Delphi 10.1 Starter Edition free serial until 9 of SepTember

[laggyluk]

For me the best part about Delphi is Firemonkey 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]

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]

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]

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]

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.