Was there ever a more productive GUI programming experience than Delphi? It's been more than twelve years since I used it (or developed on Windows for that matter), but it was so powerful and fast.
These days, we write Python that generates SQL in order to generate HTML, then write Javascript to talk HTTP to the Python and then generate HTML that gets interpreted into the screen by CSS...and there is no way a tool can present the result of that in a coherent manner (let alone autocomplete it!).
(I get an up-close view of this because I cofounded Anvil - https://anvil.works - which does the complete opposite of this at every level. All in Python, one framework, all autocompleted - basically a modern Delphi for the web.)
It's kind of funny, because one of the first things I wrote with Delphi when I first got my hands on it was a text editor. :-)
We use the XE7 version of the IDE, which is excruciatingly slow on a laptop with an i7 7700HQ processor, fast nVME SSD, and 32GB RAM. Oh, the IDE is 32 bit so it runs out of memory. The IDE also crashes a lot (I have never heard of a stable release of any version of Delphi). Our codebase still compiles on Delphi 7 (from 2002) because it is a better developer experience than thier modern versions...
Trying to find good components was easy in 2002, but it can be impossible now. All the good component developers moved on to more profitable targets. You can't find good open source components because no developer can afford the annual costs to get new versions of the compiler and compile components.
1) the trend towards greater and greater complexity and more features as time goes by and as version numbers increase.
2) the cost, of course.
Edit: Also, as others point out in this thread, some versions of it were reportedly moderately to quite buggy.
And as someone else said in this thread, Lazarus is an option.
Because everything the author was complaining about was solved in Delphi in mid-nineties.
Heck, if he were to write for Windows, he could still use Delphi and get what they want!
For that matter, VS.NET platform would be a pretty good tool for that job too (no surprise given that the head of the project was heading the development of Delphi before jumping ship to MS).
He he, I did the same.
>Because everything the author was complaining about was solved in Delphi in mid-nineties.
Related:
Delphi – why won't it die? (2013) (stevepeacocke.blogspot.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613543
I had commented a few times in that thread.
Beating a dead horse and outing myself to anyone that knows me!