Delphi developers discusson forums

[aidv]

I dont understand. Why would someone pay for Pascal, when FreePascal is, well, Free?

Back in 2004, I loved Delphi 7, but, today, FreePascal and Lazarus kicks D7's butt.

The problem with Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero is they developed incomplete software tools which they then dumped, just because they didn't make the money they thought they should make.

How can you trust a company that encourages you to develop with their software, only to have it dumped?

I dont blame people for leaving Delphi. I believe the fire behind the motivation for developing FreePascal/Lazarus is the awful way Borland treated Pascal developers. (Actually, all developers. I cant stand all the hype Borland put into its product installers. It was all just BS)

Thank god for Lazarus and FreePascal!

Well that's all up for discussion. If you would be a developer and would have the option to pay for a dev-env, what would you expect from it?

Now there are tons and tons of things that could be done much better than before and even better than it is done today.

Imagine having a complete framework for CUDA programming with examples and tutorials right inside the community portal.
Imagine having a REAL hardware accelerated graphics engine rather than a half-assed one which just irritates you.

Apple for example, they have done a really really REALLY good job providing their developers with proper guidelines and tools and methods on how to develop software.

I program in XCode, and let me tell you this, a small thing such as loading a photo in to an UIImageView without having to worry about load-time feels like such a HUGE relief.

*A UIImageView is the equivalent of a Pascal TImage.

Whats so special with UIImageView and loading a photo?

You dont have to worry about its format, or pre-generating thumbnails or anything. Also it has proper options for fitting the graphics content inside its frame and much much more.

I can tell you, programming in XCode makes a lot more sense and is a lot faster than even Pascal in many scenarios.

Why? Because Apple has properly provided the basic frameworks and made sure that you as a developer should focus on what's important: Developing.

And THATS why you would want to pay for a dev-env, because of its ease of use and highly optimized frameworks.

Imagine having frameworks for many different technologies such as VST or AU, CUDA OpenCL Mantle, Audio DSP, Networking, Serial communication, true cross platform compilation, proper service etc etc etc.

You as a customer don't pay for just the product, you pay for the maintanance and the development of all the frameworks and examples and tutorials and everything.

That's why you would want to pay.

Why would you want to pay for Adobe Photoshop which is subscription based now for about 20€ a month when you can get GIMP or whatever?

Because Photoshop might be more powerful, will most likely use the latest technologies and much more.

Maybe it is because I'm looking at it from a business point of view that it makes sense to me, but even if that is true, I'd happily pay for it.

ideas are born out of our own needs, right?

[derek.john.evans]

Im not sure what you are trying to say. It sounds like you are trying to sell ice to Eskimos.

Imagine having frameworks for many different technologies such as VST or AU, CUDA OpenCL Mantle, Audio DSP, Networking, Serial communication, true cross platform compilation, proper service etc etc etc.

Why imagine? They are available now.

You as a customer don't pay for just the product, you pay for the maintanance and the development of all the frameworks and examples and tutorials and everything.

Might have worked in the 90's. Now we have Googling, forums and online source control sites. 

I can tell you, programming in XCode makes a lot more sense and is a lot faster than even Pascal in many scenarios

Faster? In what way? Are you comparing languages or LCL to Apple OS, I dont get it.

ideas are born out of our own needs, right?

Thats one thing I kinda agree with. Maybe, think about other peoples needs too.

[aidv]

Im not sure what you are trying to say. It sounds like you are trying to sell ice to Eskimos.

 
Or like cutting down trees just to sell people logs.                       

Why imagine? They are available now.

There's no AU SDK for FPC or Delphi. Can't find any Mantle SDK for Lazarus.
There are many things that aren't available.

Might have worked in the 90's. Now we have Googling, forums and online source control sites. 

Yes sure, but who's going to write them for you if you're just going to rely on Google?
Who's going to answer you in a forum?
Who's going to upload source code?
Exactly, People will do it.
With a mentality like yours, I guess the whole world might as well come to a stop since Google can provide us with all the answers.
No offense though, Google is a great tool, but having another option is always good.
And hey, if you don't like you don't buy, simple as that.

Faster? In what way? Are you comparing languages or LCL to Apple OS, I dont get it.

I am not comparing languages, I am expressing my experience.
What's faster is that they have done a lot of the dirty work for us, so less time spent on achieving a goal is a good thing I guess.

Thats one thing I kinda agree with. Maybe, think about other peoples needs too.

Ofcourse, but who knew we'd all need Smartphones before Steve introduced the iPhone?
I know who knew, Steve Jobs and many others just like him.

It is after all a risk to create a product, you can speculate as much as you want, but you won't know for sure until it has been tested in the field.

[taazz]

Im not sure what you are trying to say. It sounds like you are trying to sell ice to Eskimos.

Imagine having frameworks for many different technologies such as VST or AU, CUDA OpenCL Mantle, Audio DSP, Networking, Serial communication, true cross platform compilation, proper service etc etc etc.

Why imagine? They are available now.

You as a customer don't pay for just the product, you pay for the maintanance and the development of all the frameworks and examples and tutorials and everything.

Might have worked in the 90's. Now we have Googling, forums and online source control sites. 

I can tell you, programming in XCode makes a lot more sense and is a lot faster than even Pascal in many scenarios

Faster? In what way? Are you comparing languages or LCL to Apple OS, I dont get it.

ideas are born out of our own needs, right?

Thats one thing I kinda agree with. Maybe, think about other peoples needs too.

I have the opposite experience so far. Most of the libraries on the internet are pour copies of commercial projects. The small number of applications or libraries that are good to use are commercial software gone open source or open source with a commercial license . As for the examples they are mostly one liners with no depth at all even the "tutorials" are most of the time copy paste from other sources. The plagiarism is so out of control that its improbable to identify the original tutorial if you are not part of its history your self.

So if I have to choose between a commercial and a free library the free library must be a lot more stable than the commercial to be chosen if both are on the same level I'll prefer to pay someone to be able to yell at when things don't work as expected.

[skalogryz]

Apple for example, they have done a really really REALLY good job providing their developers with proper guidelines and tools and methods on how to develop software.
[snip]
Because Apple has properly provided the basic frameworks and made sure that you as a developer should focus on what's important: Developing.

Just like Embarcadero did with their Firemonkey. The knew that they cannot go with VCL forever.
Any corporation providing a platform (i.e. Apple -> OSX and iOS, or Embarcadero -> Firemonkey), is interested in supporting developers (by providing, tools, manuals... etc). The difference here is, of course, money. Apple can invest more into creating fertile development community, than Embarcadero does.
Interesting enough, Apple manages to get-away with constant Xcode upgrade (causing people to learn the IDE again and again)

The more developers are "grown" the more software platforms have. The more interesting the platform to the market. The higher a company profits.

Imagine having frameworks for many different technologies such as VST or AU, CUDA OpenCL Mantle, Audio DSP, Networking, Serial communication, true cross platform compilation, proper service etc etc etc.

I prefer technical approach to this question. These libs are C or C++, so ultimetly there should be a neat tool that converts a library headers from C (C++) to Pascal. And that's it! all libraries are already there.
So the next step, is to configure the tool and give the way of automatic conversion to Pascal to maintainers of the library itself, making Pascal language as native (or official) part of a library release.
Such libraries as OpenCL or OpenGL would leave FCL and be propagated to their respective maintainers (Kronos).

Apple does it Swiftly

[derek.john.evans]

There's no AU SDK for FPC or Delphi. Can't find any Mantle SDK for Lazarus.
There are many things that aren't available.

Isn't AU SDK part of the Mac OS X framework headers? Ive never used it, but it looks like its there.
http://wiki.freepascal.org/univint

Core Audio SDK?
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MusicAudio/Conceptual/AudioUnitProgrammingGuide/AQuickTouroftheCoreAudioSDK/AQuickTouroftheCoreAudioSDK.html

RE: Mantle SDK. Never heard of it until now. But, according to this, its already dead?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2891672/amds-mantle-10-is-dead-long-live-directx.html
https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2015/05/12/on-apis-and-the-future-of-mantle

However, if you are a developer interested in Mantle "1.0" functionality, we suggest that you focus your attention on DirectX® 12 or GLnext.

DirectX 12 headers are available for FreePascal.
But, again proof of why companies should keep out of the API business, unless they are in it for the long hall.

Takes ages to learn an API, and quite frankly, im tired of relearning stuff just because something is new and fashionable.

[marcov]

I have a bunch of ideas, but it would be impossible for me to create them on my own.

Everybody has ideas. But your other posts (in which you confess to use XCode) show exactly what is wrong with paid IDEs:  Platform vendors giving tools away cheap or for free.

Even Embarcadero suffers from it, they essentially had to gave up the low end of the users, and try to wring as much as they can from the high end. To the death of Delphi if that need be. Did you ever consider that they might not have had a different choice?

[Thaddy]

Yes. Actually they had until Yokam and a bunch of other greedies (short sighted short time money) came in. Actually, the whole concept of TP (and TB) was based on selling volumes. That is still sound in software as the gaming industry proves.

And others. The marketing concept was and is copied successfully up until today. Don't focus on the technical merits, there are many, focus on the business. It is all about price point, stealing the clothes of the emperor as can be seen from their balance sheets and marketing blunders that are worse than coca cola did in the early '80 (classic coke, remember?).

And: free compilers are nothing new it is as old as, well, Babbage. (that is an explicit exaggeration) My apple ][e came with a free p-code compiler and most OS's came with at least a free interpreter and later with at least a free c or fortran compiler.

Ergo I think there is proof marketeers destroyed Delphi. Most insiders - not all - agree, btw.

[marcov]

Yes. Actually they had until Yokam and a bunch of other greedies (short sighted short time money) came in. Actually, the whole concept of TP (and TB) was based on selling volumes.

The TP and TB concept relied on large sections of the professionals in all trades programming their own software, from small business to mortgage brokers to engineers.

The bottom fell out of that marked in the early nineties when the number of titles of software, also domain specific software for smaller outfits exploded, and programming became more and more something for fulltime programmers.

That basically killed the TP business model, though its slow depth propelled still Delphi in its initial versions, together with a lack of serious competition.

Then competition came (with VS being systematically priced at 3/4 Delphi), and except for a few short flares around D7 and D2006 the long decline started.

That being said, I think that early business model that you paint has been killed more by Matlab,SPS etc than by VS.

That is still sound in software as the gaming industry proves.

Also there the big bucks are earned by people with some control or access to the sales channel. The number of big titles outside of that elite continues to decrease.

Even the whole mobile concept is no different there, it is basically a repeat of the shareware boom of the nineties, over time most of the business will condense around some big players. Yes, a handful small players become big ones, but you can't base a tool vendor business on that.

And: free compilers are nothing new it is as old as, well, Babbage. (that is an explicit exaggeration)

(or Lady Ada? Who did most of the programming ?)

My apple ][e came with a free p-code compiler and most OS's came with at least a free interpreter and later with at least a free c or fortran compiler.

Ergo I think there is proof marketeers destroyed Delphi. Most insiders - not all - agree, btw.

You assume a too steady state overall market, which is wrong. See above.

A business or engineering major won't automatically take up programming, with 10% doing more advanced stuff. Those numbers have been decimated or worse and reduced to a few PhD students doing computational work.

[Thaddy]

I've seen the situation develop first hand. I do not agree, Marco. What you describe is from much much later.

Except of course that Lady Ada had no rights whatsoever during her lifetime and therefor has to be considered "for free".
From ancient greek logic follows that something that has no rights or claim, it can not have any value. It can only have virtue.
Other than that her contribution to IT consists of:
1. she is a woman (so was the inventor of COBOL, btw)
2. her economic value could be considered as void at the time she programmed, so free as in free beer.
3. her marketing value may have been quite high as she was the daughter of an actually pretty good poet who did some pretty good marketing for himself.

Must be some money in her after all. Huh, Dwight?

p.s.: I left out skills.

[Thaddy]

To interpret this better look for the scene of Monty Phyton's famous witches scene: it floats on water, therefor she's a witch.
I do not want to offend women in any way: I am getting married. *It* is solved by history.

It does mean she could at the time be considered a free compiler, however.

[marcov]

I've seen the situation develop first hand. I do not agree, Marco. What you describe is from much much later.

Except of course that Lady Ada had no rights whatsoever during her lifetime and therefor has to be considered "for free".

If we attribute programming to Babbage then, and translate his monetary status to this time in the same way you did for Ada, then programming would be bankrupt now. 

And yes, Grace Hopper. Programmer, woman and some-admiral in the navy.

[snorkel]

I haven't been online at the Embarcadero Community forums for at least a year. I decided to check in there today to see how active it was. Compared to a few years ago, that place seems like a ghost town. There used to be some interesting discussions in the forums about Delphi and its future and new features, but today I see not a single discussion about the latest release of Delphi or the upcoming release. Where did everyone go? Is there a better Delphi community/forum to join for these types of discussions?

I have not been on the Embarcadero Community forums since sept or oct 2012.  Don't miss it at all.
I would imagine a lot of people are now using FPC and Lazarus.

Only thing I miss from Delphi is the (at one time) robust third party components that where available.

There are some available for Lazarus like SecureBridge from devart. 

Probably the biggest thing missing is a really robust 3rd party grid component like the Quantum Grid from DevExpress.  I have made due fine though with the stock lazarus DB grid and using virtual tree view in grid mode.

[rtusrghsdfhsfdhsdfhsfdhs]

I dont understand. Why would someone pay for Pascal, when FreePascal is, well, Free?

Back in 2004, I loved Delphi 7, but, today, FreePascal and Lazarus kicks D7's butt.

The problem with Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero is they developed incomplete software tools which they then dumped, just because they didn't make the money they thought they should make.

How can you trust a company that encourages you to develop with their software, only to have it dumped?

I dont blame people for leaving Delphi. I believe the fire behind the motivation for developing FreePascal/Lazarus is the awful way Borland treated Pascal developers. (Actually, all developers. I cant stand all the hype Borland put into its product installers. It was all just BS)

Thank god for Lazarus and FreePascal!

Why would someone pay for it? For Support, Bug fixes? Some of us create commercial solutions.
Lazarus/Free Pascal sounds nice in theory but fails in practice. There are just too many bugs.
Go to bugs.freepascal.org and have a look.

[mangakissa]

I would imagine a lot of people are now using FPC and Lazarus.

Those people are just using it has hobby.
Embarcadero can not earn money to normal people like us anymore. So they have to concentrate on company's which already using Delphi.

I talked to some russian and indian people yesterday. They told in the early years of Delphi 7, it was very hot on schools. Now these days they using c#. It's cheaper (free) and Microsoft is pulling there way in in Asia.