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Delphi for free? YES!! Delphi Community Edition is out!

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KodeZwerg:
I wonder if they, deep down, really just want Delphi to die...
-f0dder (July 19, 2018, 01:51 PM)
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This opinion i share since i begun working with Delphi. Anyway still using it :-*
but there's so many other (and better, IMHO) platforms around.
-f0dder (July 19, 2018, 01:51 PM)
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Sure (thanks that you excluded "and better" for yourself), in this Thread i just wanted to announce that it exists, if you are willing to tryout for free or having personal reasons to not, both is total okay for me, really.

wraith808:
Why is that bad news?  You either get a new license for a new year, or upgrade from what I'm reading your statement.-wraith808 (July 19, 2018, 12:12 PM)
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Because it makes the offering unusable? :)

It might be "the same as it was before", but that status quo is "at the mercy of Embarcadero". I wonder if they, deep down, really just want Delphi to die... there's a lot of legacy stuff written in it, but with terms like this, I can't see much reason to choose the platform. Sure, Object Pascal isn't a bad language, but there's so many other (and better, IMHO) platforms around.
-f0dder (July 19, 2018, 01:51 PM)
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From my experience, it can be really powerful, especially using inline assembler to optimize code- a feature that I've not seen so easily used in many IDEs.  I have nostalgia for it- from my first real development opportunity being in Delphi 1 (I did some c, c++, and vb before it... but this was where I was able to spread my wings) to really getting going in contracting and meeting many of the minds behind it (and working alongside Xavier Pacheco), and it really reached highs.  Borland's missteps killed it, and Embarcadero doubled down on bad decisions.  A lot of the legacy of Delphi is in Visual Studio, so it had a chance.  They just didn't grab it.  I don't think that anything Embarcadero could do would put it on top again, but it just gives me good vibes that it's still around. 

f0dder:
From my experience, it can be really powerful, especially using inline assembler to optimize code- a feature that I've not seen so easily used in many IDEs.  I have nostalgia for it- from my first real development opportunity being in Delphi 1-wraith808 (July 19, 2018, 03:08 PM)
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I learned programming with Turbo Pascal 6 back in the day, and spent a lot of time with Borland Pascal 7 as well, before moving on. Back then, the Borland IDEs were second to none, the integrated context-sensitive help system was unmatched. And because compilers generally sucked back then, and the machines were slow, the inline assembly feature was pretty good. I moved onto C/C++, but the first couple versions of Delphi were interesting because they made Windows development easy.

But after that? The whole Borland -> Inprise -> Embarcadero mess was reason enough to abandon the language, IMHO. Other, more powerful, languages appeared, several of them without costly licenses. If you want easy GUI, it's hard to beat .NET.

And inline assembly is IMHO useless these days - if there's a substantial speed gain to be had these days, it's usually from writing a large chunk in assembly, enough that you're better off writing it in an external .asm module in a proper assembler. That, or use a language + compiler that has good assembly intrinsics.

wraith808:
I remember I had a contract where they were using Delphi.  It was back when MS was first getting into .NET, and it was a major contract for a major contracting firm that wanted to use it on more contracts because of how well we'd done before with it (KPMG/BearingPoint).  I think it was going through the Borland -> Inprise at that point, and they paid no attention to that contract.  MS was always calling, and they decided to move some of the stuff to .NET.  Microsoft sent a team down there to train us (VB.NET even though we advised C#.NET) and work with us to get the contract done.  Borland was too occupied with Microsoft to see that the client base and developer base was where they should have been concentrating... not Microsoft.  After that I made a living going around converting systems from Delphi -> .NET.  A lot of very large companies were wed to Delphi- UPS, AEGON, quite a few banking and insurance interests.  Too few programmers left that were interested in Delphi left the field wide open for me, and I also garnered a lot of experience in the meantime.  Borland could have also prospered in the OSS arena- their few strides were met with relative acceptance as an alternative to MS.  But they left that one hanging too.

Self-inflicted death by a thousand paper cuts was what brought them down.

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