[DUG] What is the future for Delphi programmer?

[Richard Vowles]

2010/1/15 Jolyon Smith <jsmith at deltics.co.nz>

> But we should also remember that the free alternatives don't just mean the
> seemingly sub-par Apple tools, but as someone else pointed out, also Visual
> Studio C# Express + MonoTouch.
>


But it does also include Flash/Flex, where the Flex Dev environment is
similar in price to Delphi Pro. Java, C# (via Mono) and Flash all compile to
the iPhone so they don't use VM's, but Flash is  the most seamless - it
makes the experience painless and you get volumes of functionality that
works as expected on the platform. The same cannot be said for C# or Java
cross compilers. IMHO, you get what you pay for - the fastest (although not
most native or snappy) method for getting to the iPhone is currently
Flash/Flex, i.e. ActionScript. But as (I think you) say, most of the iphone
apps are done by people slaving away with XCode in their garage with 1
person (and possibly a contracted designer). But Games I think are the
biggest hit on the iPhone and Flash certainly makes that easy.

Android on the other hand runs the Dalvic runtime - Java is the language of
choice that Google supports compiling to Dalvic, but it also supports others
- such as Python, Perl, JRuby, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript, and shell via the
ASE (say that out loud :-) As long as you compile to Dalvic you can use
compiled, if you want to interpret and run your own VM, you can do that to.

That said, on Android you are not required to write to Dalvic - it is only
there to make things easier. Last year they opened up the O/S layer and all
the apis required, so it may be easier for Delphi to target that layer if it
wished to. Given Android lets you multi-task, run apps in the background
etc, it may be a better platform for them to choose and industry pundits see
Android taking a larger share in the smartphone market than the iphone in
the long term if only because of the number and variety of phones on the
market (at different price points and features).

I didn't read through this thread entirely, but did anyone mention
electronics? Delphi has always been big in the scientific/industrial world,
and I have taken this up as a hobby (Arduino) and would like to write the
client side apps in Delphi. With the coming of x-platform, this is even more
appealing... Does anyone here use it in that area?

Richard


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