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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I'm very sad that Delphi is so inaccessible for hobbyists. In some spare hours I'm building a native app in Qt, but I'd have definitely built it with Delphi if I wouldn't have had to cough up 3000 dollars just to get started.

In all frankness I don't get why Embarcadero doesn't copy Qt's licensing. If they make a free GPL version, Delphi-based open source could thrive while just about everybody who buys a license now would still be required to buy a license.

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Have you tried the Delphi compatible but open source https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Admittedly, I haven't. I've Read On The Internet(tm) that it isn't as good as plain Delphi, but in all honesty I really should give it a chance indeed. Thanks!

There is an online package manager and a docking IDE package (if you are into single window IDEs) in the latest Lazarus 1.8rc3, so they are slowly getting there.

There's Delphi Starter Edition, which is free for freeware / personal use projects, and 'free' for commercial apps until you've earned $1000 in total revenue. (At which point, they want you to buy a ~$2000 license. Hmm.)

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter

When I tried it, it didn't allow me to use third party components in design time. And only 32bit demo compiler is distributed. (Can't be used from command line)

That's the annoying thing. Why don't these companies say you can use it for free or for cheap until you've earned 10000 in total, and then you have to buy a license that costs less. That way you could put the money aside in your calculations and it would be no problem. The DAW Reaper has this kind of licence, you only have to buy the commercial version if you make more than 20,000 USD gross revenue per year.

It's the same with commercial CommonLisps, I'd love to use one, but the pricing is ridiculous for small companies / hobby programmers. That doesn't add up, you'd have to be 100% sure that you'll earn more than X dollars with your application and you can never be sure of that.

I think Delphi Started has same limitation as C++ Builder Starter - removed most of debugging functionality (e.g. local variables window). It may be not critical with small applications, but I would rather have "no commercial", no 3rd party components or code size limitation than crippled IDE. I've tried to switch from Turbo C++ Explorer 2006 (this was also free version) to C++ Builder 10.1 Starter and I prefer old one.

If you're looking for something more Deplhi-like, why don't you just use .NET? Mostly open source now, tons of 3rd party libraries and component packages available for it, just like Delphi in its glory days.

Because I want a UI that works on Windows and macOS out of the box.

Plus I want it to have a tiny memory/CPU footprint and while .NET/WPF is better than the average Electron app I still notice a difference.

Definitely a good reason to use Qt, but you wouldn't get that with Delphi either. Qt is probably the best looking build-once, run with an acceptable UI package anywhere in that market.

EDIT: Just saw your second addition... not so sure I'd agree though, the performance on startup of .NET applications these days is quite excellent and I haven't been able to tell for years, but I've been on SSDs with lots of RAM on recent chips I suppose.

Delphi footprint is actually less than Qt in many cases (at least of older versions, don't know about the new ones). Don't forget that VCL wraps native widgets, so there's a lot less code in there.

Have you tried Racket?

I'm programming desktop applications in Racket, but unfortunately for many purposes it is, as of now, too slow. Especially application startup time is painful, and text% and other essential components of the GUI are way too sluggish for professional end-consumer applications. Maybe the Chez-based rewrite will help, but I'm not betting on it. Parts of the GUI library are just too complicated, and sometimes for no good reason (for example, style lists or the way it deals with snips internally).

I'm probably ending up with prototyping in Racket and writing the final application in Qt or Lazarus.

You can get an UI that works on both (WinForms or GTK#), or you can use the native UI frameworks

I believe there's a few things under .NET that try to wrap multiple UI libraries to varying levels of success too however none of them are as mature as Qt for a nice multiplatform UI in my opinion.

Golang + Facebook's C flexbox yoga? Not sure it covers all the bases but it's a new option!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14928177

Isn't the same guy behind both Delphi and C#? Anders Hjelsberg if memory serves.

Also TypeScript!

And Turbo Pascal!

Yes. And also more recently, Typescript. Quite a career!

Let me offer my apologies on behalf of the Danish nation for what we have foisted upon the world: Hejlberg's C#, Stroustrup's C++, Lerdorf's PHP, and Heinemeier Hansson's RoR.

TP and Delphi, obviously, require no apologies.

Nothing's wrong with C#. When it came, it was a "better Java" in many respects, and that was a niche that was desperately begging to be filled. Over the years, it became even better at it.

I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it. It's just me being old school and curmudgeonly - not really hot on runtimes and complex dependencies. Although of course, if I really need it, Nim will compile my wonderfull code to js. Otherwise just singe, compact, standalone executables for any platform I care to imagine.

And yes, the language itself is a joy to code in. Which is opinion, not fact, I realize that.

Would you compare Nim to DLang (honest question)? If yes, how? I've been watching both and just waiting for an opportunity/excuse to build something using one of them

Yes. Both fast and AOT compiled languages with great compilers and probably not the best IDE support unless you count a bunch of plugins. Both have small and tight knit communities and have evolved fast. Neither are the best from a library perspective, but Nim can use C or C++ libraries easily. Doc isn't terrible. Nim has jokingly been called "New Improved Modula-3", so it has some things in common with Pascal, although it's syntax looks like Python with types, while D looks like a mix of C++ and Java.

thanks!

Np...I'll add that Nim has an awesome book out "Nim in Action" and D has a free book on their site. Nim has several different backends (C, C++, Objective C, JavaScript) that it can transpile to that leverage the insane optimizations that things like GCC and Clang can offer. Nim has multiple garbage collectors depending on the level of performance you desire.

C#, for all the platform limitations, is probably the best designed and evolved mainstream language out there.

And C++ powers Google, Facebook, 100% of AAA games, 90% of mainstream OSes, and 90% of all top-of-the-line commercial programs (from browsers and office apps, to Photoshop and AutoCAD).

Nothing to apologize about RoR either.

Stroustrup brought sanity those of us that need to touch C based APIs, Hejlberg designed Java as it should have been done properly.

No need to apology for them.

Is that why the Danes are supposedly the happiest people in the world?

I never stopped to consider how much of the world's software is written in a Dane-designed language.

Isn't Pascal from Nicolaus Wirth, a Swiss?

Absolutely. But Turbo Pascal was a somewhat different kettle of fish, and very much a unique implementation.

The UI construction on Delphi is a pleasure. Does something comparable exist for .NET?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but Visual Studio? https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/

WinForms, it is not 'cool' nowadays, but works exactly like VCL+delphi ui designer

Eto.Forms if you're going cross-platform.

WinForms is a bit of a mess when you want to support high-dpi.

You can switch to WPF at that point I think.

Which is like wading through treacle, I'm convinced we have taken as many steps backwards as forwards when it comes to desktop development.

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