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Author Topic: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...  (Read 34848 times)

Mr.Madguy

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #60 on: July 23, 2018, 10:07:36 am »
I don't want to start holywar here, cuz it's pointless, as it's actually war of philosophies. May be you don't understand it, but in professional programming choice between compilers/IDEs/frameworks - isn't about philosophy (i.e. when you personally think, that compiler X is better, than compiler Y). It's about plain result. Delphi suits my needs, Lazarus doesn't. Plain and simple. And I have source code, I've been developing for years. Some code is 15 years old. Converting it to Lazarus - is about completely redesigning it and writing it from scratch, cuz Lazarus lacks several major features, like closures and runtime packages. And this means loss of time and money. IDE also isn't as good, as some people here say it is. For example GDB is terrible for assembler code debugging and I need it very often to optimize my code.

You know, Delphi vs Lazarus - is like MS Office vs LibreOffice for me. Back when I was working as CAD programmer and had to write all documentation in Excel, I tried to migrate from MS Office to LibreOffice. And, it wasn't only about simple fact, that due to some philosophy reasons LibreOffice programmers have stuck in 2001 era (like some Delphi programmers, who've stuck in D7 era) - it was about simple fact, that LibreOffice was messing up all my MS Office documents and I just couldn't do everything from scratch, cuz it meant two years of work scrapped. I.e., yeah, may be if I would start working with LibreOffice right from the beginning - everything would be fine, cuz I would get used to it. But at that moment neither I had time to fix all this problems, nor my boss was ready to pay for it.

So. What do I try to say. If Lazarus's major goal - is to provide free alternative of Delphi, so Delphi developers would be able to migrate to free platform - then currently it fails to serve it's goal. I can't migrate to it, cuz I would need to do lots of work from scratch in this case and nobody will compensate my losses.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2018, 10:10:46 am by Mr.Madguy »
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marcov

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #61 on: July 23, 2018, 11:01:01 am »
So. What do I try to say. If Lazarus's major goal - is to provide free alternative of Delphi, so Delphi developers would be able to migrate to free platform - then currently it fails to serve it's goal. I can't migrate to it, cuz I would need to do lots of work from scratch in this case and nobody will compensate my losses.

1. anonymous methods in Delphi are not 15-years old. They are somewhat closure like, but not real closures(Expressions are often partially evaluated on closure creation, not always on use)
2. packages are worked on in trunk.

And of course, by using every feature in the book, one could argue you set yourself up for failure. Maybe you don't feel it that way because you think it saved you a lot of work, but any way it is a personal choice.

P.s. I can understand that people think packages are a major feature. It does things (like postdelivering code without relinking) that can't be done any other way.   But anonymous methods? Cheap, badly implemented shorthand, which is quasi unavoidable because eager newbies drew it in 3rd party libraries to imitate other languages. IMHO of course.

Mr.Madguy

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #62 on: July 23, 2018, 11:23:20 am »
1. anonymous methods in Delphi are not 15-years old. They are somewhat closure like, but not real closures(Expressions are often partially evaluated on closure creation, not always on use)
2. packages are worked on in trunk.

And of course, by using every feature in the book, one could argue you set yourself up for failure. Maybe you don't feel it that way because you think it saved you a lot of work, but any way it is a personal choice.

P.s. I can understand that people think packages are a major feature. It does things (like postdelivering code without relinking) that can't be done any other way.   But anonymous methods? Cheap, badly implemented shorthand, which is quasi unavoidable because eager newbies drew it in 3rd party libraries to imitate other languages. IMHO of course.
Yeah, closures are just 10 years old. And yeah, they've saved lots of work for me. I don't use feature, just because it exists. I know, how it's actually implemented, and what code it's meant to replace. For example A++ replaces A = A + 1. Closures allow me to implement interface without actually declaring this interface and declaring class, that implements in - lots of unnecessary work saved. If you personally don't need them, cuz your tasks are simple enough to avoid them - it doesn't mean other programmers don't need them too.
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440bx

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #63 on: July 23, 2018, 11:32:28 am »
But anonymous methods? Cheap, badly implemented shorthand, which is quasi unavoidable because eager newbies drew it in 3rd party libraries to imitate other languages. IMHO of course.

That's one of the unavoidable problems with aiming for compatibility.  The need to implement features that are "questionable"/"not good ideas". 

At the same time, aiming for compatibility is a clear goal which saves time in that some of what has to be implemented doesn't need to be discussed among the compiler writers since Embarcadero has already  made the "decision".

It's rather nice to see that the FPC developers have "stolen" ideas from other languages such as C.  The ++/-- operators are nice to have and, the += is more than nice since it prevents adding/operating to/on the wrong variable.

One such feature that I'd like to see implemented is "for integer/type i = <somevalue> to <someothervalue> do ...  (declare the index variable on the spot) which is not only convenient but would allow the compiler to more easily optimize the use of the index variable.  That would be a nice addition :)

Keep up the good work guys, there is much to appreciate in both, FPC and Lazarus.
(FPC v3.0.4 and Lazarus 1.8.2) or (FPC v3.2.2 and Lazarus v3.2) on Windows 7 SP1 64bit.

JuhaManninen

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #64 on: July 23, 2018, 12:36:34 pm »
... I prefer FPC and Lazarus to be better than Delphi and be proud of itself, instead of keep being under the shadow of Delphi, in the name of compatibility. As a long time user of FPC and Lazarus, I don't even care about Delphi compatibility.
Fortunately those goals are not exclusive, except for some corner cases maybe.
The system can be Delphi compatible but at the same time adding new features or implementing the existing ones better.

Both FPC and Lazarus have a lot to do on both fronts to become better. That is another issue.
Mostly Lazarus trunk and FPC 3.2 on Manjaro Linux 64-bit.

PascalDragon

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #65 on: July 23, 2018, 02:21:23 pm »
Regarding the fact it includes the source, also: more simply put, this means that complete Delphi library source code is now available to literally anyone at all in a free, legal download, whereas before it was only available to those who either pirated Delphi or paid for one of the more expensive licenses. So there is perhaps a somewhat higher chance of future FPC/Lazarus patches including plagiarized code, which is something the devs might want to keep an extra-attentive eye on going forwards.

That is indeed a good point  :(

It's rather nice to see that the FPC developers have "stolen" ideas from other languages such as C.  The ++/-- operators are nice to have and, the += is more than nice since it prevents adding/operating to/on the wrong variable.

FPC only supports the +=-like operators, not the increment/decrement operators (for that there are the good ol' Inc()/Dec() intrinsics).

Compatibility should be a two-way street which each one respects the other. So far, I see Delphi seems to "dictate" the development of FPC and Lazarus, while on the other hand Delphi treats FPC as if it doesn't exist. I don't see other modern Pascal variants such as Oxygene and SmartPascal are so devoted to Delphi like FPC/Lazarus.

First of FPC's drive to provide compatibility with Delphi is older than Oxygene and SmartPascal are. Also those two language target a different user base where the users accept that they can't have easy compatibility (e.g. no initialization/finalization sections in Oxygene) while quite some code is supported. It's the same with Pas2JS by the way as there some features are not supported either.

Also FPC not only provides Delphi compatibility (even if that's the main one), but also compatibility to ISO Pascal, Macintosh Pascal and Turbo Pascal.

440bx

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #66 on: July 23, 2018, 03:14:14 pm »
FPC only supports the +=-like operators, not the increment/decrement operators (for that there are the good ol' Inc()/Dec() intrinsics).

You are right.  C doesn't like it when I type writeln and FPC doesn't like it when I type *p++;

oh well... LOL
(FPC v3.0.4 and Lazarus 1.8.2) or (FPC v3.2.2 and Lazarus v3.2) on Windows 7 SP1 64bit.

cpicanco

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #67 on: July 23, 2018, 05:54:17 pm »
Still no linux support. What a shame.
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Thaddy

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #68 on: July 23, 2018, 06:06:54 pm »
Still no linux support. What a shame.
There is Linux support, but not in CE. There are good reasons for that. I actually like it a lot: to test against fpc  O:-).
The initiative is such that I re-consider testing for rhem.
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cpicanco

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #69 on: July 23, 2018, 06:31:25 pm »
We live in a world where even Microsoft now have its linux subsystem for development purposes (on windows) and Delphi releases a community edition with no linux support. Great.
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Leledumbo

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #70 on: July 24, 2018, 02:04:34 am »
Still no linux support. What a shame.
Not even their enterprise edition has full Linux support, it's only meant for server side programming and they even limit the supported OS. Not a hair of what FPC/Lazarus can offer for Linux. And oh, the IDE still requires Windows :)

taazz

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #71 on: July 24, 2018, 08:47:33 am »
Still no linux support. What a shame.
Not even their enterprise edition has full Linux support, it's only meant for server side programming and they even limit the supported OS. Not a hair of what FPC/Lazarus can offer for Linux. And oh, the IDE still requires Windows :)
there are options open and in my book in better shape than lcl https://www.crossvcl.com/
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Leledumbo

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #72 on: July 24, 2018, 04:11:16 pm »
there are options open and in my book in better shape than lcl https://www.crossvcl.com/
Paid 3rd party solution should be of that quality. Otherwise, who's gonna buy?

Mr.Madguy

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #73 on: July 24, 2018, 05:13:48 pm »
Dunno, I just try to fully migrate to Linux, as I don't like, that I depend on Microsoft's monopoly too much. What I currently try to do - I try to use cross-platform applications only for my own purposes, such as Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, 7-zip, OpenShot, Audacity, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, etc. And I'm mostly successful. Except just 3 things, that are still way too important for me and I just can't find replacement for them: 1) Delphi (my whole life - is about programming) 2) MS Office (for the same reason, as Delphi - LibreOffice isn't fully compatible with MS Office, so it's way too hard to migrate) 3) And of course games. As you can see, Delphi is #1 in this list. I guess, if free alternative would be available to me - I would be able to fully migrate to Linux. I even think about making my projects open source.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 05:15:49 pm by Mr.Madguy »
Is it healthy for project not to have regular stable releases?
Just for fun: Code::Blocks, GCC 13 and DOS - is it possible?

Akira1364

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Re: delphi and C++ builder community edition is here...
« Reply #74 on: July 24, 2018, 06:23:59 pm »
there are options open and in my book in better shape than lcl https://www.crossvcl.com/

I don't know enough about CrossVCL to say exactly how it stacks up to the LCL, but I will note that its vendor KSDev is the revived company of Eugene Kryukov (i.e. the guy who wrote VGScene and DXScene, which he sold to Embarcadero and were combined into FireMonkey, who went on to work for them for years until being fired a while ago for reasons I'm not sure of.)

So it's not surprising the quality is already high. The guy has well over a decade of experience developing commercial software of that particular sort.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 06:27:44 pm by Akira1364 »

 

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