had?) built in OLE compatible reference counting and interfaces for simple memory management (without the cost of garbage collection). I was the first person to ever ship a commercial application written (partially) in Delphi (I was at Borland at the time, and got special dispensation to ship using a pre-release version of Delphi, otherwise Delphi would have been the first). After leaving Borland, I used Delphi to build many commercial systems, and the productivity it brought to the team significantly outweighed the learning curve (I particularly appreciated that moving old C programmers to Delphi helped them to learn and write true Object Oriented code, which migrating to C++ would not have done). There are still things I like about Delphi better than .NET (like the way fields are modeled for SQL), but as I've been working for Microsoft for the last 15 years, I've come to appreciate a lot about .NET (Although I still have quite a bit of old Delphi code sitting on my home computer, I also have not been able to use Delphi for quite a while, so my experience is quite dated :-(). But I would certainly give it a good look if I left Microsoft and was looking for something cross platform (although .NET Core is doing a pretty good job in that space now from my limited viewpoint).
That's a great story and reminds me of a friend I worked with at a local computer shop back in 1992. He called Microsoft Office vapor-ware and always lauded the fantastic abilities of Borland Paradox (database that I'm sure you remember). He was right too. Borland had a better Office before Microsoft, but MS knew how to say, "but just wait, when we get there you going to see something...." Anyways, really great story and I believe you about it being better than VB. :thumbsup:
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Just stumbled upon this book and I'm shocked that it was just published in Nov. 2020. Maybe, Microsoft will release a new Petzold, Programming Windows 10, next. :rolleyes: Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey: Unleash the full potential of the FMX framework to build exciting cross-platform apps with Embarcadero Delphi[^] Are people out there still using Delphi? My company used the technology before 2000 and around 2005 started converting to .NET. We do have some old code in Delphi but most has been rewritten.
Yes, both Delphi 4 and Delphi 7. There are projects in both actively maintained and extended. On same machine, compilation speed washes away anything .net. IDE is much faster than VS. Coding style prefixing types with T makes code completion much faster, far less error-prone. VCL is much more thought out, than WinForms. You assign dialog return value to a button, not hunting buttons from the form's properties. Form description format (dfm) is much more version control system friendly. Grid customization painting (therefore scrolling) was far faster than in the C#/WinForms equivalent. Never ever a Delphi programmer missed an else branch. With these older releases, and falling inet packages REST and XML processing not as natural. Database access is a good mix of SQL and ISAM. With the "with" multi-object support, query is more language-integrated than anything MS came up, except Visual Foxpro (scatter/gather memvar and human grade dynamic compilation is hard to surpass).
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Just stumbled upon this book and I'm shocked that it was just published in Nov. 2020. Maybe, Microsoft will release a new Petzold, Programming Windows 10, next. :rolleyes: Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey: Unleash the full potential of the FMX framework to build exciting cross-platform apps with Embarcadero Delphi[^] Are people out there still using Delphi? My company used the technology before 2000 and around 2005 started converting to .NET. We do have some old code in Delphi but most has been rewritten.
I work in Delphi every day. It's still a good language. I think that is is on par with Java and .NET for functionality. Their syntax is at least similar enough that the learning curve is minimal. We've been using a Delphi EXE with both OLE embedded .NET UI components and COM .NET DLL's for over 10 years now. Works great and it's fast. The .NET code is much slower than the Delphi code. Bond Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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I have read online that the language is not dead, but dying. Delphi is losing more programmers than gaining. Delphi is primarily used still for legacy apps.
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This is also due to Embarcadero's pricing, I'm sure. Delphi/C++ Builder used to be affordable as hobbies tools when Borland owned them. Not so much any more. :(
ajhampson wrote:
This is also due to Embarcadero's pricing, I'm sure
Yes, indeed. I understand their pain though. They could cut prices and gain some users but would they gain more than they lost? With a language in Delphi's position now it would be debatable. So they press on with sky-high pricing, knowing that at some point they will lose a critical mass of developers. One can only presume that the owners are pocketing as much of the income as they can while it's still coming in. I've never done any Delphi projects but I have always liked what I saw with Delphi and I think the world is better with it in it than without it. But, sadly, I know that one say it will go away (and it being cheaper would not necessarily prevent this).
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Funny, I just finished upgrading to Delphi Sydney (10.4)... It is still simply the best GUI development experience I've had. The remaining components are pretty rock solid. The Clients still enjoying the software. One product is literally 20 years old, just got a facelift! And about the book. FMX is the Alternate to VCL. It is cross platform, so it runs on android, MAC, iOS and windows... One set of controls... This is LITERALLY a 2021 topic, is it not? One code base, trying to hit every platform. And call MSFT Press, tell them Xamarin needs a book published :-)
Kirk 10389821 wrote:
The Clients still enjoying the software. One product is literally 20 years old, just got a facelift!
2Brightsparks?
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Kirk 10389821 wrote:
The Clients still enjoying the software. One product is literally 20 years old, just got a facelift!
2Brightsparks?
Mark, I don't get the reference. I searched it, it comes back some Backup/Sync software. For the Record: SQLite Expert (Free and Pro) Are Delphi apps kept current. Works well, skinned. TreeSize (Free and Pro) I use all the time to see where my drive space is wasted! (Delphi). But it appears to be fading. Although my current upgrade project is such a pleasure to work with. I used Visual Form Inheritance, and was able to Adjust the "DBGridToXlsx" in one spot for every place it was used, so all grids save to the newer versions of XLSX with color coding options, etc. Lightning fast. I also realized I upgraded 3 other components, and 5 versions of Delphi [It's been ~6 years since working on the code], and it was all rather clean and easy. The EXE Size is my biggest complaint these days. Delphi used to produce a product we could ship on a single floppy. Now the EXE Sizes are approaching 30MB. At least I don't have to worry about DLLs. Oh, my other complaint is the FPC and Lazarus. Because it has splintered our market so much, ALL of the 3rd party vendors left $IFDEF$ the crap out of their code to support everything. But I have a project coming up, that needs to run on Android Phones... I am looking forward to that!
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Mark, I don't get the reference. I searched it, it comes back some Backup/Sync software. For the Record: SQLite Expert (Free and Pro) Are Delphi apps kept current. Works well, skinned. TreeSize (Free and Pro) I use all the time to see where my drive space is wasted! (Delphi). But it appears to be fading. Although my current upgrade project is such a pleasure to work with. I used Visual Form Inheritance, and was able to Adjust the "DBGridToXlsx" in one spot for every place it was used, so all grids save to the newer versions of XLSX with color coding options, etc. Lightning fast. I also realized I upgraded 3 other components, and 5 versions of Delphi [It's been ~6 years since working on the code], and it was all rather clean and easy. The EXE Size is my biggest complaint these days. Delphi used to produce a product we could ship on a single floppy. Now the EXE Sizes are approaching 30MB. At least I don't have to worry about DLLs. Oh, my other complaint is the FPC and Lazarus. Because it has splintered our market so much, ALL of the 3rd party vendors left $IFDEF$ the crap out of their code to support everything. But I have a project coming up, that needs to run on Android Phones... I am looking forward to that!
Kirk 10389821 wrote:
I don't get the reference. I searched it, it comes back some Backup/Sync software.
2Brightsparks' main product, SyncBack, is written in Delphi. I was wondering if it was them you worked for. It seems I guessed wrong. :-)
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Kirk 10389821 wrote:
I don't get the reference. I searched it, it comes back some Backup/Sync software.
2Brightsparks' main product, SyncBack, is written in Delphi. I was wondering if it was them you worked for. It seems I guessed wrong. :-)
Sorry, this was local business software (From BDE to SQLite along the way, I wish SQLite was out when DBF Files first came about. LOL. My life would have been easier!) And FWIW, I am doing a BeyondCompare Sync... Another Delphi Tool. Last I checked, I had some GW-Basic code still running out there. LMAO. The one downside to writing code that works...
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Just stumbled upon this book and I'm shocked that it was just published in Nov. 2020. Maybe, Microsoft will release a new Petzold, Programming Windows 10, next. :rolleyes: Delphi GUI Programming with FireMonkey: Unleash the full potential of the FMX framework to build exciting cross-platform apps with Embarcadero Delphi[^] Are people out there still using Delphi? My company used the technology before 2000 and around 2005 started converting to .NET. We do have some old code in Delphi but most has been rewritten.
It's both nostalgic and amusing to see comparisons between Delphi and C#, as both are emits from the brilliant mind of Anders Hejlsberg. Anders and co. at Borland International ran rings around Microsoft products, performance- and ANSI compliance-wise, for many years. Microsoft ultimately poached a lot of talent from Borland, including Anders, which got them in some trouble, you might recall! My observations (I'm an Old Programmer): As in other parts of the industry, Microsoft started relatively slow, then ultimately took over the market, not by delivering surpassing quality, but by gathering maximum mindshare and buying out competitors. Remember the old saying "Nobody ever lost their job because they bought IBM"? In software development that eventually became true of Microsoft. To their credit, Microsoft eventually produced great software development tools (thanks to both home-grown and imported talent, I believe), but they started out way behind Borland in the C++ space, and never really competed in the Turbo Pascal / Delphi space, especially if you wanted to produce self-contained .EXEs free of endless dependencies. That's why they had to get Anders Hejlsberg on staff! Our shop uses all of the above, including RAD Studio, which includes C++ Builder (still my hands-down favorite for Windows development) and Delphi. And of course we also use Visual Studio, mostly for C#, but for other reasons, too. I don't know about the jobs market, but again, given Microsoft's mindshare stronghold, it's not surprising that excellent products like Delphi are relegated to the "also ran" category. Now in Embarcadero's catalog, it's still an excellent development environment and language, and still has the fastest compiler I've ever used (Delphi has always been magical-fast thanks to Anders' phenomenal talent for efficient design). Borland was so fanatical about the quality of the product that at one point they started developing the Delphi IDE in Delphi, one of the first times I encountered -- and immediately saw the wisdom of -- "dog fooding" it.
