Delphi or FreePascal?

[Traveler]

as a "sidenote" we're no longer talking about the topic, are we?

Indeed, get back on track people...

[DarknessX]

Only good on my end from XP. I personally believe it depends on how you use it.

If you mess around with it, visit virus'y sites, or generally experiment, things tend to go bad. If you do the same things, over and over again, practice more security than *nixes require, don't use an administrator account (something I fail to do, I ALWAYS use admin), and don't download what you don't trust, then it won't have problems. Mind you, some computers don't like their owners and screw up on purpose. And hardware failures kill XP...

I run XP 24/7 for the past year. Not one BSOD, nor one full crash. A few app freezes, but thats ok. Fixed with a restart/ctrl+alt+del.

[Mirage]

Ehm like Stalin perhaps? Who killed 7 million people on Ukraine because of starvation and 1.8 milion people by forcing them to work?

Your tale-tellers are so humble! Ours tells us about 20M. In some variants some millions of these 20 where killed personally by Stalin.

On topic:
Because I want my programs to be crossplatform I maintain compatibility with FPC. But for Win32 Delphi is better yet. It generates smaller and more efficient code, has great IDE and VCL (my GUI-applycations are Windows only yet). I hope that FPC will be improved on these matters, although it is already a great compiler.

[Chebmaster]

It generates smaller and more efficient code, has great IDE and VCL

Lazarus IDE is no slouch either. Ctrl-clicking to get to the function/const declaration is great. And it works for any function -- while in Delphi when you try to track some system stuff it often fails, since the function requested is compiled from assembly code/object file with no sources provided.

Seriously, it could be used instead of help (when you forget the exact declaration of some function) or search for related functions without the need to look into help.

By the way, the help system in Delphi 2..5 was much, much better than what Turbo Explorer provides now. Early versions contained only Delphi+Win32 stuff, it was easy to find something by keyword. Current version is an ugly heap containing unsorted info on all Borland products including also .NET, C++ and tons of other crap the keyword search drops on you. It's hard to find the Delphi-related information you search.

Well, FPC's help system isn't that great either, you need a PDF viewer than can perform search, but at least it contains only the FPC stuff. Pretty complete too, if you know how and what to search.

[wodzu]

Ehm like Stalin perhaps? Who killed 7 million people on Ukraine because of starvation and 1.8 milion people by forcing them to work?

Your tale-tellers are so humble! Ours tells us about 20M. In some variants some millions of these 20 where killed personally by Stalin.

Indeed Depends who tells the story isn't it? I've picked up the lower number from Wiki;-)

By the way, the help system in Delphi 2..5 was much, much better than what Turbo Explorer provides now. Early versions contained only Delphi+Win32 stuff, it was easy to find something by keyword.

And what about Delphi 6,7? It seems you stopped using it on version 5

Current version is an ugly heap containing unsorted info on all Borland products including also .NET, C++ and tons of other crap the keyword search drops on you. It's hard to find the Delphi-related information you search.

It is unbelievable what they did with Delphi's help. It's totally useless in my opinion. And if you want to use it in Delphi 2007 for WIN32 you actually need to install 1GB of .NET crap

[dmantione]

Well, FPC's help system isn't that great either, you need a PDF viewer than can perform search, but at least it contains only the FPC stuff. Pretty complete too, if you know how and what to search.

Use the IDE or the search engine on the web site. Both work great.

[VilleK]

Until recently I kept using Delphi 6 because I found later versions buggy or did not add any functionality I needed. But now I've upgraded to Delphi 2007 and I'm happy with it. No bugs that I've noticed, and the help system works again . It cost me 300 euros to upgrade which is worth it for me because I use it professionally.

I've also used FPC and think it is very good. But I could not use it for my 64kb-programs project because it generated larger exe-files than Delphi.

[Almindor]

Still what it boils down to is that you are not likely to get a job programming in FPC. So if you want to program in pascal for a living then learning to use delphi is the way to go.

FPC will stay a hobbiest compiler.

BTW it is quite easy to debug DLLs. And as for debugging fullscreen app, just run it in a non-fullscreen mode.

This isn't exactly true. Not sure about your locality conditions but in here getting a programming job with any "pascal" is almost impossible. Delphi is rarely required but I can say I had small jobs (I'm incorporated) on both about 50/50.

Recently I worked on a GL panel in delphi, and had a proposition for one big DB app in delphi too. In the past I worked on my networking library for 2 companies for Lazarus/fpc (specifically cross-platform requirement, so delphi is out of game).

With Delphi it was always "lagacy". The DB proposition fellow even said they'd turn to Lazarus or something else if they could, but they can't go from start anymore. I haven't seen new Delphi jobs in an age...

But it's probably country-specific. I think tho that cross-platform possibilities are slowly crawling in. From what I saw, companies are slowly going over to a "it should be simple to port to linux (or OS-X) eventually" mentality.

[wodzu]

I've never used Lazarus and never tried to write any database application in FPC. Is this possible, I mean are there any units alredy written to speed up the process of creating such application?
I think that when it comes to databases Delphi is just superior among other languages. Creating an application which connects to database ad displays results of some query with data edition is like 30 seconds

[Almindor]

I've never used Lazarus and never tried to write any database application in FPC. Is this possible, I mean are there any units alredy written to speed up the process of creating such application?
I think that when it comes to databases Delphi is just superior among other languages. Creating an application which connects to database ad displays results of some query with data edition is like 30 seconds

Lazarus/FPC contains an army of DB libs. There's the 100% native TDBF (a FPC made non-SQL database (should be extra-fast), SQLDB which is an abstraction above databases like MySQL, PostGreSQL, Oracle. SQLDB is very similar to the delphi ones, and Lazarus have standard components like "DataSet", "DBGrid" etc. So it's almost same like in Delphi.

You also have Zoes for Lazarus.

And yes, they all work on atleast Windows and Linux, most on others as well.