Delphi GUI Programming in 2021?
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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.