Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…

[bee]

Yesterday I met someone who is complaining about how expensive Delphi is that he couldn't afford to purchase it anymore. He had asked Embarcadero to lower the price and make Delphi becomes affordable again to education, hobbyist, and indie developers. Yet, Embarcadero ignored him again and again. I've seen this more than once occurrence. Here's what I said to him…

These days most development tools –compilers or interpreters, IDEs, libraries, plugins– are either open source, free, or cheap. Java, Swift, Python, JavaScript, Go, Kotlin, PHP, you name it… are free and open source. Even Microsoft is offering many of their dev tools for free and open sourcing some of them. There is one or two reasons why it's going that way (which needs another thread to discuss it).

Delphi's pricing and business model are obviously NOT for students and teachers, hobbyist, nor indie developers. Embarcadero is clearly targeting enterprise developers market which have a lot of money. If you're not in their target market, well… shame on you. Their free version product is just a sneak peek, a teaser. They don't want you to create real apps using the free version.

If you want to study Pascal, stop whining and use Free Pascal and Lazarus. Pascal as language is larger than Delphi. For educational purpose, FPC+Laz is more suitable. And, if you're not in Delphi's target market, I suggest you to either use FPC+Laz and avoid Delphi as much as possible; or use another language entirely.

Unless –of course– if you don't mind to spend some great amount of your (company) money, you may use Delphi happily. Most programmers who couldn't afford to purchase Delphi go into the dark side, pirating and cracking Delphi, which is another reason to avoid Delphi altogether.

Oh… and please stop praising Delphi as the best tool ever. It's non-sense. Well, it used to be, but it's no longer now. Today there are many dev tools out there that are as good as Delphi or even better. Whether you admit or not, it's not relevant and doesn't change the fact.

I've abandoned Delphi since about 10 years ago and completely switch to Free Pascal and Lazarus IDE, without any regrets. Well, of course both are not perfect, just like Delphi is. As any dev tools, you need to learn how to use it, workaround the flaws, and maximize its potentials. But I can assure you, FPC and Laz today is more than good enough to create real (commercial) apps for any platforms you can imagine.

I hope this will encourage you –and anybody else out there who's considering to learn or use Pascal– to use Free Pascal and Lazarus IDE, and avoid Delphi. Unless you can really afford it.

[RAW]

+1000

BTW: purchasing Delphi won't be enough, if you don't pay and update the subscription model from EMBA/IDERA then you don't get bugs fixed as long as I know. In other words: you pay for a product and if you recognize any bugs then nobody will fix these bugs, at least not for free even if you've already payed for the product. That's a joke and I can totally understand why people who payed for a certain Delphi version crack a higher version to get what they payed for... And there are blogs out there where some individuals talk about this as the right and good way (subscription model).

It's like harassment.... isn't it ? There are always at least two idiots necessary... 

OpenSource is the future anyway !!! Much more intelligent !!! Together... not against each other... !!!

Yeah... I couldn't deny myself again...  sue me ... 

[Zath]

I was recently offered from Idera, a chance for three years free updates and x% off depending on what package I went for. Even then, it would have been nearly £2500.
Way back, I bought D3 Pro and subsequently D5 Enterprise. Both solid products with disks and hefty manual which are great even now. I can't afford the current equivalent.
I explained my situation to the Idera man, he understood and sympathised. I said I use Lazarus and Visual Studio. He'd never heard of Lazarus.
I recently tweeted Marco Cantu about the situation where VS Community draws in many to C# but Delphi Starter, although free, can't even do the Fish Facts demo of old.

Yes, we all know Idera are a commercial enterprise and make money from high end sales but if they want the pascal community to flourish rather than just survive, creating more users and future sales, they need to rethink their strategy. Just look at Microsoft and Visual Studio; what an amazing product available for free yet they still have other versions for purchase.

I'm torn between Laz, Delphi Starter and Visual Studio. It's only my familiarity with pascal that keeps me from C# and some legacy pascal code I'd love to update but aren't clever enough yet !

[Handoko]

I am on the neutral side. I do not hate nor think Delphi is bad. Yes, I'm sad that I'm not listed in their target customer range, but that doesn't mean I should blame them. Everyone has their business strategy and target customers. I want to buy iMac but cannot afford it, should I blame Apple that set the price too high?

Yes, I agree. Delphi should lower its price a lot more.
But that still doesn't solve my problem, Delphi can't run on Linux.

[munair]

And don't forget the limited multi-platform support. While Delphi 10.2 supports Linux, it's only 64 bits and for enterprise development only, as I read from their website. For a long time it was Windows only.

One of the reasons I use Lazarus is that it allows me to compile both 32 and 64 bits applications for Linux. Lazarus also supports both GTK and Qt, which makes it hard to beat. Open source for open source is still the best match. I tried other RAD tools for developing Linux applications but Lazarus is definitely the best.

[sam707]

+1000 too!

to my point of view, delphi is not the only one entering this path. Qt from nokia was and is a Great tool in the C++ world, as they changed their sale politic around money making for some years, look at the dangerous slope they drove!

1) they fired lot of people in many countries, restructuring their business
2) they raised the prices to an unaffordable hurting cliff
3) finally they sold Qt to other businesses, killing the impulse, making greatest developpers run away

Qt and Delphi are alike, this way. All we can do is run away and wait for their final fall

[sam707]

N.B.

evidence to become rich =>
better to get $1 from billions people than $10000 from 10 billionairs

meaning = the business plans of delphi and Qt are ....

just crap'n'shit

they both don't deserve 'hate', they just deserve scorn

[RAW]

I do not hate nor think Delphi is bad.

Yes... Delphi isn't bad !
The subscription model or let's say the evil bug-fixing-method is bad !

[munair]

Qt and Delphi are alike, this way. All we can do is run away and wait for their final fall

Maybe, but Qt and KDE made an arrangement so that Qt could be used freely in the Linux/UNIX world. If Qt were to change that it would be the end of the KDE desktop.

[sam707]

Qt and Delphi are alike, this way. All we can do is run away and wait for their final fall

Maybe, but Qt and KDE made an arrangement so that Qt could be used freely in the Linux/UNIX world. If Qt were to change that it would be the end of the KDE desktop.

true until Qt 4.5, false with Qt 5.xx and below. interea, digia bought Qt from nokia

that is why i am moving some of my works from Qt to Ultimate ++

https://www.ultimatepp.org/www$uppweb$vsqt$en-us.html

[sam707]

well, Ultimate++ is code shorter and more object oriented, despite the fact it doesn't have an enlighted UI library/framework, it does the job for industrial apps that dont care bleeding colors on buttons for kids HAHAHAHAH

ENJOY the compare link on my preceding answer, folks!

Qt vs U++ = forget about expensive Qt in industrial apps world

[sam707]

Conclusion:
Apart from maturity of projects (that is an other concern),
I would say U++ is to Qt exactly what is Lazarus to Delphi ==> Free great alternatives watching the crap'n'shit businesses' philosophy of their templates, failing to death
  

[munair]

true until Qt 4.5, false with Qt 5.xx and below. interea, digia bought Qt from nokia

that is why i am moving some of my works from Qt to Ultimate ++

https://www.ultimatepp.org/www$uppweb$vsqt$en-us.html

Not sure about that.  On KDE.org we read: "The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization with the purpose of securing the availability of the Qt toolkit."

And regarding history: "In September 2012, Digia bought Qt from Nokia and signed a letter of commitment to be bound by any and all terms of agreement, and then continued to sign a revised agreement with the foundation. Later Digia founded The Qt Company, which signed a similar letter of commitment and negotiated an update to the agreement."

Perhaps somewhere in the future a transition will be made by the KDE team to move on to U++, but for now, KDE seems perfectly comfortable with Digia's commitment.

[sam707]

true until Qt 4.5, false with Qt 5.xx and below. interea, digia bought Qt from nokia

that is why i am moving some of my works from Qt to Ultimate ++

https://www.ultimatepp.org/www$uppweb$vsqt$en-us.html

Not sure about that.  On KDE.org we read: "The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization with the purpose of securing the availability of the Qt toolkit."

And regarding history: "In September 2012, Digia bought Qt from Nokia and signed a letter of commitment to be bound by any and all terms of agreement, and then continued to sign a revised agreement with the foundation. Later Digia founded The Qt Company, which signed a similar letter of commitment and negotiated an update to the agreement."

Perhaps somewhere in the future a transition will be made by the KDE team to move on to U++, but for now, KDE seems perfectly comfortable with Digia's commitment.

huh ... now explain me WHY before 2012 you could navigate to Qt site and download it for free personal use, and after the fatal transaction date, you can only download a free locked trial WITH MINIMAL functionalities! please don't don't no no no don't give me the baton to spank you HAHAHAHA

[mas steindorff]

Delphi has it's place.  just because there was a company out there that was "commercial Pascal" in the eyes of my boss, he let me create 1st a demo and then gave to go ahead for FP to be used for  the main program.  As a manager, there must always be alternative plans and Delphi was a backup B or C.  if it did not exist, my boss would have gone with a Microsoft C approach for the software.  gcc was out of the question do to limit support (you can't count the internet).  "Even if Pascal turns out to be the perfect language, there needs to be knowledgeable programmers I can use if needed" he said.
let Delphi do it's thing. As long as it adds to the Pascal experience then it's good for us. 
I find the info on QT most informative... It's being forced on me in another project simply because it was in use in before I joined it and the PI did not wish to change.