7 ms·

I still compile a old project in Delphi 7 once every 3 months just to add 5 lines of code, and they pay me monthly for it. It's cheaper than porting the whole s

I still compile a old project in Delphi 7 once every 3 months just to add 5 lines of code, and they pay me monthly for it. It's cheaper than porting the whole system to any other language. It is a project that I've built 8 years ago. Delphi was already a "strange think" on that time, it was declining fast. I think Java killed Delphi - "One codebase for all platforms, even your freezer will have Java!" - this was the cool sentence on that time. Since I started with Delphi when I was 14 (I am now 33), a lot of thinks changed to me. Now I mainly work in back-end field, building APIs, Bots, Crawlers and Queues to do massive things (like receive million SMS per hour in a voting system for a TV Reality Show program) When I am programming, 70% of my time is Nodejs, 10% Python and 20% Vuejs. But I still miss the old days of drag-N-drop GUI of Delphi, really easy.

pjmlp 9y ago
Which is one reason I am still sore about the whole VM thing instead of adopting AOT compilation from the get go.
jlebrech 9y ago
there needs to be a delphi for react. I remember starting to learn components in delphi, never got round to it but I think you could composed them like with react and also style them.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  We could have something like that if Web Components were actually a thing, but they are only properly supported on Chrome.
  - jlebrech 9y ago
    It's time we just make wasm render raster and vector graphics directly and throw the DOM away, i'm sick of it already.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I firmly believe that once WebAssembly matures, we will have the renaissance of browser plugins, just wait for it. There are already people playing with prototyping language runtimes into it.
cooervo 9y ago
Vuejs is wonderful, I love it
hdhzy 9y ago
I wish I could upvote this several times. That's my exact experience as well. I would like more people to experience what was the way of creating software with Delphi, seamless and easy, really closing the loop between creating and the resulting application and then look back at what unnecessary complexity we are dealing with every day when working with software. (nb I think there was a blog somewhere by one of Delphi's creators where they explicitly mentioned that the language and IDE were designed to be simple to use). If I will be teaching programming to my children I will dig up old installation of Delphi 7 and just let them play.
- Certhas 9y ago
  Absolutely. I did GUI programming with Delphi in high school, then haven't touched it till now, and I am somewhat shocked how the ability to create desktop (or web) GUIs today seems to lag so much behind how I remember Delphi. Might be nostalgia speaking, but even if it doesn't lag behind, I'm pretty sure it hasn't gotten better. I guess QT Creator actually comes close. (Plus: Compile times were never ever an issue...)
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    The majority of tools for native apps desktops and mobile OSes (minus deployment) still comes close to Delphi. Now for the web, nevermind.
    - apta 9y ago
      I don't do desktop app dev, but what tools are there? I'm aware of .NET under Visual Studio and NetBeans UI designer.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        .NET has Windows Forms and XAML Visual Studio designer, and Blend for XAML. Java has Netbeans Matisse for Swing, Eclipse WindowsBuilder for Swing and SWT, Scene Builder for JavaFX, Android Studio designer. Not sure what InteliJ offers. Objective-C and Swift have the XCode GUI design tools, based on the NeXTStep development environment. C++ has UI designers for Qt/QML, C++ Builder, UWP/XAML. Object Pascal has Delphi and Lazarus. Xojo as Visual Basic dialect also has its own designer. Commercial Common Lisp environments like Alegro CL and LispWorks also have their designers in the tradition of Lisp Machines. Smalltalk environments also have GUI designers. These are just some examples that come to my mind.
mobilio 9y ago
Delphi 7 was last of greatest IDE (on that time) exists. New one add .Net and became larger and unstable. Probably 2007 bring stability. I also start with Pascal (Turbo 3, 4, 5, 5.5 (greatest!), 6 and little bit 7). Then jump to Delphi (all 1-7) and then abandon it.
- defined 9y ago
  Yeah, I used Turbo Pascal, starting with TP 1.0 on 8 MHz, 8 bit Z80 with 64kB RAM (entire compiler and TUI in 64kB! compiled even large programs in a few seconds). Much kudos must go to Anders Hejlsberg, who wrote the compiler in assembly language, starting on it at age 20[1]. Hejlsberg went on to create Delphi, J++, C#, and TypeScript. I still regard TP 1.0 as one of the best software products I've used, and feel it is a testament to brilliant, performant, compact software development - and to its developer. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg
maga 9y ago
> Since I started with Delphi when I was 14 (I am now 33) Almost the exact same experience: started at 14 and now close to 30. Back in the day, we used to exchange game CDs in my small town, and by a mistake I got one with Delphi 5. I knew nothing about programming, just installed it, clicked around, somehow managed to run the default app, and got an empty window. We didn't have internet, so I had to ask around what this thing was about, someone said all other programs were done with it. There were no books about Delphi in local bookshops, the closest I found was an introductory book about Visual Basic. Armed with a book on VB and Delphi 3, by trial and error I had managed to produce my first ever working apps. Few months later I was a well-known "programmer" in my town and wrote my first production ready app: a management system for a taxi company that managed exactly 20 cars. Why twenty? Because I haven't figured out loops and all my loops over those 20 cars were "unrolled" - 20 consecutive lines of if/else statements! But it worked! I don't know for how long, but it was still in use when I moved from the town few years later.
- bruno2223 9y ago
  > Delphi 5 instead of Games CDs LOL!!!! > 20 consecutive lines Haha that's nice think about trial and error. Cool history!
jorgeleo 9y ago
"But I still miss the old days of drag-N-drop GUI of Delphi, really easy." How many years later and the web still does not catch up.
- gbersac 9y ago
  I think this is because of the unpredictiveness of html/css. The css api is not intuitive and there is difference between browsers.
  - unclebucknasty 9y ago
    True, but we've solved that reasonably well enough when hand-coding that slapping a GUI code generator on top of it should be workable.
    - computerex 9y ago
      A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist. The difference between the web and traditional desktop based programs is that you have a lot more freedom in constructing the experience on the web. Whereas a typical WinForms app is made up of a bunch of drag and drop common controls like the button or text edit, simple text editing and buttons can take many different creative forms to best suit the intended experience. So I guess another way of saying it is that older desktop based technologies like WinForms are more geared towards purely functional experiences. The web can go above and beyond providing merely functional experiences. The aesthetic and the experience as a whole is important.
      - unclebucknasty 9y ago
        >A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist. >older desktop based technologies like WinForms are more geared towards purely functional experiences. The web can go above and beyond providing merely functional experiences. Not talking about web sites here, but web apps, which in the modern sense are much more aligned with desktop apps than websites of old.
Joeri 9y ago
Also started Delphi at 14, now 37. Always had a soft spot for it, but Borland managed it into the ground, and the later owners never figured out a way to make it successful again, even though to this day it has a lot of unrealized market potential. I often think nostalgically back to my NT4 system. A full office suite, photoshop, and delphi IDE running side by side in 128 MB of RAM, with room to spare, and very zippy. I see some functional improvements in modern day software, but nothing that warrants the incredible bloat. I notice that the software industry as a whole still lives in the assumption that hardware can fix slow software. However, that doesn't seem to be the case. If you look at single-threaded performance the improvements are much less than they used to be. We may reach a point where CPUs stop getting faster at all. At what point should we go back to micro-optimizing our code?
- badpenny 9y ago
  Hell, just optimising would be a start.
frik 9y ago
Delphi and VB4-6 used to be the RAD tools. (RAD = rapid application developed) One could drag and drop controls and create an GUI application in WYSIWYG-style. Then in 1999 when Microsoft abdomen VB for their new dotNet vision, MSFT was about to be split up, etc Web took over and Dreamweaver (and Frontpage) offered a similar IDE experience for HTML4 with a tables and PHP (or ASP, etc). To this day VB6 has the easiest to use RAD IDE, no other newer IDE allows one to create GUIs that fast. Nowadays XCode has a good GUI tool. Traditional Windows applications are out of fashion for many years. Only Win32/64 games are made, everything else is crosspatform electron JS apps or legacy apps that get a yearly minor update. Android and iOS apps thrive, and SaaS web apps too. And on Windows UWP hasn't got traction, it's like a failed experiment - I use zero UWP apps, 1% dotNetFramework4 apps and 99% WinAPI C++ based apps.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  You don't use the Start Menu in Windows 10 or the Settings application or the calculator or the WiFi menu or the Action Center or ...? UWP apps are more ubiquitous than you think they are in Windows 10. Zero times visited the Windows Store to directly install apps? Sure, that's possible. Actually using Zero UWP apps? Increasingly unlikely. UWP isn't a failed experiment by most measures, and you may not directly notice the API transition in many major Windows components from Win32 to UWP, but it's happening. For what it is worth, the RAD experience for UWP is pretty good and if you want to make a not-very-well-architected "VB6-ish code behind" app with Visual Studio RAD tools, you can knock it out in about the time it would have taken you in VB6.
  - frik 9y ago
    I have tried Win10, but all these new UWP based parts tacked on Win7 shell are so laggy. I mean click on start button, it takes several noticeable milliseconds to show up, the same for the windows clock pop up (calendar), etc. even the calc has now a loading screen and animation. And even though these UWP parts like the start menu are coded in C++ for the UWP API, they are like 100 times slower than the old C++ WinAPI based applications. I know, I had a discussion with the MSFT startmenu devs over here on HN in a thread several months ago - it's a lot less responsive than what could be done with a WebView control and HTML and CSS yet it's even solver than both a webview and a native C++ WinAPI implementation - sucks. I stay with Win7, which is superb and doesn't suck.

pjmlp 9y ago

Which is one reason I am still sore about the whole VM thing instead of adopting AOT compilation from the get go.

jlebrech 9y ago

there needs to be a delphi for react. I remember starting to learn components in delphi, never got round to it but I think you could composed them like with react and also style them.

pjmlp 9y ago
We could have something like that if Web Components were actually a thing, but they are only properly supported on Chrome.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  It's time we just make wasm render raster and vector graphics directly and throw the DOM away, i'm sick of it already.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I firmly believe that once WebAssembly matures, we will have the renaissance of browser plugins, just wait for it. There are already people playing with prototyping language runtimes into it.

cooervo 9y ago

Vuejs is wonderful, I love it

hdhzy 9y ago

I wish I could upvote this several times. That's my exact experience as well. I would like more people to experience what was the way of creating software with Delphi, seamless and easy, really closing the loop between creating and the resulting application and then look back at what unnecessary complexity we are dealing with every day when working with software. (nb I think there was a blog somewhere by one of Delphi's creators where they explicitly mentioned that the language and IDE were designed to be simple to use). If I will be teaching programming to my children I will dig up old installation of Delphi 7 and just let them play.

Certhas 9y ago
Absolutely. I did GUI programming with Delphi in high school, then haven't touched it till now, and I am somewhat shocked how the ability to create desktop (or web) GUIs today seems to lag so much behind how I remember Delphi. Might be nostalgia speaking, but even if it doesn't lag behind, I'm pretty sure it hasn't gotten better. I guess QT Creator actually comes close. (Plus: Compile times were never ever an issue...)
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The majority of tools for native apps desktops and mobile OSes (minus deployment) still comes close to Delphi. Now for the web, nevermind.
  - apta 9y ago
    I don't do desktop app dev, but what tools are there? I'm aware of .NET under Visual Studio and NetBeans UI designer.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      .NET has Windows Forms and XAML Visual Studio designer, and Blend for XAML. Java has Netbeans Matisse for Swing, Eclipse WindowsBuilder for Swing and SWT, Scene Builder for JavaFX, Android Studio designer. Not sure what InteliJ offers. Objective-C and Swift have the XCode GUI design tools, based on the NeXTStep development environment. C++ has UI designers for Qt/QML, C++ Builder, UWP/XAML. Object Pascal has Delphi and Lazarus. Xojo as Visual Basic dialect also has its own designer. Commercial Common Lisp environments like Alegro CL and LispWorks also have their designers in the tradition of Lisp Machines. Smalltalk environments also have GUI designers. These are just some examples that come to my mind.

mobilio 9y ago

Delphi 7 was last of greatest IDE (on that time) exists. New one add .Net and became larger and unstable. Probably 2007 bring stability. I also start with Pascal (Turbo 3, 4, 5, 5.5 (greatest!), 6 and little bit 7). Then jump to Delphi (all 1-7) and then abandon it.

defined 9y ago
Yeah, I used Turbo Pascal, starting with TP 1.0 on 8 MHz, 8 bit Z80 with 64kB RAM (entire compiler and TUI in 64kB! compiled even large programs in a few seconds). Much kudos must go to Anders Hejlsberg, who wrote the compiler in assembly language, starting on it at age 20[1]. Hejlsberg went on to create Delphi, J++, C#, and TypeScript. I still regard TP 1.0 as one of the best software products I've used, and feel it is a testament to brilliant, performant, compact software development - and to its developer. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

maga 9y ago

> Since I started with Delphi when I was 14 (I am now 33) Almost the exact same experience: started at 14 and now close to 30. Back in the day, we used to exchange game CDs in my small town, and by a mistake I got one with Delphi 5. I knew nothing about programming, just installed it, clicked around, somehow managed to run the default app, and got an empty window. We didn't have internet, so I had to ask around what this thing was about, someone said all other programs were done with it. There were no books about Delphi in local bookshops, the closest I found was an introductory book about Visual Basic. Armed with a book on VB and Delphi 3, by trial and error I had managed to produce my first ever working apps. Few months later I was a well-known "programmer" in my town and wrote my first production ready app: a management system for a taxi company that managed exactly 20 cars. Why twenty? Because I haven't figured out loops and all my loops over those 20 cars were "unrolled" - 20 consecutive lines of if/else statements! But it worked! I don't know for how long, but it was still in use when I moved from the town few years later.

bruno2223 9y ago
> Delphi 5 instead of Games CDs LOL!!!! > 20 consecutive lines Haha that's nice think about trial and error. Cool history!

jorgeleo 9y ago

"But I still miss the old days of drag-N-drop GUI of Delphi, really easy." How many years later and the web still does not catch up.

gbersac 9y ago
I think this is because of the unpredictiveness of html/css. The css api is not intuitive and there is difference between browsers.
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  True, but we've solved that reasonably well enough when hand-coding that slapping a GUI code generator on top of it should be workable.
  - computerex 9y ago
    A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist. The difference between the web and traditional desktop based programs is that you have a lot more freedom in constructing the experience on the web. Whereas a typical WinForms app is made up of a bunch of drag and drop common controls like the button or text edit, simple text editing and buttons can take many different creative forms to best suit the intended experience. So I guess another way of saying it is that older desktop based technologies like WinForms are more geared towards purely functional experiences. The web can go above and beyond providing merely functional experiences. The aesthetic and the experience as a whole is important.
    - unclebucknasty 9y ago
      >A GUI web site generator is trivial and many already exist. >older desktop based technologies like WinForms are more geared towards purely functional experiences. The web can go above and beyond providing merely functional experiences. Not talking about web sites here, but web apps, which in the modern sense are much more aligned with desktop apps than websites of old.

Joeri 9y ago

Also started Delphi at 14, now 37. Always had a soft spot for it, but Borland managed it into the ground, and the later owners never figured out a way to make it successful again, even though to this day it has a lot of unrealized market potential. I often think nostalgically back to my NT4 system. A full office suite, photoshop, and delphi IDE running side by side in 128 MB of RAM, with room to spare, and very zippy. I see some functional improvements in modern day software, but nothing that warrants the incredible bloat. I notice that the software industry as a whole still lives in the assumption that hardware can fix slow software. However, that doesn't seem to be the case. If you look at single-threaded performance the improvements are much less than they used to be. We may reach a point where CPUs stop getting faster at all. At what point should we go back to micro-optimizing our code?

badpenny 9y ago
Hell, just optimising would be a start.

frik 9y ago

Delphi and VB4-6 used to be the RAD tools. (RAD = rapid application developed) One could drag and drop controls and create an GUI application in WYSIWYG-style. Then in 1999 when Microsoft abdomen VB for their new dotNet vision, MSFT was about to be split up, etc Web took over and Dreamweaver (and Frontpage) offered a similar IDE experience for HTML4 with a tables and PHP (or ASP, etc). To this day VB6 has the easiest to use RAD IDE, no other newer IDE allows one to create GUIs that fast. Nowadays XCode has a good GUI tool. Traditional Windows applications are out of fashion for many years. Only Win32/64 games are made, everything else is crosspatform electron JS apps or legacy apps that get a yearly minor update. Android and iOS apps thrive, and SaaS web apps too. And on Windows UWP hasn't got traction, it's like a failed experiment - I use zero UWP apps, 1% dotNetFramework4 apps and 99% WinAPI C++ based apps.

WorldMaker 9y ago
You don't use the Start Menu in Windows 10 or the Settings application or the calculator or the WiFi menu or the Action Center or ...? UWP apps are more ubiquitous than you think they are in Windows 10. Zero times visited the Windows Store to directly install apps? Sure, that's possible. Actually using Zero UWP apps? Increasingly unlikely. UWP isn't a failed experiment by most measures, and you may not directly notice the API transition in many major Windows components from Win32 to UWP, but it's happening. For what it is worth, the RAD experience for UWP is pretty good and if you want to make a not-very-well-architected "VB6-ish code behind" app with Visual Studio RAD tools, you can knock it out in about the time it would have taken you in VB6.
- frik 9y ago
  I have tried Win10, but all these new UWP based parts tacked on Win7 shell are so laggy. I mean click on start button, it takes several noticeable milliseconds to show up, the same for the windows clock pop up (calendar), etc. even the calc has now a loading screen and animation. And even though these UWP parts like the start menu are coded in C++ for the UWP API, they are like 100 times slower than the old C++ WinAPI based applications. I know, I had a discussion with the MSFT startmenu devs over here on HN in a thread several months ago - it's a lot less responsive than what could be done with a WebView control and HTML and CSS yet it's even solver than both a webview and a native C++ WinAPI implementation - sucks. I stay with Win7, which is superb and doesn't suck.