As I said this was my perspective, my experience.
There are a wealth of commentators with their opinions on what is good, coming
from a scientific background I like to look at the data, so an automated index
rather appeals to me – its sort of factual with all its limitations of how it
is compiled, data rather than opinion.
A couple of the points you made seem to be contradictory – you say Microsoft is
more natively cross platform and refer to Embarcadero as proprietary – I tend
to look at Embarcadero as a much less proprietary vendor than Microsoft and
almost all out there, even Oracle with Java. Also I don’t see that having a
large free/open source variant (Lazarus/free Pascal) out there as a bad thing.
If Embarcadero ever did bite the dust financially I reckon most people would
like to see and would work to Delphi becoming open source, much like Firebird.
About zero terminated strings – the point I am making is that Delphi is not so
prone to buffer overflows simply because it does not continue until finding a
null terminator – the length for native Delphi strings is at the beginning.
(Yes it supports null terminated strings but that is beside the point I am
making about its default safety)
Most of us were not expecting so much focus on iOS or Android even 5 years ago,
nor Bash appearing native on Windows (later this year). I saw commentary that
Google may be contemplating moving away from the Java API and all proprietary
aspects of Java because of the on-going strife with Oracle. So the IT market
will continue as always to be unpredictable and changing and the longest
lasting tools will be those that are the best designed and do not get sunk as
being too embedded in an eco-system that moves out of market popularity
Overall I see Delphi in a sweet spot in the market, a legacy language not tied
to any major OS vendor and hence well placed to respond to new architectures,
and these will continue to surprise.
There are two things I think Embarcadero/Delphi could do that it is not:
1 - Some student program – give away value tools for IT students to get them
used to Delphi, new young Delphi programmers, as well as
C/C#/Java/Python/PHP/Ruby which most of them are working with – after all it
was designed for that - as a teaching language.
2 – Some way of running Delphi programs in a browser – in a way its the last
major OS they haven’t ported to as a target platform.
From: Jolyon Direnko-Smith
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2016 8:21 PM
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] Seattle questions
Um, John.... Delphi has had zero terminated strings since Delphi 2 and still
does. They are zero-terminated AND they have a payload descriptor which
specifies the length. This can actually lead to problems when a string is both
terminated by a zero but also ends up CONTAINING a zero (i.e. an additional
zero within the string length described for the string, BEFORE the terminating
zero).
Surveys don't mean anything when it comes to credibility. TIOBE in particular
(not a survey incidentally, but an automated index) is poo-poohed when it shows
Delphi in decline but is suddenly now reliable? And there was a recent bit of
an upset when someone (at Embarcadero but supposedly with no particular axe to
grind... yeah right) managed to finally get the TIOBE index to count "Object
Pascal" in the Delphi numbers, something which some parts of the Delphi
community have always claimed was why Delphi was under-represented in that
index. So as of February this year, Object Pascal does now count towards
Delphi (even though there is a LOT of non-Delphi Object Pascal activity) and
the difference it made was ... negligible. In fact, no difference at all,
despite some people posting some spurious comparative claims about performance
in the last 12 months (in the TIOBE index). A proper analysis of TIOBE shows
no such thing unfortunately.
On the ground I can say that Delphi skills are in shorter supply (in NZ) than
ever as the result of there being no new "intake" and the old guard continuing
to drift away (or retire). And as well as corporates not having heard of
Delphi or believing it to be "out of business", there are also many who do know
full well what the current state of affairs is and for precisely those reasons
are actively engaged in removing it, and their dependency on it from their
businesses.
It is difficult to think of Delphi "still going strong" when it is hardly
"strong" now. However, I doubt it will ever disappear. Programming languages
never really die. Even Gupta, PowerBuilder and Omnis are still going after all
these years, supported by eye-watering prices (if you need to ask you can't
afford it) paid by a tiny user base (sound familiar?). Consider that the cost
of a new user Delphi "Ultimate" license is now over NZ$10,000. You don't need
to sell many of those to make a bit of money. Which is a good thing, because
you won't (sell many that is).
As for outliving C# for the reasons you gave. I think Pascal will absolutely
live on, so Wirth's legacy is secure. FreePascal is getting a LOT of attention
these days, not least on the back of the popularity of devices like the
Raspberry Pi, which you can use FreePascal on. Even Lazarus, the Delphi-like
IDE. But the Delphi incarnation of Pascal .. ? I'm not so sure. Certainly
not for the reasons you mention.
C# is now also "officially" cross platform and could be argued to have been so
for a long time (thinking of Mono in general and Xamarin more recently in
particular) and in a far more complete and robust fashion than FireMonkey.
.NET core is a "natively cross-platform" framework, rather than a lowest common
denominator cross platform runtime environment "bolted on" and reliant on
on-going support from the underlying platforms for the approach to even remain
viable. If Google ever decide to end of life the NDK (e.g. if they decide that
the Java SDK + ART delivers all the performance that developers need) then
FireMonkey has no place to go on Android. For example.
If nothing else, Delphi faces a problem in being proprietary to Embarcadero.
With Microsoft now embracing Open Source, expensive proprietary, closed systems
such as Delphi look increasingly out of place.
Worth noting is that FreePascal is also open source, also cross-platform and
has been for longer than Delphi and supports many more platforms than Delphi.
Apologies if this comes across as doom or nay saying but if Delphi is to be
assessed properly in the current context then we need to make sure we are
properly across that context and not looking at it through rose tinted specs.
On 11 April 2016 at 16:33, John Bird <[email protected]> wrote:
My perspective, and its a partial one. But I work in a house using both
XE8/Seattle and C#
Q1 – XE8 is fine (our current production version) and all the comments about
Seattle I have heard are good – large projects more stable in particular.
Q2
· Which is more effective at producing finished product. (Faster to
market)
Both are fast – Delphi compiler and single file deploy is still very hard to
beat.
· Which is more effective at meeting customer’s needs. (Faster
customisations)
Everyones opinion will differ on this
· Solution performance. Which is better. (How snappy is the solution
to use)
Delphi performance is hard to beat. A lot of .NET is also very good these
days. But not all.
· Security. Which is better. (.NET seems inherently flawed in this
respect)
Delphi does not have zero terminated strings – this has to be a huge
advantage as buffer overflows in strings are likely the main security weakness
in C family of products. Runtime languages such as ..NET and Java have a
spotty reputation too. Security is ultimately much more than the language,
but to my eyes Delphi starts with less weakness.
· Deployment. Which is easier?
Single file vs a folder structure of hundreds of files – and the issue of
figuring which files of those files to deploy for a new version.
· Does the Delphi team sit comfortably alongside the .NET team ?
Yup, 3 teams using both. Each team prefers one or other, but uses both.
Remember Anders Hejlsberg designed both
· Which product fits better with latest business strategies such as
IOT and Cloud ?
Everyone’s opinion varies according to what they know and like.
Q3 – WPF - Yes with differences – merits in both
Q4 – Credibility - refer surveys – latest TIOBE index has Delphi at Number
11, at half to two thirds popularity of C#. Higher than Objective C and Swift
still. Java, C and C++ are still the biggest
http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index
Q5 – IOT/Cloud - Delphi does Web Services, IIS and DBs, and cross compiles to
Win32, Win64, OSX, iOS, Android and linux server soon. Others can add more
specific cloud points.
Q6 - Where - Europe seems strongest bastion of Delphi, but everywhere.
Maybe not India – they all want to seem to do SQL Server, C# and Oracle there
so they can get jobs in California.
Q7 – Cost - Cost is reasonable to me. If it has to be free looks like Free
Pascal is a decent alternative too - never had to look at it myself.
Q8 – Support - Mainly good. Generally resolve any issues within days or
hours – and its usually the way I’m doing it that is at fault
Q9 – Developers - Mainly older developers tis true. But only mainly. Some
of them think that Delphi may still be going strong when C# fades from
popularity – mainly for the reasons of:
a – its a good language (Thanks Nicholas Wirth – designed as a good formal
teaching language)
b – its already cross platform, so competes with the biggies of C and Java
with advantages over each.
From: Tony Blomfield
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2016 1:21 PM
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: [DUG] Seattle questions
I hope the group does not mind me asking a few business oriented questions
about Seattle.
I have had Seattle since its original release, but so far have not used it. I
have become quite cynical about Delphi as a result of my XE2 experiences.
1. I’d like to hear from anyone that is using Seattle in full
production, general thoughts about its features, and productivity.
2. If there is anyone also using .NET? It would be particularly useful
if they could compare from a Business perspective the pro’s and cons. For
example.
· Which is more effective at producing finished product. (Faster to
market)
· Which is more effective at meeting customer’s needs. (Faster
customisations)
· Solution performance. Which is better. (How snappy is the solution
to use)
· Security. Which is better. (.NET seems inherently flawed in this
respect)
· Deployment. Which is easier?
· Does the Delphi team sit comfortably alongside the .NET team ?
· Which product fits better with latest business strategies such as
IOT and Cloud ?
3. Does Seattle have any comparative presentation layer to compete with
WPF ? Does anyone used it ? Does it support well MVVM ?
4. Market credibility for Delphi is low. Most International Corporate
clients have never heard of it, and those that have are very cynical. How to
overcome this marketing hurdle?
5. What is the Delphi developers strategy for Cloud deployment ?
6. Which country has the greatest penetration of Delphi Seattle ? Where
are the best developers available ?
7. How do you feel about the high cost of Delphi compared to VS ?
8. How is the support for Delphi ? User groups, and Embarcadero
maintenance contract ?
9. And finally: How is the market availability of Delphi developers
these days ?
Thanks very much,
Tony
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