tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post5538012649658614554..comments2023-06-19T01:22:31.258+12:00Comments on Steve's Software Development Blog: Delphi, why won't it just die?Steve Peacockehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03155137500284265720noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-42858212268158055842016-08-24T15:58:58.940+12:002016-08-24T15:58:58.940+12:00Vahrokh's post is one of the best here for sur...Vahrokh's post is one of the best here for sure. There are a few others that speak of valid real world examples of the POWER of Delphi/Pascal/Lazarus/etc.<br /><br />The constant negativity from 'alcalde' is nauseating. Delphi/Lazarus/etc are FANTASTIC products and there are millions of developers the world over using it to develop software. We do not need to be the flavor of the month. We just need to use the best tool to turn our IDEAS into SOLUTIONS - and Delphi/Lazarus/etc does just that. <br />Trinionehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09706130681246968816noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-57033042975612208662016-07-06T04:05:21.528+12:002016-07-06T04:05:21.528+12:00Why I just can´t leave Delphi.
https://www.linked...Why I just can´t leave Delphi.<br /><br />https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/web-developersand-new-school-dont-know-what-erp-oliveira-dias?trk=pulse_spock-articlesAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05490512728127631173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-2994254277116798662015-09-17T01:21:59.763+12:002015-09-17T01:21:59.763+12:00You should look at Appmethod which is essentially ...You should look at Appmethod which is essentially the same thing, the C++ part + Android development remains free.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13663054886859099822noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-34709635767581058082015-09-01T11:41:56.210+12:002015-09-01T11:41:56.210+12:00Very interesting discussion!
I left programming 10...Very interesting discussion!<br />I left programming 10 years or so ago. I loved Delphi:<br />1. No bothers about GUI<br />2. One executable as 'product' (no install shit and DLL hell)<br />3. 'rapid' development<br />4. OO<br /><br />I loved Delphi.<br /><br />Now I want to pick up programming again:<br />-Delphi 10 Seatlle looks great: you can compile for all platforms including Android and iOs!!<br />But: it is ridiculously expensive!!<br />I don't care about the 'language' (C++, Pascal, whatever) That is only a tiny part of the programming environment.<br />I just want: OO, good classes (objects) available, fast GUI design, access to lots of components, etc. all benefits of Delphi.<br />After reading this blog, but without any further investigation (yet.....; I know, I have to dive into this myself after 10 years) <br />But, what is the way to go?<br />Lazarus? Can it also compile for Android?<br /><br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04520002532274727598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-57046619094108360832015-07-16T11:48:07.620+12:002015-07-16T11:48:07.620+12:00Thanks Mad. It's a very interesting discussion...Thanks Mad. It's a very interesting discussion. I personally would not get involved in Java as I have seen too many Java projects that end up becoming hugely inflated and fail, but some have used it successfully. If I were looking for an alternative, it would be to C# or to Ruby on Rails, depending on my project directions.<br />However, I am involved currently on a project that uses FireMonkey extensively with great success - but still somehow agree with your sentiment.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00994900851537394935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-24615707191273757882015-07-16T11:30:34.746+12:002015-07-16T11:30:34.746+12:00While it's true that Delphi was a pleasure to ...While it's true that Delphi was a pleasure to use, the same cannot be said of FireMonkey. For those wanting to deliver multi-platform from the same code base, the promise of Delphi XE is a broken promise. I spent 2 hours writing a simple program in XE7 and have spent more than two weeks dealing with the UI bugs brought on by FrieMonkey. I found your article because I am once again searching for a "jave IDE for delphi programmers". Time to learn java and stop messing with Embarcadero's forever-beta product. Plus the price is retardedly expensive as they make you pay $1000+ for bug fixes.Mad Martianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06600636350017215836noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-21029914915295690542015-06-01T19:01:07.339+12:002015-06-01T19:01:07.339+12:00Saul L, I'm not sure exactly what you're a...Saul L, I'm not sure exactly what you're attempting to rebut. I explained how these very press releases are a mishmash of differing units that prohibit any attempt to compare quarter to quarter over a reasonable time frame, and you respond by posting a link to a press release from 2011. <br /><br />>announced today that worldwide sales for its new RAD family of <br />>development tools, including RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++ Builder, grew <br />>54 percent<br /><br />Read what it says. In this press release (again, it changes from release to release) it's lumping everything together.<br /><br />> over sales of the previous version in 2010<br /><br />Previous version (singular)? That doesn't even make grammatical sense. Does it mean that the total sold of those products was 54% greater than in 2010? Are we going from 1/1 - 12/31? Do the release dates for 2010 and 2011 match up? Etc. The most important question of all, which your link doesn't answer, is... what were the sales like in 2010? If they were poor, this doesn't mean much. This is what would happen after the XE2/3 debacle and they conveniently omitted any press release for the next version (which insiders said bombed). Then the next release they put out a press release announcing huge gains in sales! :-) Of course, if the last release bombed, sales have nowhere to go but up. <br /><br />You had one legitimate surge in Delphi sales, and that was when the small shops that use it were finally forced to leave their XP and move to 7. That's when they discovered that Delphi 7 wouldn't run right on XP and they had to upgrade. <br /><br />Everything else has been obfuscation. Think about it... if Delphi use were really climbing 50%+ release after release would it be ignored by tech book publishers? Would EMBT have to start requiring subscriptions to pay for extended update cycles? Would the job market continue to be absymal? <br /><br />Instead of believing what you want to hear, ask critical questions and look at the facts that are really in front of you. alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-63772109529779996802015-05-31T21:33:38.302+12:002015-05-31T21:33:38.302+12:00alcalde, http://www.embarcadero.com/press-releases...alcalde, http://www.embarcadero.com/press-releases/embarcadero-technologies-grows-delphi-and-c-by-54-in-2011<br />Now STFUSaul Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09440679921091663720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-70593236279503585562015-05-31T20:44:38.228+12:002015-05-31T20:44:38.228+12:00To Saul L. I welcome all your comments but please ...To Saul L. I welcome all your comments but please can you limit your comments to civil replies. I will continue to delete replies that are offensive.<br />SteveStevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00994900851537394935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-41112679071340904172015-05-31T20:15:55.568+12:002015-05-31T20:15:55.568+12:00really? how so?really? how so?Saul Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09440679921091663720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-50046624115666836872015-04-02T01:15:13.571+13:002015-04-02T01:15:13.571+13:00As a long-time Delphi programmer who has also work...As a long-time Delphi programmer who has also worked with C/C++, Python, MATLAB, and to a much lesser extent Java, JavaScript and Lua, all exclusively on the Windows platform, I would be very interested to learn how the newer language features have been leveraged to enhance productivity. If you are referring to LOC/day, then languages that are more compact by virtue of their modern structures will obviously score well compared to older languages. But I suspect you are talking about other differences too and not just LOC. What would they be, and how do they boost productivity in practice?<br /><br />FWIW -- and this is just my experience -- I find the Delphi language, IDE and VCL extraordinarily comfortable to work with, especially the short edit-compile-test loop, which I am convinced is good for productivity. The easy construction and reuse of components (visual or not) is great. The production of standalone .exe files is helpful - something that remains unnecessarily fiddly in Python, which is a shame because I do like Python as a language and Python has some nice libraries like matplotlib. I believe compile-time strong typing is beneficial for larger projects. Delphi gives you a way of doing dynamic type programming if you want to (sort of), but I have hardly ever needed to. Delphi's compiled code is plenty fast enough for what I want to do. Sure it would be nice if the optimizations were better, but for me that is low priority. Compared to C++, Delphi feels safer and simpler; compared to Java it feels leaner and simpler. Simple is good, imo.fburtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11622283454482776712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-89971836899589736512015-02-25T05:15:01.797+13:002015-02-25T05:15:01.797+13:00Personnnally as a new Delphi developer I'm lea...Personnnally as a new Delphi developer I'm leaving the language as soon as I find a new Job. Delphi is Dead and has been dead for along time the only thing that has slowed is death is legacy code. <br /><br />Sadly anyone using Delphi is just simply an outdated developer any new graduate wouldn't touch it with a barge pole (wish I never took this job). I now have to start from the bottom again as no software house would ever bother looking at someone with delphi when others actually have useful languages.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01224847616056597441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-33153614467531266032014-11-27T14:06:13.459+13:002014-11-27T14:06:13.459+13:00Actually I see Delphi more effective to provide fa...Actually I see Delphi more effective to provide fast solutions at middle tier. With our multiple devices and cloud devices, it's not productive to put all of your business rules into your client applications. So, interactivity and web user experience were never Delphi strong points. But when you abstract your business rules, security, encryption and integration and put all then in a middle tier application, such as webservices, you can do them pretty fastly with Delphi, and the cost with licensing become too small because there's no need to hire more than 2 or 3 developers to build and maintain it.<br />No one have mentioned, but there are a real army of Delphi Developers in China, and the Russians also do great things with Delphi, as example there are the Kaspersky security softwares, the most hard to crack and the second best antivirus on the market.<br />Here in Brazil there's also a strong Delphi community, and what everybody say to me when I show entire WEB systems build using Atozed Intraweb Framework (VCL for the Web) is just: wow! These babies can support many simultaneous sessions as the server memory and network cables can handle. In a small server (4GB of RAM) it's very easy to support more than 5k active sessions with none or very little performance downgrade. It can do most of things in async way without none knowledge of AJAX. It's high level development.<br /><br />The real deal is that Delphi is still a great path to companies focused in B2B, the problem today is to find developers, because developers need to eat, and the job positions for Delphi are not growing. It looks like companies are trying to build systems over languages and technologies that aims global scale performance, what can bring more costs than benefits.<br /><br />Delphi is not dead and the big bet of Embarcadero is to make Delphi code be reusable for apps development. As a case study you can read http://www.embarcadero.com/br/products/digifort-case-study (use Google Translate to get English version).<br /><br />This company (Digifort) have customers in over more than 100 countries, it's based in Brazil, and have a cutting edge surveillance system. Their choice to write iOS and Android Apps was Delphi, after serious studies and cost plannings. The result was that in just 2-3 months they were delivering the app version of their software to customers, final version, for both Android and iOS.<br /><br />B2B don't come to the news, but it's where the money is.<br />For this scenario there are many good and modern languages and platforms, and Delphi is still a very interesting choice, even with few developers in the market, compared to .NET, for example.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11925353556936903683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-45640992730256215222014-11-05T06:04:58.923+13:002014-11-05T06:04:58.923+13:00we had the same situation in our company, 15 delph...we had the same situation in our company, 15 delphi developers with hugh legacy systems. at the end we developed our own vcl for typescript which went excellent in term of learning curve and development time. <br /><br />http://vcljs.comAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00376365481979816084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-24632579639429842172014-11-04T21:34:35.215+13:002014-11-04T21:34:35.215+13:00True, MS is stupid. Microsoft has net seen the fut...True, MS is stupid. Microsoft has net seen the future at the time they endeavor for .Net.<br />Their .Net endeavor is due to their jealousy with Java. There is wind of change from desktop applications to mobile apps to cloud computing.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01608009935927892798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-35798132514206555592014-08-08T14:53:24.518+12:002014-08-08T14:53:24.518+12:00# of lines of code doesn't really matter all t...# of lines of code doesn't really matter all that much and you mentioned that you cross compiled python to C, which is kinda cheating. I can cross compile pascal to C too, you know. Python isn't IMO a fully-fledged language. I feel like, if I'm going to be maintaining millions of lines of code, I better have complex static types, compile-time evaluation, speed when I need it, including in-line ASM capabilities, threading, thread-pooling, a rich-extensible GUI system. Python is a scripting language, people write little scripts in it, sometimes those little scripts are web pages, but don't get me started on the idiocy that drives web programming. Most people who program python think that python and javascript are the as good as programming languages get and that HTML and CSS are great methods for designing GUIs. I don't claim that Delphi is the greatest language ever invented. It was after-all abandoned by its creator, who BTW became the architect of C#, which is easily, hands down, the most elegant computer programming language ever created. Delphi could have been the greatest language ever invented but we Delphi programmers all admit and recognize that it has been under poor stewardship for a long time now. I am thankful that there are more cross-compile options and 64-bit support now. I write things in delphi that, as the author says, would take large teams of programmers to accomplish in any other language. I particularly like the "Ctrl+shift+C" hotkey... it basically writes the code for me. I am prolific enough in Delphi that I have lots of secret weapons that make me more productive... none of which I'm going to share with you ;)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02533993400069302917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-83598134952666602112014-07-06T18:30:42.084+12:002014-07-06T18:30:42.084+12:00Vanners, you do realize that popular, complex prog...Vanners, you do realize that popular, complex programs such as the mercurial DVCS, Dropbox, the Eve Online MMORPG, Review Board, the Reddit website (10th most popular), Instagram (sold for $1 billion), and at one time at least ALL of YouTube were written with Python? IronKey says it has over one million lines of Python across its security products. I don't think scaling past 10K lines is a problem. alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-90229715065346834672014-07-06T18:26:21.718+12:002014-07-06T18:26:21.718+12:00>>"In fact, name one language feature o...>>"In fact, name one language feature of Delphi that's been copied by other languages because it's awesome? Or even name one (sensical) feature we have that's unique? <br /><br />>I will...C# (and, .Net in general) as developed by Anders Hejlsberg.<br /><br />Anders isn't a language feature. :-) He's a smart and talented man who left many years ago. <br /><br /> >MS recruited him away. If Delphi didn't hold merit, why would MS feel so compelled to steal him away?<br /><br />Anders is a smart and talented man. In fact, when Joel Spolsky was asked why he didn't consider Delphi for a project, he wrote something to the effect of "Let's be honest; when it comes to Delphi, the talent has left the building."<br /><br />Anders didn't invent Pascal though; Niklaus Wirth did. MS didn't hire him. :-)<br /><br />>Take a look at the similarities of the languages.<br /><br />Of course there's going to be some similarities. This still doesn't answer the question - name one true innovation that appeared in Delphi (1995 onwards) that was later adopted by other languages? Delphi itself was essentially Borland Pascal 7.0 (1992) with some changes for objects and the VCL and BDE added on. The improvements were in the framework and libraries, NOT the language even then. When Anders was asked at the unveiling by journalists why Pascal he answered that no one else was using it so they thought they could do whatever they wanted with it. Thus it wasn't because Pascal was inherently RAD or anything else. <br /><br />>Those who don't use Delphi...<br /><br />which doesn't include me. Pictures of some of my Delphi CDs, stack of Marco Cantu Mastering Delphi books, etc. available on request. I chose it for a start-up I was part owner of and worked at from 1995-2003. <br /><br /> >I saw the benefits over Visual Basic and C development using Visual Studio. It was designed to be a VB killer and it did it's job perfectly.<br /><br />I refered to the Delphi + Crystal Reports as my "Access Killer". The problem though is that this isn't 1999 anymore. In 2012 I helped 2 startups choose software stacks and I realized Delphi didn't compete anymore on features, price or ecosystem and if I was doing it all again today myself I wouldn't make the same choice I did then. :-(<br /><br />>To this day, no language or tool can really do what, visually, what was possible in Delphi.<br /><br />You're kidding, right? Things like Qt don't exist? And point-and-click programming went out of fashion after the '90s.<br /><br />> The entire Win SDK was available to us.<br /><br />And was never updated beyond Windows 98. :-( <br /><br /> >Database connectivity has always been a breeze ...<br /><br />In the BDE/dBase era. Until FireDAC though there was the nightmare of result.FieldByName("Whatever").AsString. <br /><br />> or the need for an interpret as for .NET and Mono.<br /><br />.Net/Mono are JIT compilers, not interpreters. And C# and Delphi perform similarly on SciMark (actually C# and Java both beat Delphi). <br /><br />> And, it's possible to develop for both Windows and Mac with, nearly virtually, the same source.<br /><br />Which you could do with C++ and Qt (or almost anything and Qt) for quite some time previously, as well as Java, Python, etc. <br /><br />>I would also dare you to write a high performance compiler in Ruby, Perl, Python.<br /><br />I would dare you to write one in Delphi. The Delphi compiler is written in C. 99.9% of software are not compilers, however. No one (outside a few GTK die-hards) write desktop applications in C anymore. <br /><br />>The only real downside is the verbosity of the Pascal language and the need by its designers to keep importing features from more "modern" languages to "keep up". <br /><br />Which brings us back to the point I was making. :-)<br /><br />>But, when I go home at night, it's Delphi that is my preferred environment.<br /><br />Whatever makes you happy. But we've got to be real about the state of the Delphi ecosystem today. Could you really recommend it for a new business or a job-seeker?alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-55770924892756846892014-07-06T18:07:51.572+12:002014-07-06T18:07:51.572+12:00>At work it takes 8 hours + to compile the c++ ...>At work it takes 8 hours + to compile the c++ quant library which is 6 <br />>million lines. We have to use a grid to make it bearable!<br /><br />Kelly that's because the Delphi compiler is a legacy single-pass compiler design that dates back to Wirth and the original Pascal. The C++ compiler's multi-pass design allows it to implement many optimizations that can't be performed with single pass. Your code may take 8 hours to compile but it's going to perform 2x, 3x or more faster than equivalent Delphi code. <br /><br />I had a small benchmark in which Delphi took 3x as long as C because it didn't convert the division to bit-shifting operations. TinyC is a C compiler designed for speed and small size; it can fit on a floppy disk along with a Linux kernel! Because of its speed and size it performs very few optimizations; one of the few it implements is... bit-shifting. Even TinyC could optimize code in a way that Delphi XE5 could not. :-( Delphi's compilation speed comes at a performance price. Obviously the value of this trade-off depends on which is most important to you.<br /><br />alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-33558987757545420192014-07-06T18:00:41.264+12:002014-07-06T18:00:41.264+12:00Vahrokh, again, please show us the Delphi language...Vahrokh, again, please show us the Delphi language structures that give you this productivity. Ask a C# developer and they show you LINQ. Ask a Python developer they show you list comprehensions (among other things). Ask a Delphi developer and they seem to bite down on cyanide capsules. :-(<br /><br />>By the way I had to interact and merge with data created in 3 different <br />>SQL engines, <br /><br />And what did you use to do this? Delphi's old TDataset? BDE? Or FireDAC? And what about ADO.NET or Python's DB-API and SQLAlchemy would have made it impossible to do with those tools? <br /><br />>All done and visually for the most part.<br /><br /> Any SQL Query Builder tool could have done that.<br /><br />>All with real time interactive forms ... pixel precision paper reports....<br /><br />Please don't tell me you used IntraWeb. And are you suggesting no other language has a PDF library or can print to a printer? <br /><br />>Now, WHAAA WHAAA in Big Great America Delphi job are scarce.<br /><br />Everywhere Delphi jobs are scarce. Check out Indeed.com's trend graph:<br /><br />http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Delphi&l=&relative=1<br /><br />>Delphi and other "poor man's little team developers" tools are having a two <br />>digit a year growth in those new markets. <br /><br />And your source for these figures is? Chinese developers get ripped off as the Delphi price is astronomical for them and combined with abysmal average salaries (puts your growth claim in perspective) Delphi costs a huge percentage of their yearly income. <br /><br />http://delphihaters.blogspot.com/2011/09/dim-sums-in-china.html<br /><br />In fact, this post links to an EMBT forum post in which a HK citizen relates that Delphi is dying in popularity, not taught anymore, etc. over there just like it is in the USA so I really question the source of your data. <br /><br />>I had to change about 5 lines of code! Even for dinosaurs like BDE based <br />>ancient apps! So, today, a customer is running their legacy BDE 1998 app <br />>on Windows 8.1.<br /><br />I call foul on this as well. Python 2.x to 3 involved a major change in strings/Unicode. So did Delphi with 2010. If your Delphi 2, 7 and 2007 apps only needed 5 lines of code than Unicode wasn't an issue with these programs at all, in which case comparing them to Python 3's intentional compatibility-breaking Unicode change is apples and oranges. <br /><br />The real point to take away is that Python both evolves and deprecates old constructs to stay clean and streamlined. Because Delphi just keeps piling new stuff on top of old crud we have four string types, at least FIVE different ways to open a file - from the old Assign to TStreams to BlockReads to TFile etc. Some of those work with Unicode, some don't - it's a mess. Python has had ONE way its entire life - "open", which does everything all the other Delphi methods do. <br /><br />If crud is still in the language that means some people will not only not update their code to use the more modern features (which you apparently didn't either) but they keep using those ancient constructs in NEW code. <br /><br />>not to be told that the wonderful functional language decided to stop being <br />>compatible with itself just because<br /><br />Sigh. Guido Van Rossum fixed the many problems that came from having two string types. Delphi switched to Unicode later, ignored Guido's public proclamation that it was the worst mistake he ever made, and gave us FOUR string types. Now they're talking about bringing it back down to one string type. Guess what? When the new compiler arrives, you're going to have the same porting work to do with Delphi.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Python not only kept developing the 2.x branch for a few years, they even backported 3.x features! Finally, the last 2.x version continues to be supported; Guido just extended its support to 2020! On the Delphi front, when EMBT switched to 6-month releases they dropped the support window down to 8 MONTHS. Python's is 1.5 years and 2x that for security bugs. Now which does your CEO want to depend on? I don't need to upgrade Python to get bugs fixed.<br />alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-69668623383045190152014-07-06T17:29:14.326+12:002014-07-06T17:29:14.326+12:00>There is actually no way this would be possibl...>There is actually no way this would be possible to get this level of design <br />>with any other programming environment. <br /><br />See, this is the kind of hyperbole that makes talking about Delphi honestly so frustrating. First, have you any experience with other programming environments or more aptly, a comparable amount of experience with another environment? If not, you can't accurately make that statement.<br /><br />Second, most CAD software is not written in Delphi, so per your statement it should not exist. AutoCAD, the granddaddy of CAD software, is written in C++, for instance. I'm sure AutoDesk would be amused to learn that one needs Delphi to write CAD applications. CATIAv5, Pro/Engineer and Solidworks are also C++. <br /><br />>I can't beleive someone actually quoted Python as a usable alternative, <br />>seriously?<br /><br />Seriously. Simpler language yet more powerful at the same time. Also vastly more popular with a vibrant ecosystem and actual job prospects. Its standard library is much richer, with many built-ins you need to pay thousands for with Delphi. When choosing a language stack of a project recently, the Delphi option would have cost almost $6000 to go apples-to-apples with the python option, and even then there were several features that just couldn't be obtained with Delphi. Python option cost $0 or $200 with the Jetbrains IDE. <br /><br />In tests I've done I've rewritten Delphi code in as little as 1/5 the number of lines with Python. It scales up - the larger/more complex the original Delphi code, the greater the difference in total LOC. On top of that, the Delphi compiler is so old and unoptimized that on an (admittedly simple) mathematics benchmark, Python code fed through a program that converted the math to C, compiled it, and wrapped it for importing into Python automatically ran the benchmark 3x faster than stock Delphi! Someone who looked at it had to hand-replace the division in the Delphi code with bit-shifting to match the C performance (which used the free gcc compiler). I'm working on an econometrics benchmark from a just-published paper now that was presented in several languages (but not Delphi). I'm going to test Delphi, Delphi with Dew's MtxVec math library ($600 with source code) and FreePascal. While native Python was rather slow in the paper, with a free JIT compiler that uses LLVM the Python turned in a performance about 1.65 times the speed of C across OSes. This was one of the best performances and while not beating VSC++ on Windows it did beat gcc C++ on Windows! It also beat MatLab and Mathematica. Based on my own previous benchmark testing I have a feeling Delphi is going to perform rather poorly compared to both C++ and even JIT-ed Python. alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-17428996050822518062014-07-06T17:07:18.078+12:002014-07-06T17:07:18.078+12:00Anders was lured away with a million-dollar signin...Anders was lured away with a million-dollar signing bonus. EMBT just bought a db tools vendor for $20 million dollars. They could have used that money as 20 signing bonuses to lure 20 extremely talented people to the firm; the kind of people who issue press releases about when you hire them. Instead they fired a lot of the experienced Delphi devs a few years ago and outsourced most of the development to the cheapest programmers they could find in Europe (Romania and Spain). One Romanian dev said the proffered pay is so low even for Romania that the only ones they can hire are kids straight out of school. The kids only work there to get one year of experience on their resumes before leaving to get a better-paying job elsewhere. Because of this morale is very low (and of course no one cares about bugs/problems because they don't plan on being around long enough to deal with them). alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-87722026278777037342014-07-06T17:03:24.813+12:002014-07-06T17:03:24.813+12:00This doesn't, sadly, prove your point about pr...This doesn't, sadly, prove your point about productivity. Those 2.5 developers could have been very good, per your own account very well supported, etc. On top of that, when was this? The competition in 1995 was a lot different than the competition Delphi faces in 2014. I called Delphi my "Access Killer" when I chose it for a startup I was at from 1995-2003. In 2012 when I helped two new startups choose software stacks I realized there was no way I could honestly recommend Delphi to either of them; the ecosystem was almost dead and it offered too little for too much compared to the competition. <br /><br /> To demonstrate that Delphi is more productive you actually need to show us the language features that make it more productive. I've yet to meet a person who can put up a slide on the wall and say "THIS. This language structure let's me do in one line of code what takes 10 in other languages." The fact is said language feature - or library feature - simply doesn't exist (or TeamBers and MVPers are keeping it a closely guarded secret). Meanwhile, it's undeniable that a lack of type inference, memory management, etc. lead to larger code bases and more potential for error. <br /><br />>does a product like Delphi, with so much potential and capability, <br />>continue in its un-relenting path towards obscurity and obsolescence? <br /><br />Because Borland et al stopped evolving the language so it grew stagnant and stale? Because they couldn't deliver things like Unicode or 64-bit when enterprise needed them? Because they still can't get into the Windows App Store? Because they failed to deliver an acceptable web solution? Because they delivered a Linux solution to early and cross-platform too late? Because they tied the language to the framework and the IDE? Because point-and-click programming went out of style? Because with a dying ecosystem you can't find developers or libraries? Because of poor quality for many years? Or because the area where open source performs the best is development tools - tools written by developers for developers with no marketing or accounting department to answer to? And hence open source is devouring the development tools market as Borland foresaw?<br />alcaldehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14404682533930977783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-42377297776342136812014-06-23T05:06:35.335+12:002014-06-23T05:06:35.335+12:00I agree your point of view,, As and ISV I'bee...I agree your point of view,, As and ISV I'been coding and deploying Delphi desktop apps since Delphi 2 up to day, of course I use other languajes such as PHP, .NET, C++, etc. depending on what I need to implement, but at the end of the day, I turn to Delphi (when it comes to desktop apps) because of the same reazons: easyness to implement ideas and also the easyness to deploy my apps,, like you just said: Who can argue that?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16700069698406327549noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3782954984366933851.post-87945600497250671582014-06-04T06:27:59.791+12:002014-06-04T06:27:59.791+12:00The next time you go to a large Theme park a Delph...The next time you go to a large Theme park a Delphi written application will let you through the gates :)shakaworld.shophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02202208073443736806noreply@blogger.com