Delphi Renaissance

bongo69 writes "The TIOBE Programming Community Index is reporting that Delphi is experiencing a revival, this coincides with Borland recently releasing Delphi 2005 allowing users to target both win32 and .net platforms, which to some, is a welcome alternative for .net developers reluctant to use Microsoft Visual Studio or the opensource alternative SharpDevelop."

lazarus is maturing too

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lazarus.freepascal.org/

ok so it doesn't support microsofts .net but it does support windows linux and (just about) mac os x

It's Pascal

[wiredog]

Which makes it harder to write bad code. PLus, it's Borland. Borland, IMHO, writes better compilers than MS, and better libraries too.

Re:SharpDevelop

[arethuza]

Yes, I've used it for over a year. It isn't nearly as slick as VS.NET but I find it to be pretty usable. When combined with the GUI debugger from the .Net SDK it makes a pretty decent development environment.

Re:Why?

[zulux]

Pascal is a bit verbose... but Borland's Object Pascal is a great fit for event driven apps that have to talk to databases.

For this particular type of application, Delphi is great. For example - you can get a pointer when you need to, but you don't have to drown yourself with them all the time.

Re:It's Pascal

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel makes the best compiler for the usual suspects in languages (C, C++, Fortran).

Delphi has always been under-rated

[gUmbi]

I'm sure that there is going to be a bunch of Delphi bashing posts but Delphi was one of the first truly great object-oriented development environments (the other might be IBM's VisualAge). It allowed for rapid layout of forms with the power of OO components. And the language, although not loved by many, is consistent and just as powerful as Java. The component library was also second to none.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

For once, Delphi has supported RAD (what people now think makes .Net great) for ages and in many ways are still far superior to .Net.

For developing Desktop applications there isn't a better suited development tool.

It also has an incredibly rich third-party component market:

http://www.devexpress.com and http://www.remobjects.com are some of the best.

Why not try it out? Delphi 2005 Architect is available for trial download at http://www.borland.com

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[MacDaffy]

There's an excellent version of the gpc Pascal compiler for Mac OS X available. There's even a plug-in for the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE (not free). Anyone familiar with Objective-C and Mac OS X's Cocoa/Carbon development model is invited to help generate wrappers to call the code, Join the mailing list here. The site and mailing-list are also excellent resources for Pascal syntax and engineering questions, so Delphi coders can benefit, as well.

Re:Visual Studio

[Dystopian Rebel]

it's actually a damn good ide, don't think any developer can disagree

Well, we can't have you strutting around all day thinking that!

Have you ever used a Borland IDE? I've used both Borland and Monoposoft and prefer Borland by far. Especially for UI development. All the properties of an object are easily accessible and the IDE's dialogs are nicely designed instead of being modal and unsizable.

I don't think any developer can disagree...

Delphi is my secret weapon

[Local Loop]

I don't know (or care) about .NET, but if you are writng a windows program Delphi is staggeringly more efficient to develop in than C++. You can also use it to do Windows API stuff efficiently, meaning you can write most of your custom controls in delphi itself without have to resort to C++.

I just wish they could get their act together and make better documentation.

I actually used C++ for many years before finding out about Delphi, but now that I've switched there is no way I would ever go back.

Of course, more efficient development is not in the best interests of most programmers, because they are motivated to drag out projects as long as possible for job security reasons. But when you are doing fixed-bid contracts, or even if you just care about your reputation, Delphi is the way to go.

New web cartoon: Jendini.com [jendini.com]

Re:SharpDevelop

[Teancum]

I would say that SharpDevelop is one of the best Free-As-In-Beer environments for you to learn how to write software in C#. Download the ECMA docs for the specification and try to write a few programs, and it works out pretty well. Certainly much better than trying to write something with a text editor and trying to compile by command-line when everything else you may have is done through a GUI environment. Get the C# How-to books if you don't have access to them anyway.

I happen to be a Delphi developer as well, and my #1 complaint about Sharp Develop is that they use the Visual Studio environment as the model for how user interaction should take place. It isn't bad, but moving between Delphi and #Develop can be a bit of a paradyme shift that is uncomfortable. For those who are VS fans, it would be a much more familiar environment (like the windowing stuff and location of help files, etc.)

The GUI end is a little bit clunky, but it is getting better. The first time I tried #Develop the menu editor was so buggy that it crashed the package. It has been showing significant improvement over time, and is remarkably stable now for some fairly serious GUI development. They bootstrapped the development with Visual Studio, but I believe that #Develop is self-compiling now (the editor can be edited with itself).

The part of getting it to work with Mono is a big deal, and the only real reason that it doesn't self-compile in Mono is because Mono lacks the GUI support necessary to get it to work. This is being worked on, and with #Develop getting stable there is now a larger push to get it working in Mono on Windows (and yes, Linux too). It would be terrific if you could get true cross-platform development going for a GPL'ed GUI development environment.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[bad-badtz-maru]

The person who originally wrote Turbo Pascal, and was also largely responsible for Delphi, led the C# design team.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record so that it's complete; that seems to have been a guy named Anders Hejlsberg.

Re:Languages die for a reason

[Ronin Developer]

Why do you assume there are "countless superior" languages out there? Have you ever tried programming in Delphi's dialect of Pascal?

I program in a variety of languages. However, I became a Delphi convert when Delphi was first released. And, I still am a Delphi convert today and it is my tool of choice for Win32 programming.

As another post points out, Delphi is, and still remainds, a superior IDE, a very fast and optimizing compiler, a wide range of tools and components (VCL and CLX based) and decent. The "Delphi" language is merely the latest incarnation of Object Pascal. It is not Turbo Pascal -- it has evolved far beyond that.

The Delphi environment makes RAD programming possible with its compiler, debugger and visual editor symbiotically working together. Other tool developers (even MS) try to mimic the seemlessness of the environment and, for the most part, fail. MS went so far as to recruit the lead developer behind Delphi. .Net works because of that move.

Until just recently, Kylix broght the power of the Delphi to the Linux community. Unfortunately, it wasn't a success there. .Net, however, is proving to be a very lucrative venture and fit into the Delphi paradime. Borland now offers several languages targeting the .Net environment in Delphi 8/Delphi 2005. The weakness, in my opinion anyway, is that the class libraries are still base on WinForm. That makes it relatively difficult to port to Mono at this time. I hope we see a change there soon.

The bottom line is that Delphi is make resurgence because people see the advantages of such a development environment and the popularity and pervasiveness of .Net.

RD

Re:Borland and its IDEs

[DigitalTechnic]

They did, that's what Delphi 2005 is. It's Borland Development Sudio 3 aka BDS 3. It uses same IDE core as Delphi 8 and C# Builder now and combined.

Re:Novell is porting SharpDevelop

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell isn't porting anything. MonoDevelop is a 100% community effort with no support from Novell.

Re:Why?

[Moe Taxes]

Delphi is fast. Fast development, fast compile, fast execution, most people even learn it fast. Object pascal is a powerful, real programming language. Real programming language means you are programming a machine, not an interpreter in a sandbox. If a PC can do it, pascal can tell it to do it. And Delphi has the VCL, the only way I know of to write a complex program for the Win32 api and maintain your sanity. If Delphi 2005 does for WinFX what Delphi did for Win32 Borland will have another winner.

Re:It's not a language

[rikennedy]

The original Delphi through Delphi 4 used a language called Object Pascal. With the release of Delphi 5, the name of the language was changed to Delphi.

No Delphi compiler understands C++, although C++ Builder can compile Delphi code and Delphi supports compiler directives for exporting C++ headers for use by C++ Builder. Delphi 2005, the newest Delphi version, does not include C++ Builder; it includes C# Builder.

In the past, Delphi has included C++ Builder as a separate install. It was usually the previous release version, so Delphi 5 came with C++ Builder 4.

Delphi 2005 is three products in one. It handles Win32 development in the Delphi lanaguage, it handles .Net development in the Delphi language, and it handles .Net development in the C# language. It's all in a single IDE, not separate products. To my knowledge, Borland still uses Microsoft's C# compiler for that portion of the product.

Re:lazarus is maturing too

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an excellent version of the gpc Pascal compiler for Mac OS X available.

Last time I checked, gpc was aiming to implement standard Extended Pascal, and Delphi compatibility was NOT a priority. Extended Pascal has a lot of nice features, but it has taken a very different evolutionary path from Delphi, and the two are only similar at their core; Delphi programmers will find the syntax accepted by gpc very strange, and they will not be able to find equivalent features for many of the idioms they are used to using.

Free Pascal has a similar problem - it implements Delphi, but the Delphi it implements is something like Delphi 3; it has many of the same features as later versions, but they made up their own syntax for them! For example, last time I checked, Free Pascal's implementation of function overloading was DIFFERENT from the implementation Borland introduced six years ago in Delphi 4. This annoys me in particular because I have a Delphi 4 app I'd rather like to be able to compile with Free Pascal... but I'm buggered if I'm going to go through it making incompatible changes first.

Delphi is Fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a programmer for years and learned Pascal for the AP test way back then. Since then, I have coded in about every known language, well maybe not. But I always seem to come back to Delphi. My code compiles small, makes sense, works, and is fast. Need I say more. C, C++ suck, too obscure, Java is the same as C, and VB -DLL hell- need I say more. For those of you looking for somthing to do, give Delphi a spin and you will not go back. One more thing... There are tons of nice eastern block delphi programmers that write incredible VCL libraries. They have excellent support, cost effective and also fun to code. TRY IT!

Stats that show Delphi is not surging ahead

[StrawberryFrog]

Delphi revival? Are you sure? The UK job market stats are as follows:

C# : still ramping up - here [jobstats.co.uk]
Java: Recovered well in the last year - here [jobstats.co.uk]

Delphi - flat as a pancake. Much smaller market, and has failed to recover when the others did, which means it is losing market share to them - here [jobstats.co.uk]