Embarcadero RAD Studio 10.3 (Delphi, C++) Product Feature Matrix [pdf]

I'd like to try out the community edition, but the license seems restrictive. It sounds like if you make more than $5,000 (from anywhere - not just through use of the software) you have to buy a license? I don't really get the point of a community edition if (almost) no one can use it without paying.

From https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-e...

> For example, a developer who receives payment of $5,000.00 for a single project (or more than $5,000.00 for multiple projects) even if such engagements do not anticipate the use of the Community Edition, is not allowed to use the Community Edition. In addition, a developer building solely an app store application would not be allowed to use the Community Edition once the app store revenue reaches a revenue of $5,000.00 or more in a year. If Licensee is a company that has a cumulative annual revenue which exceeds the Threshold, then Licensee is not allowed to use the Community Edition, regardless of whether the Community Edition is used solely to write applications for the business' internal use or is seen by third parties outside the company or has a direct revenue associated with it.

Sadly Borland really did a big mistake dropping Kylix and going into that Inprise endeavour.

Probably Java would have never had taken off if they kept their compilers accessible to the hobby developers.

Probably not exactly what you'd expect as a comment to this link, but a few years ago i bought second hand copies of Delphi 2 and C++ Builder 1 (and Borland C++ 5 and JBuilder 2 and VB4Pro, and VB5 and a bunch of other stuff, i like collecting and using old dev tools - sadly most of them do not come in a full box with original manuals which i'd love to have). I normally use Lazarus[0], but sometimes i also like using Delphi 2 and C++ Builder, the former being what i used for years as a teenager (i used to have another second hand CD i got from a local programmer - again without manuals and i guess i got ripped off, but it was the first tool i ever bought by selling some game i wrote... and i promptly lost after my parents moved, but by that time i had lost interest in Delphi and was dabbling in C++ with Borland's free C/C++ Compiler - although i did use the "personal edition" of Delphi 7, which came in a magazine cover disk, to create an "IDE" - really a text editor that could keep a list of files and call BCC32.EXE - and used it for a couple of years and was where i wrote my first 3D rasterizer[1][2] and learned OpenGL[3], although at some point i also wrote a platform game in Delphi[4] which i later ported to Free Pascal and a few years later recreated with new graphics in C++/SDL, originally as shareware but later opensourced[5]) and the latter something that i was curious about.

I used C++ Builder the last few years to create some unofficial game patches (most can be found at [6]) because it creates small executables (i used OpenWatcom before that, but i found creating the dialogs annoying and of course i didn't want to use Lazarus that makes 1MB+ executables just for a single dialog). Also i really like how fast the compiler is - i do not care it doesn't even support C++98 as i wouldn't use C++ normally anyway :-P. Like with Lazarus, i have a few classes[7] in it for utility stuff.

Recently i also made a mesh editor[8][9] with it. If you check my channel, i have a few "Making a game in XYZ" videos and i wanted to make a video where i "retrocode" a simple game using Direct3D on a Voodoo 2 under Windows 95, but i couldn't find any free mesh editing program that runs on Windows 95 (i tried some old versions of Blender and Wings3D but either nothing worked or was too slow - Voodoo 2 only supports 3D acceleration in fullscreen so the windowed mode programs have to be usable with OpenGL 1.1 using Microsoft's GDI-based software rendering OpenGL implementation). So i decided to write my own :-P. It mostly works, as shown in the video, but i haven't added a way to edit texture coordinates yet. I also tried to write a Quake-like editor[10], but lost interest. I did port (rewrote) the 3D widget stuff for my Lazarus tools though[11].

Ironically even though i spent basically my childhood with Delphi 2, i am not really using it much these days. I use Lazarus for most of my stuff (and TBH i wouldn't really rely on either C++ Builder or Delphi 2 to keep working in the future, although it works just fine under Wine[12] which i feel will be more likely to stay backwards compatible in the future than Windows itself). I did write an OpenGL viewport[13] and OpenGL 4.6 bindings unit for Delphi 2 though (which may work with later versions of Delphi), although the former is really almost a line-by-line conversion of my OpenGL viewport for C++ Builder[14] and the latter is just a unit generated with my Lazarus OpenGL unit binding generator[15] hand-converted to work with Delphi 2's Pascal dialect. I recently thought about writing a Nendo-like[16] modeller by porting my winged edge classes from Lazarus[17], but the day job doesn't leave me with much free time sadly :-P (and i have some games to play too :-P).

Funny enough, just before visiting Hacker News today i went to Embarcadero's site and thought about downloading the latest Delphi - but meh'd out when i was asked to register (i have an account, but i don't remember the details and i'm too lazy to go through the password recovery dance). Although TBH this is largely because every time i tried it the last few years i was really underwhelmed. I don't know, i never liked the post-Delphi 7 interface and i remember even at Delphi 7's time i thought the IDE was too bloated (granted, i was trying to run it on a Pentium MMX with 32MB of RAM...).

I wish there would be a version that had an affordable price (like the original Delphi 2 and C++ Builder, the base versions of both costing only $99.95 which lasted until Delphi 5 and C++ Builder 5 respectively and after that prices started hiking fast), was available in a box with nice manuals and CD/DVDs (or whatever, for that money i want to have something to touch :-P) and was free of any sort of DRM (i installed C++ Builder once when i got the CD off ebay years ago and since then i simply carry the installation folder around - which is kinda necessary since i've modified a few headers and lib files - if they had any sort of DRM i wouldn't be able to do that).

Basically i'd like a new Delphi 2 :-P. Although TBH this is more of a sentimental thought and in practice Lazarus does the job just fine, even if a bit clunky at times. Still, i'd buy a (proper, non-crippled, especially license-wise) $99.95 DRM-free Delphi (hell, even a digital-only version, as long as i got a nice .exe installer i could safekeep in my external hard drive) without much thought.

[0] http://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[1] https://i.imgur.com/uYBX6nN.png

[2] https://i.imgur.com/opVUsvG.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/eS802L7.png

[4] https://i.imgur.com/CO4lnhz.png

[5] http://runtimeterror.com/games/nikwideluxe/

[6] https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/Bad_Sect...

[7] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/bcbcmn/index

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr1Sr9hTkzg

[9] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/olmeshy/index

[10] https://i.imgur.com/zRguUf8.png

[11] https://i.imgur.com/6uIFrMC.gif

[12] https://i.imgur.com/rInEdBY.png

[13] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/dglvp/index

[14] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/bcbgl/

[15] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/gl2unit/index

[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC7EDkZfw3M

[17] https://i.imgur.com/4Zk9Td7.png

Nice to see a C++ Builder reference here on HN. If you're looking to build a native Windows GUI, give it a try.