Delphi GUI Programming in 2021?

[Delphi 7 Solutions]

not true, there are still new projects started in Delphi today. Yes the number of users is much less then c# that is true, but as happend so often it's not always the best technology that makes it...

[User 13269747]

Quote:

Are people out there still using Delphi?

Not Delphi specifically, but Lazarus (which compiles Delphi code too) is probably more popular than Delphi at this point in time. I've been using it and it isn't all that bad.

[Wizard of Sleeves]

I had forgotten about Delphi. Now I need to go for trauma counseling.

Nothing succeeds like a budgie without teeth.

[giulicard]

wrote:

From my point of view, nobody has implemented visual inheritance as transparently and perfectly as Borland / Embarcadero (more than 20 years ago). Neither WPF nor others can hold a candle here...

So true...

[Delphi 7 Solutions]

Yes offcourse Delphi is still used. There is a new version every year, and I must say Embarcadero has done a reasonable job at getting Delphi back to the best development environment again. After Delphi 7 Borland made bad choises which finally gave microsoft opportunity to catch up (also getting Anders from Borland into their team helped offcourse) The only backdraw is its cost, it is much to expensive in my opinion, but given a choise I would get back to Delphi immediate.

[giulicard]

CPallini wrote:

Personally, I can't stand Pascal syntax.

You can use C ++ instead of Delphi (or together with Delphi) because RAD Studio, which contains both Delphi and C ++ Builder, is able to do (almost) everything Delphi does (regarding supported platforms) and much more than Delphi if you keep I realize it has a C ++17 compiler that consumes many of the open-source libraries out there (including boost libraries).

[pkfox]

05 WS-POINTER-VAR USAGE IS POINTER.

:-D

"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP

[alexcoder99]

I am still actively developing/maintaining an existing Delphi/Oracle application with over 3m lines of code that is not economically viable to migrate onto newer platforms. Where possible new modules are being added using C#, usually ASP.NET or services but the core application remains Delphi. The biggest issue I have with Delphi is the lack of modern syntactic sugar, poor out of the box serialization support and difficulty finding code examples anywhere online these days. I agree it should definitely be considered a legacy language.

[CPallini]

Yes, I am aware of that. Your point is similar to the one of Member 15056742 above (however you provide more details). Unfortunately, in my experience, the related documentation is poor (MSDN is far better).

"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?" -- Rigoletto

[OriginalGriff]

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"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!

[giulicard]

CPallini wrote:

Yes, I am aware of that. Your point is similar to the one of Member 15056742 above (however you provide more details). Unfortunately, in my experience, the related documentation is poor (MSDN is far better).

Yes, MS is a much larger company than EMB, so it can do a lot better in areas like documentation. Nonetheless, for teams or single developers, productivity is much higher than with MS tools. I don't want to be misunderstood, as I use VS Code a lot, but to have a complete product in a short time, with GUI, networking, complex algorithms, database at any level and which has a very low impact on resources and which has dependencies only on the operating system, Delphi and its cousin C ++ Builder have no equal.

[Jan Holst Jensen2]

I am also actively developing things in Delphi and maintaining both large and small existing applications. For Desktop app development it is by far the most productive environment I know. Too sad that it is perceived as legacy, but then it seems that the whole concept of Desktop apps is becoming legacy - apparently running everything in a browser is the way to go these days. So in that respect WinForms and WPF is legacy too :rolleyes:.

[Slacker007]

Delphi.7.Solutions wrote:

there are still new projects started in Delphi today.

nothing to write home to mother about, though. I have not seen active job placements, recruitments or hiring for Delphi positions in over 10 years in my area. I used to though, and that is part of my point. Delphi is dying, whether you agree with the world on that or not.

[Kevin Firth]

Our main application was written over many years in Delphi v5 (yes version 5). This is now being converted to WPF. We have the complication that the WPF .Net code has to integrate with Delphi and open in MDI windows within the main Delphi application. ;P Eventually all the Delphi screens and functionality will be rewritten and we will switch over to a complete .Net application. Still many screens to be done. :)

[MarkTJohnson]

May be ugly, but you never accidentally assigned something in an if condition. := All day long. The one thing I truly miss about Delphi.

I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.

[Jonas Hammarberg]

I still maintain some programs written in Delphi 5 ...

[Kirk 10389821]

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 :-)

[CPallini]

Assignment is the most used operator in procedural programming. Choosing a two characters sequence for assignment and just a single character for comparison is rather unfortunate.

"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?" -- Rigoletto

[raddevus]

Jan Holst Jensen2 wrote:

So in that respect WinForms and WPF is legacy too

I actually totally agree with that statement. Desktop development is now legacy. And, I actually understand it a bit too, since the desktop is now passe. I run Ubuntu 20.04 and only use Win10 through remote session/VMs to do work at job. THe only thing I cannot do on Ubuntu is...win10 desktop development (which we do at work). Not trying to be a Linux fanboy, just interesting. And, honestly Ubuntu uses less ram, runs less background processes that eat my processor, etc. Just lighter-weight than Win10.

[Kirk 10389821]

Yeah, I really LOVE the JS approach of =, ==, ===, ==== (I hope I didn't miss a comparison, I forget which one means the left side is equal, in context, but not of type, against a mutated version of the Right Hand Side... LOL) The := jams me up when I switch between other languages, admittedly. But I will argue that the "." is the most used, as in

sVal := dsCustomer.FieldByName('Value').AsString;