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View Full Version : Delphi 10.1 Starter Edition free serial until 9 of SepTember



ironquark
25-08-2016, 05:02 PM
Hello Guys!

Valid 22 August of 2016 until 9 of September of 2016.

Download link:
https://www.embarcadero.com/br/products/delphi/starter/promotional-download

Compile just for Windows 32 bits... but its free ::)

Best regards!

AirPas
26-08-2016, 07:12 PM
its too late embarcadero , we already have fpc/laz as a better alternative .

salvadordf
31-01-2017, 08:25 AM
The 100% discount is still available!

Delphi 10.1 Berlin starter edition at 0$

sternas
01-02-2017, 09:07 PM
A simple test...

phibermon
24-02-2017, 02:00 AM
Free? that's still too expensive - You'd literally have to pay me to use Delphi over Lazarus - which I am actually open to, a man's got to eat

SilverWarior
24-02-2017, 10:39 PM
I'm a Delphi supporter now for 6 years already. But even I must admit that I'm becoming more and more disappointed with it.

Now it is nice that Delphi ships with a bunch of components that provide all those neat almost ready to use features.
But what I don't like is that extending any of these components has become a nightmare in recent Delphi versions. Why? Because Delphi VCL (and especially FireMonkey) heavily and I mean HEAVILY depends on use of interfaces which means code damn hard to read.
I still remember times when I started programming in Delphi 6 and even thou at the time my programming knowledge was much lower than it is now I never had much of a problem for making of a customized version of certain VCL component. But now even thou my programming knowledge is greatly improved I'm having huge difficulties extending existing modern Delphi VCL components.
In fact the last time when I was trying to make a customized version of some VCL component I actually rage-quitted after spending a whole day getting nowhere. The next day I fired up my old laptop with Delphi 7 on it, copied the code of that VCL component I was extending to my desktop current development machine and extended that component with desired features. And for all that I spent just over two hours. Sure that extended component does not support component styling and it probably won't work OK with advanced reference counting. But since I'm not using none of these features in my project I'm fine with that.

Another frustrating thing about Delphi is that it contains quite many very old bugs. And while many of them might seem trivial at first look they could actually have huge impact. One such bug is related to code folding or to be more precise scenarios where parts of your keeps getting expanded so you end up either spending most of your time folding back that code or not using of the code folding feature at all which is a shame as if used correctly it can greatly improve code writing productivity.

Any way for the time being I'm still sticking with Delphi but if this trend will continue then I'm definitely going to switch to Lazarus or some other IDE. I guess that one of the main reason why I'm sticking with Delphi is that it has more powerful debugger. At least it seemed so when I was doing comparison against Lazarus debugger about a year ago. Hasn't checked the newest version of Lazarus. Has it been improved on this area recently?

phibermon
25-02-2017, 12:23 AM
The debugging support of FPC+Lazarus nowadays is just as good as anything in the GNU tool-chain style compilers for example. I don't have a single issue debugging my code and I can't think of anything about debugging in Delphi that is better or that I can do without. Debugging works fine on Windows, Linux and OSX - although OSX Lazarus is a bit quirky but that's mainly down to jumping through X-code hoops.

Delphi is all about the components it ships with which are generally of a very high quality.

However I personally think Firemonkey is a joke - given they're a large commercial company they should be capable of far more than I am - yet my own comparative system is so much better it's funny - it doesn't give me much confidence in the abilities of their developers if a group of people being paid good wages are incapable of producing a better system than one person working in their spare time.

Their abysmal cross platform support over the years is nothing short of embarrassing nowadays - again they pay their developers an actual wage - why can't they do what Lazarus has been doing for years? who the hell is coding for them? the aliens from independence day?

Not to mention they expect you to pay extra for the 'privilege' of cross platform development, I mean *seriously*?

Unless you're being forced to support some old Delphi code base - updating it because it would be too expensive to re-implement - Delphi is dead - only somebody without another economically viable choice would *pay* for what is free everywhere else.

I miss Borland - they actually cared about their product and their customers - not just the money they could squeeze out of them.

I say this as somebody that has been coding in object pascal for over 25 years - I'm an expert and as much of an authority in the language as anybody can be - FPC + Lazarus are the better choice. I don't see why anybody in a position to choose would choose anything else.

laggyluk
04-03-2017, 11:51 AM
For me the best part about Delphi is Firemonkey :P Recently I had this idea to redo my bot making software in Lazarus and guess what, control's size can't be scaled which pretty much is a road block for my zoom in/out idea.

Maybe I'm spoiled by Unity and UE4 but I got used to creating UI that can fit the screen, be able to rotate or scale the control If I wan to. Make new components by simply nesting and stitching together simpler ones.

Embarcadero does what it can to keep Delphi an unattractive choice but at least they understand that modern IDE for application development should be able to produce modern looking GUI.

phibermon
07-03-2017, 07:33 PM
it works, it's pretty and it's robust - firemonkey is certainly a great off the shelf choice for people looking to easily develop unique looking apps but lack any sort of technical knowledge or need of hardware accelerated APIs.

But that's the kicker - we're game developers - if you're talking 3D acceleration, games you're also talking performance, cross platform flexibility - firemonkey simply isn't designed to work inside an existing engine/framework - it's designed to *be* the framework. It uses a ton of memory (I assume it has to be creating back-buffers for every control to use as much as it does) , it doesn't give you full control over GL initialisation (very important) or the 'render loop'.

If you're not using the 3D hardware outside of what firemonkey directly gives you - and you can afford it, then sure, brilliant, firemonkey is pretty and it works.

But it's not very suitable as the GUI for a 3D game for example - that needs total control and utilisation of the hardware - this doesn't include every project - not at all - but it becomes an issue eventually so unless you're absolutely certain your project won't grow? it's worth thinking about.

SilverWarior
08-03-2017, 04:12 AM
It uses a ton of memory (I assume it has to be creating back-buffers for every control to use as much as it does)

I also assume something like this. But not so much due to memory requirements but based on some of its features like zooming ability which clearly simply scales up the contents of entire control.
Another problem with FMX is that unlike its first few iteration it does not natively support vector graphics rendering which means that for each control you need to have respective image. These images are stored within those styles that FMX use. And I seriously doubt that FMX has proper algorithms for optimized storing of this resources in VRAM which might be another cause for high memory usage.


But it's not very suitable as the GUI for a 3D game for example - that needs total control and utilisation of the hardware

If you ask me it is not very suitable as the GUI for any game or even for any more complex application for that matter. Why?
Go and make a next test example. Create a new FMX project and simply put about 100 to 200 controls on it. Compile the project and then preform quick mouse movements around your FMX application and you will se that the CPU usage will rise significantly. In fact this issue is so bad that if you have an application with complex UI mouse movement can cause application lag. To me that is unacceptable.
Remember when in another I mentioned that I'm still not sure whether to use FireMonkey for my texture creating application that I'm creating or first finish my Silver GUI library and use that for my application UI. The reason for my dilemma is the fact that even with partially done UI in FMX I'm already noticing performance issues and we are talking here about texturing application that does not have any kind of fancy graphics or animations for its UI.

To be honest I'm wondering how people can make any mobile application using Delphi ad FireMonkey which isn't lagging as hell since mobile phones have much weaker processing capabilities compared to desktop computers on which you can already notice FMX to lag as hell.

phibermon
10-03-2017, 04:35 PM
To be honest I'm wondering how people can make any mobile application using Delphi ad FireMonkey which isn't lagging as hell since mobile phones have much weaker processing capabilities compared to desktop computers on which you can already notice FMX to lag as hell.

Yes I agree - its use of the hardware is naive at best, for such a highlighted feature and already after a few iterations? the lack of performance, the clunky design and the on rails usage pattern (concerning OpenGL) is quite frankly shocking - considering it's a commercial project.

They need cross platform in all versions as standard, native OSX + Linux compiler and IDE - hire some *experienced* devs to sort out firemonkey, not just the lowest quote. Hire somebody with some common sense to update headers.

I'd personally throw out the compiler, use FPC - save myself a ton on development costs every time a new OS comes out and then put that money into making my actual selling points better while gaining a shed load of 'new' features I can list.

Delphi costs a fortune, it's been around for over a decade, it has (or had) a massive user base - it should be ten times better than FPC+Lazarus - not ten times worse.

They even *used* FPC for one Delphi version for the cross platform support - they didn't contribute back to the FPC project or even mention they made use of it in publicly recognisable way.

I used to worship Borland - I grew up wanting to work for them - Turbo Pascal and Delphi were big parts of my life that I remember fondly.

It's such a terrible shame to see the once great name of Delphi reduced to this pathetic stream of poor quality updates.

SilverWarior
11-03-2017, 05:41 AM
Yes I agree - its use of the hardware is naive at best, for such a highlighted feature and already after a few iterations? the lack of performance, the clunky design and the on rails usage pattern (concerning OpenGL) is quite frankly shocking - considering it's a commercial project.

I think that mayor disadvantage of FMX is that it is trying to be to much alike VCL. Sure this allows easier transition for people who have rich experience with VCL to FMX platform but the problem is that VCL and DirectX or OpenGL use completely different approaches which are not compatible with each other. So in the end you are limiting the functionality of your platform and preventing your users to make most of DirectX or OpenGL functionality.
That is why in my Silver GUI library I'm not trying to mimic VCL or FMX approach but instead I'm using my own approach.

Another problem is that FMX developers spent a lot of time designing various FMX controls so that they look as similar as possible to various native components for each platform. This is the consequence of latest trend where each application should look and feel the same as OS on certain platform so that it gives you illusion that it is part of that OS.
Man I miss the days where developers actually spend time designing their application UI to be the most suitable for that specific application features and not making the UI to look so dull as most modern OS UIs do.



They need cross platform in all versions as standard

If as versions you think about different editions/bundles (Starter, Professional, Enterprise, Architect) then all I can say is that they should abolish this archaic approach and offer their users to create their own custom bundles with those features that they actually need and use.
This would make Delphi much more affordable as you would only be paying for the features you actually use and not for bunch of features that come with certain edition that you aren't even using. Not to mention that this would give Embarcadero clear picture of which features are most popular and where they should provide most focus in further development.


Delphi costs a fortune, it's been around for over a decade, it has (or had) a massive user base - it should be ten times better than FPC+Lazarus - not ten times worse.

Delphi had a massive user base. But not any more. And there are multiple reasons for this. Based on my opinion most major reasons are:
1. Affordability: its high price makes it hardly affordable for beginners or smaller development teams. Sure by making Starter edition free it become a bit more affordable but the problem is that Starter edition is way to limited with the features it provides.
If you ask me features like Symbol insight (ability to navigate to declarations or implementations), Class completion, Code refactoring (at least basic refactoring's like renaming of variables, types, etc.) should also be included in Starter edition as they can be very valuable to someone who might be learning to code in Object Pascal. And To-do list! Not including something like "To-Do" lists in starter editions is just idiotic.
2. No longer on bleeding edge: Back in its glory days Delphi had support for at the time most newest features. And in fact in some cases it actually provided even better support for certain features than its competitors. Not to mention that it brought some of its own unique features to.
But today feature vise it is slowly following others. And what is worse is that many times the implementation of these features is just terrible.
3. No longer listens to whole community: It is becoming more and more apparent that guys at Embarcadero first and foremost listen to wishes and suggestions of some of their major business partners instead of the whole community. Because of this development is more focused on features which are more useful to bigger companies and not for features that are useful for smaller or individual developers. This in turn is driving away those smaller developers
4. Uncertainty in the past: We also should not forget that in the past there was quite high uncertainty if Delphi would even survive due to changing ownership from one company to another.


They even *used* FPC for one Delphi version for the cross platform support - they didn't contribute back to the FPC project or even mention they made use of it in publicly recognisable way.

That was in Delphi XE3 if I'm not mistaken. The reason for this is that first iterations of FireMonkey actually relied on XCode and Delphi still didn't have its own native compiler for MacOS and thus used FPC instead.


It's such a terrible shame to see the once great name of Delphi reduced to this pathetic stream of poor quality updates.

I totally agree with you.

Wiering
13-03-2017, 01:56 AM
Just installed Delphi Starter for the first time. That limited commercial use license is pretty worthless:

"Once your company's total revenue reaches US $1,000, or your team expands to more than 5 developers, move up to the Professional edition with an unrestricted commercial license."

So that is your TOTAL revenue, not just revenue from Delphi Starter (as I assumed at first). I'd think that a company that isn't able to make $1000 in a year is probably in trouble, at least in western countries.
And meanwhile you can get the complete Visual Studio 2017 Community for free if you make less than a million dollars.

BTW, those samples are boring. Back in the days of Borland, even the samples had gems. I remember using the TVEDIT demo as my default text editor for years after buying TP6.

Jonax
20-11-2017, 02:52 PM
Agree with Wiering that the starter licence is not very attractive but better than nothing I guess. Anyway I just successfully downloaded the Tokyo 10.2 starter version. Let's see if it can be useful.

ironquark
23-11-2017, 02:29 PM
Agree with Wiering that the starter licence is not very attractive but better than nothing I guess. Anyway I just successfully downloaded the Tokyo 10.2 starter version. Let's see if it can be useful.

Hi

Do you know if the Tokyo version have any advantages for gamedev users?

Jonax
25-11-2017, 05:40 PM
Hi

Do you know if the Tokyo version have any advantages for gamedev users?

I don't know in general but Tokyo has some advantages for me personally. Tokyo can handle some of my ancient Delphi 3 code while Lazarus complains a lot over one of my ancient project. In other cases Lazauras is great and imports my old Delphi 3 code nicely.

SilverWarior
26-11-2017, 09:28 AM
I don't know in general but Tokyo has some advantages for me personally. Tokyo can handle some of my ancient Delphi 3 code while Lazarus complains a lot over one of my ancient project.

What does Lazarus complains so much?

Jonax
29-12-2017, 02:51 PM
Actually I eventually managed to make the old software run on Lazarus too. So quite pleased now.

SilverWarior
29-12-2017, 10:03 PM
Nice to hear you overcame your problems