Delphi For PHP Released

Gramie2 writes "Codegear (now a subsidiary of Borland) has just released version 1.0 of Delphi for PHP, a RAD development environment (running on Windows) that produces standard PHP code. It features a large set of built-in components, including ones that use AJAX for database access; and Codegear is encouraging users to develop their own components. The framework, VCL for PHP, is open source, and documentation follows the PHP model. Initial database connectivity is for MySQL and Interbase (Codegear's commercial database that spawned the open-source Firebird), but more are promised."

Borland has died after Borland Delphi 7

[vivaoporto]

When Borland (then Inprise, then Borland again, then Codegear(?) ) stopped making sober RADs and decided to take a chance on expensive toys for code management, they lost in both fronts. The Turbo Series (Pascal, C and Assembler) and Delphi (the odd versions, 1, 3, 5 and 7) seriously competed against Microsoft products (Microsoft C, Assembler, Visual Series), even outselling them in a lot of places in the world (Brazil, for instance).

Two things made Borland wreck their scene: 1) losing their creative minds to Microsoft, specially Anders Hejlsberg [wikipedia.org], creator of nothing less than Turbo Pascal, Delphi and main architect of C#. 2) losing their focus (from useful RADs to expensive but totally good for nothing "Application Lifecycle Management" (whatever it is).

Had kept the focus and the creative minds, either .Net would not exist (and consequently, stole Borland's thunder) or the Borland tools would be better even than the Microsoft ones on that fronts (Delphi 8 almost got there, initially). Borland died a sad death, and what we see now is nothing but Post Morten flatulence.

Re:Does this IDE build upon the existing interpret

[Aladrin]

It appears to be the regular PHP, but they've created a library for common controls. (Yes, they made a library for making textboxes and radio buttons. -yawn-) At first I thought it was a php plugin written in C or something, but no... It's just plain PHP. What was wrong with making the controls in HTML like always, I dunno.

I'll admit, I've written a function to take an array and make a dropdown box from it, but Delphi's VCL is going a bit far, I think.

Re:You kidding me. .NET alternative ?

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect , .NET is a great platform for enterprise-level development.

Hardly. .NET doesn't run worth shit on my company's Solaris and HP-UX systems. Yes, we're talking about real enterprise systems here. Some Intel box running Windows 2003 Server and .NET does not constitute actual enterprise development. Real enterprise work is done on UNIX systems like Solaris, HP-UX, and AiX.

.NET and Java just can't offer the execution speed necessary for really large-scale enterprise apps. That's why we still use C++ in many cases. And yes, I know that in a small number of unrealistic microbenchmarks Java is shown to be faster than the equivalent C++. But in reality, that's just not the case. .NET and Java just don't scale well enough.

Your app on Delphi

[suv4x4]

This is your app on Delphi (TM):

I installed the trial Delphi for PHP and created an app which prints "Hello World" on the screen.

For a reference, this is how this looks in plain PHP (granted no MVC and so on, but for the sake of example..):

&lt?php echo "Hello World" ?>

What does Delphi do?

1. Loads several thousand lines VCL code
   
2. Loads all the menu, form, container and "external" controls, although they're not used (thousands of lines of code)
   
3. The Hello World is a label (no simpler way) which has around 50 properties (color, bg color and what not) defined in an XML file. I left all at defaults, but never mind. The file is loaded, parsed.
   
4. The Label class inherits from CustomLabel, which inherits from Components which inherits from other stuff I didn't even bother check, it goes through all properties, and figures out after a lot of thinking that it should print the words "Hello World".
   

Keep in mind I simplified it so you stay with me. There's also a bunch of other stuff happening, application classes and what not.

And again, this is how it's done in plain PHP:

&lt?php echo "Hello World" ?>

This Delphi stuff is really promising I tell you. Or, rather, it's supposed to look promising when Borland pitches CodeGear for sale again. Don't forget, CodeGear was spun off so that it's income is more clearly defined, and it's a more lucrative sale. Borland doesn't care of CodeGear has a future, it only wants to make it LOOK as if it has a future, and this project is sadly nothing more than this.

Re:Borland has died after Borland Delphi 7

[osgeek]

I'll take it a step further. Borland/Inprise/whatever is such a fucked up piece of shit company that I'd never knowingly start a serious project that depends upon them or their products in any way.

My team has suffered from blistering crotch fires of agony trying to cope with C++ Builder's (5 & 6) linker woes. Rather than spending our valuable development time on important-for-our-customers product development issues, the very existence of our company became reliant upon working around our inability to even link our growing application.

It was a horrible mess, and one that Borland was useless in helping us to resolve because they were off working on new products that never saw the light of day.

Never *ever* again.