Former Delphi developers

[airpas]

i don't think people whom already bought delphi would throw it that easy . it already cost them a lot of money
lazarus is not better than delphi , that is clear without debating. the only advantage i see is maybe linux support and the lightweight of the installer .

the thing that will make the change in my opinion is the skin support.

[Leledumbo]

lazarus is not better than delphi , that is clear without debating. the only advantage i see is maybe linux support and the lightweight of the installer .

Watch out, you could trigger an dynamite explosion with your words. I will try my best to hold myself as I know you're not a full fledged lazarus/fpc user that really knows what the project can offer in and out.

[mica]

i don't think people whom already bought delphi would throw it that easy . it already cost them a lot of money
lazarus is not better than delphi , that is clear without debating. the only advantage i see is maybe linux support and the lightweight of the installer .

the thing that will make the change in my opinion is the skin support.

sure ....
but Linux support is crucial for me so Lazarus is the only alternative.

the golden times of Delphi are over, the hefty price point kills the hobbyist open source component developers ......

technical is no clear Delphi roadmap, code quality is not excellent, developer teams outsourced , Emba is  not able to develop an up to date compiler, no contributions to FPC or LLVM ...


Data Snap is a joke performance/securitywise
Firemonkey/FMX whatever is a toy, Newsgroup Websit is down the most time, new forums are nearly empty ........

 The Delphi installer ..... back to the 90tes

[airpas]

Watch out, you could trigger an dynamite explosion with your words

not that much
i am not underestimate the power of fpc/lazarus  , look at ( lazarus , msegui ) its a proof of strength already
but there are some delphi fantics see that delphi is a big product developped by big company . so they can't switch to a lazarus starting from this point  .

i know some people are using delphi5 from 1999 till now . 

[garlar27]

Since 2008 I'm working with Lazarus/FreePascal. We produce Point Of Sale software as well as some servers, the updaters, some Apache Modules and Daemons/Services. Our clients use Linux and windows, and our software has a consistent functionality in both OS'. Most of our BackOffice system is writen in "web" (don't ask me what exactly is used in the web part).

Every thing related to the POS is writen in Lazarus. Even the tester which simulates a user pressing keys in the keyboard! And I think that there is nothing we can't do with Lazarus.

They hired me because I know Delphi but we never use it. At first I was reluctant using a "Delphi clone" but now I really love FPC/Lazarus and don't want to use delphi again.

...
but there are some delphi fantics see that delphi is a big product developped by big company . so they can't switch to a lazarus starting from this point  .

   o- Fanatics will be fanatics. For instance: It took years to convince people that Internet Explorer is crapp!!
   o- There is a thing called Learning Laziness or Fobia to Learn/Changes: Some get really upset because unit "windows" is not cross-platform and thus they complain because can't use windows APIs in Linux (??!!).

There's a long list of people bad reactions because of change and the fear of passing from Senior Delphi Programmer to Junior "What-it's-name" Programmer.

There's nothing you can do against their own FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt).

Watch out, you could trigger an dynamite explosion with your words.

I hope not cause the same effect 

[Leledumbo]

Watch out, you could trigger an dynamite explosion with your words.

I hope not cause the same effect 

Thanks for the refreshing water

[Zoran]

dodgebros, please read the article:
http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,10827.0.html
and it was written almost five years ago! Many things improved since then!

You're talking about me ?

Sure I am! 

[dmytron]

Is there such thing in the world as Lazarus fanatics?

Lazarus is almost perfect for me except one thing, that is, interface. Delphi 7 interface is good but it is for the sake of nostalgia, current Delphi interface is (IMHO) on the par with Visual Studio.

[JuhaManninen]

Lazarus is almost perfect for me except one thing, that is, interface.

Is this mostly about the docking framework problems or also about the default IDE without docking?

[Michaela Joy]

1) Are there any former Delphi developers who abandoned Delphi and switched to Lazarus and FPC exclusively for commercial software development?

I was a Delphi programmer who used Delphi 5 and 7. At some point, I'd like to use Lazarus / FPC as a complete replacement for Delphi.
I believe that it can happen. I've been watching Lazarus / FPC mature, and it's going quite nicely.
Kudos to the Lazarus / FPC teams. And thank you for all your hard work.

2) Is Lazarus and FPC mature enough to be used to develop enterprise desktop applications ?

I have to say, Lazarus is getting there. There is a learning curve; Delphi programmers have to search around and tinker to convert their existing code to Lazarus / FPC, but IMHO, the end result is worth it. There are a few quirks and bugs, but they're working on it. The ability to dock IDE forms like Delphi would be really nice, but, since the IDE source code is available, someone can make an attempt at modifying the code and doing it themselves.
Could you do that with Delphi?

And with 64 bit support, Lazarus / FPC can compete with Embarcadero. Perhaps not this second, but as long as programmers continue to put their hearts and souls into Lazarus / FPC, The projects will grow into greatness and completely achieve that role.

Did I mention it's free?

:MJ

[Leledumbo]

Lazarus is almost perfect for me except one thing, that is, interface. Delphi 7 interface is good but it is for the sake of nostalgia, current Delphi interface is (IMHO) on the par with Visual Studio.

Did you know that many users also prefer the undocked interface? Making it docked or not will never satisfy everybody. Current choice of undocked interface is because none of the existing docking packages work perfect that's appropriate to be installed by default.

[jwdietrich]

Did you know that many users also prefer the undocked interface? Making it docked or not will never satisfy everybody. Current choice of undocked interface is because none of the existing docking packages work perfect that's appropriate to be installed by default.

Yes, I prefer the undocked interface (as it was in early Delphi versions). It would be a nice idea, however, to introduce layout guidelines (similar to those in the form editor) that help to properly align Windows.

[motaz]

I'm working on Telecommunications development field.
I have abandoned Delphi for good, because of US Embargo to Sudan. I have switched to both Lazarus and Java. For Web services (Soap) clients and services, I use Java, and I use Lazarus/FPC for Desktop applications and for socket programming. The big problem of Lazarus/FPC as well as for Delphi is that there is no new developers in the market, specially young developers. Our universities in Sudan teach mostly Java

[JD]

Well I can't say I've totally abandonned Delphi (I still have several versions) but I prefer to use Lazarus/FPC for all my projects (commercial or otherwise). I like to show skeptics what open source software can do.

Lazarus is very mature. I've used it to create multiuser real-time client-server applications running over the Internet. I use mostly Lazarus, Python & Java in that order because multiplatform is very important to me. All 3 run on the 3 major platforms.

JD

[marcov]

i don't think people whom already bought delphi would throw it that easy . it already cost them a lot of money
lazarus is not better than delphi , that is clear without debating. the only advantage i see is maybe linux support and the lightweight of the installer .

Not all Delphi users have the newest version. If you have a D7, you have no native Unicode in the gui, database drivers anno 2000 and new applications have a Windows XP look (not enabling Vista theming) etc etc.

Similar to D7, XE8 will one day get old, and then the Delphi choice turns out to require continued investment.

Which might be fine for the people that utilize it 40hrs a week in projects that directly yield money, but in many industries, it is harder to get such funding for inhouse programming (e.g. HMI development for PLCs with aging Delphis or VBs).