[DUG] Presentation in Christchurch - any other meetings in Chch?

[David Brennan]

Interesting.

 

But if the future is handheld and mobile OSes (which it almost certainly is
in terms of numbers at least) then is Linux and Mac cross platform really
the next stepping stone to take? I don't think so.

 

Surely the next step to take would be developing a MobileVCL which is a cut
down and streamlined version of the Windows VCL, with target platforms such
as Symbian, iPhone OS, Android, Windows Mobile, etc. Now THAT would very
much interest me because we could certainly see a use for cut down field
versions of several of our apps.

 

However I don't see how VCLX is really a useful stepping stone towards
running Delphi on mobile devices. If it is the goal and VCLX is just some
sort of expensive and frustrating (for the customers) trial of Cross
Platform development in preparation for the main event then I am extremely
disappointed in Embarcadero. 

 

David.

 

 

 

From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of John Bird
Sent: Wednesday, 14 October 2009 4:57 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] Presentation in Christchurch - any other meetings in
Chch?

 

I think a lot of you are being short sighted.  Just my opinion.

 

I lived through the mini-computer era, using Digital Equipment
mini-computers with RT-11 and VMS - both really good operating systems, and
thought at the time if they started selling VMS for a few $100 rather than
thousands they may have captured the mini-computer market as it was way
superior to MS-DOS, instead they didn't adapt and got clobbered by Microsoft
to the extent the company and the platform does not even exist now.

 

Its a less certain thing as its still the future, but its my guess likely in
5 years netbooks/laptops and mobile and phone OS will largely kill desktop
PCs and in time likely Windows too, as there is not much sign they will be
the leading candidate for mobile devices in 5 years.  Hence the more cross
platform and new UI (read touchscreen) enabled a language is the better
positioned it will be.

 

Also apps are moving more to be web enabled, where the UI is done by the
browser instead, so this also is not really tied to one OS.  There are only
a few good frameworks that run across many OS's - think Firefox/Thunderbird
(XUL) and Safari/Itunes etc.  As far as I can gather none of these are
remotely easy for new programmers to jump into.

 

Thats why I reckon Delphi as a cross platform simple UI language could be a
killer, and why its worth doing even if it is not too easy.

 

John

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