I apologize if I caused offence and yes I was not very diplomatic much to my shame. I'm sorry.
Embarcadero and FMX is very much a hot topic for me - Like many Pascal developers in England I was taught Object Pascal and Delphi at School, College and University - Borland were making a big push to get the language recognized throughout the industry and we were all assured through our national institutions backed by the commercial might of Borland that Object Pascal had a future and it *did*, we all dedicated ourselves and our initial careers to Delphi. And all looked good until Embarcadero took over. Their lack of vision and effort followed by a series of poor quality control decisions that has allowed things like FMX to persist despite *repeated* failures and widespread criticism, things like IOS + Android support delayed for many years and Linux support *totally ignored*? these things basically say to the tens of thousands of people across the world that were counting on Embarcadero : We don't care about your future.
Delphi was the only thing keeping mine and many other peoples career prospects open. Just a few years ago Delphi jobs were abundant! and they still would be if Delphi had moved with the times.
Instead of a mighty cross platform system that works on all major platforms with a first rate library to match that of any C++ suite? We get a product stuck on Windows with poor cross platform support that was years and years late (and still woefully incomplete) and FMX : far from being the future of Delphi represents all that is wrong with the decisions made over the past few years. It's slow, badly layed out when compared to the *standard* VCL and enforces a design that makes game development next to impossible on IOS and Android (in pipeline as well GPU resources locked) you know Embarcadero, games? the number one source of revenue on Android and IOS? Thanks for that, really helpful.
So yeah, not a big fan of FMX on either technical or even general grounds. We should of had enterprise class database development on Linux, seamless RAD across all platforms, Android/IOS support *the moment* those systems came out. We should of had a professional, world class compiler and tool-chain. Instead we get animated buttons on IOS. Great. So for me the push for FMX is why Delphi is *no longer* the worlds greatest database client development tool and why mine and many thousands of people's careers have been ruined.
I wouldn't mind having support for other platforms years too late, I wouldn't even mind the total lack of Linux support (you know Embarcadero? the world standard in database servers? Delphi was the world standard for database client development? are you literally not seeing this?) But for FMX to be so *badly* designed as to be unsuitable for exploiting the main revenue streams on the platforms it was designed for? it's nothing short of insulting given the dedication that I and many people have shown in the past.
I hope FMX turns into some amazing fully capable system and we see support for spinning, hardware accelerated buttons on all major platforms and I wish all of its users happiness and joy.
But I won't be recommending FMX for games development and indeed I wouldn't recommend any other proprietary tech that ships with Delphi. It's too much of a gamble on a company that doesn't care about your future. Use open-source / standard libraries and API's even with Delphi - that way your hard work and effort will survive any poor commercial decisions.
I do want to see a brighter future for the language and for those looking to develop games in Pascal I do want to be able to recommend and advise what I objectively see as the best options.
I apologize again for my tone, it is unjustified unless you actually have an affiliation with Embarcadero - I just don't want anybody else's careers ruined on the promises of a company that can't deliver and the thought of an Embarcadero employee pushing FMX as suitable for games development in light of this made me angry. In such a context it is nothing short of greedy lying at the cost of people's future. Given that I can't see how anybody but an Embarcadero employee would recommend FMX? I assumed you were.
I'm sorry. I will now go and write a tetris clone with FMX as way of penance
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