Marco Tech Blog

January 13, 2016

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month #37

Let's start the new year (after some days off) with a new round of interesting links and news.

posted by marcocantu @ 5:33PM | 10 Comments [0 Pending]

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Sorry Bruce for the wrong attribution of your blog post, it is 
now fixed. 

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 13, 18:18

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

In terms of market - delphi is still considered to be
a rather small competitor,. which is a shame because
it's a great product and easy to use.

A large part why it's considered to be left behind is
the lack of a fresh userbase. While microsoft is
offering free products (visual studio) to encourage
schools and individuals to use and learn the
software,. the basic delphi rad studio is still WAY
out of most people's price range.

30 day trial is not enough I fear to get people to try
the product.

Have the guys at Embarcadero been thinking about this?
Perhaps even copying Microsoft's tactic in allowing
individual users (non corporate) to use the software
for a much reduced fee / or even free? Your market
would grow so much,. that the corporate sales should
increase over time as well.

I'd hate to be one among a dying breed of coders that
can put Delphi on their resume.

Comment by Thomas [] on January 15, 08:56

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Any timeline / plans for update 2? :) 

Comment by Thomas on January 15, 08:56

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Out of curiosity,.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2476690/delphi-why-does-explicitwidth-and-explicitheight-keep-appearing-in-dfm-files

It's quite a hassle to keep having to manually edit
files before checking them into version control. 

And yet Delphi 2010 seems to decide at random whether
it needs explicittop/left/bottom/right,. and for no
reason that i can decipher it feels like either adding
or removing them at whim.

Is that issue fixed if i were to upgrade to RX Seattle?

Comment by Thomas on January 15, 15:03

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

I'm about to start a new Windows desktop project 
involving some automation, database backends, media 
playing, animations. I was a huge Delphi 7 fan back 
in the day. I was seriously thinking about going back 
to Delphi, as I hate the WPF XAML madness combined 
with the sluggish experience of Visual Studio 2015. 
That said, after givin the trial a shot, I do not see 
myself going back to Delphi ever again. The whole 
experience with exception of the Delphi Editor itself 
was crap. The installation took me longer than 
installing Ubuntu Server including tons of server 
software like databases, message queues and so on and 
so forth. WTF happened? Then I encountered a couple 
bugs. Then I could not find any decent Firemonkey 
documentation or book. And so on and so forth.
I wish I could just buy a slightly improved Delphi 7.

Comment by Fritz [] on January 16, 17:41

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Thomas,

  Explicit coordinates are there for a reason, so 
that if you disable alignment, the control goes back 
to the expected position. There were bugs in the 
past, that made them unreliable, I think these have 
been fixed.

-Marco  

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 18, 14:26

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Fritz,
  
 the installation took you more then Ubuntu 
Server... because Delphi is bigger than that 
server. But we know the installation experience is 
not good, and are at work to completely revamp it. 

If your focus is Windows, you can still use 
good'old VCL which is fully supported and 
continually expanded. If you are interested in 
multiple target platform, than FMX is a premium. It 
has a learning curse, and while we provide a lot of 
documentation, book coverage is sparse, that's 
true.

If only install Windows support and use VCL, you 
have "just a slightly improved Delphi 7".

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 18, 14:29

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Marco, the thing is,. (at least in rad 2010), if you
moved all the controle 1 pixel, saved, moved them
back, saved again. The explicit values would be gone
again.

They often appear to have no additional value.

Example, original:
- Top: 55;

After changing dialog style from bsSizeable to bsDialog:
- Top: 50;
- ExplicitTop: 55;

After moving the control left,right and saving:
- Top: 55;

Seems like it could have been, and kept on 55?
This is causing some git clutter. It's easy enough to
manually fix or move controls and save a bit more
often,. but fully automatic would be the preferred
(and somewhat expected) method.

Comment by Thomas on January 18, 15:26

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Atanas (Embarcadero General Manager) said:-

 "We will communicate the updated Product Roadmap in 
January."

It's January 29.

Comment by Wilfred Oluoch [http://www.ideaz.co.ke] on January 29, 14:27

Delphi Blogs of the Week/Month 37 

Wilfred, we are probably going to be a few days late... but 
the roadmap is coming soon. 

Comment by Marco Cantu [http://www.marcocantu.com] on January 29, 15:05