[DUG] Opinion wanted - is the upgrade from XE5 to XE6 worthwhile

Fri Jul 11 14:28:49 NZST 2014

Hi Stephen,

There was a long discussion on Firemonkey in the DUG back in May with input from Jolyon, myself and many others. It was perhaps from a slightly different angle than your questions but there was still very relevant information in that discussion. The subject for the thread was “Auckland Event Details” so you may want to review those emails.

I come to a rather different conclusion on Firemonkey to Jolyon, I think primarily because I am looking from a different viewpoint. For a start, because I am business owner, I AM a bean counter and project manager as well as a developer. However Jolyon has some good points.

I’m not sure about the Windows mobile platforms. I don’t think there is any real reason that Delphi couldn’t compile executables for the Modern UI on an RT device IF Microsoft opened up the ability for other native code to run. Last I heard at an Embarcadero roadshow (admittedly a year or two ago), Microsoft let Visual C++ executables run (and in fact from a TechEd presentation last year I gather C++ and COM are much more core to RT than .NET) but Microsoft won’t let anything but the Visual C++ exception stack run on RT. So it is more a policy problem with Microsoft than a technical problem.

Cheers,

David.

From: delphi-bounces at listserver.123.net.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at listserver.123.net.nz] On Behalf Of Jolyon Smith
Sent: Friday, 11 July 2014 1:59 p.m.
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] Opinion wanted - is the upgrade from XE5 to XE6 worthwhile

Xamarin relies on Mono, with potential licensing and runtime implications for commercial developers.

Xamarin does have a fully capable free edition and an individual edition, but if you have 6+ employees then you don't qualify for these (not 6+ Xamarin licenses/users, just employees).  At which point, as Leigh mentions, Xamarin starts to get eye wateringly expensive.  When looking at Xamarin pricing remember to multiple each user by the number of platforms that user will support!

As for XE6, I doubt that mobile development per se will get any "better" in Delphi XE, in the sense that it will ever fundamentally change the approach.  You will always be stuck with a runtime framework which will eat up a significant portion of any benefit gained from compilation to hardware code, comes with it's own minimum hardware requirements, regardless of your application needs/complexity.  This framework delivers platform independent UI's but denies you access to the full capabilities of the underlying platforms.

The approach actively encourages a "one size fits all" approach to mobile device UI's, flying in the face of the fact that the different platforms do have differences, some of which influence the choice of platform for the users involved.  Some iOS users don't want no stinking Android look and feel, and vice/versa.  And nobody is much impressed when an app has it's own entirely unique UI, even if it's consistent across all devices.  I never could understand why an Android user is supposed to care that the app they use on their device looks exactly the same on someone else's iPhone.

imho these advantages speak to bean counters and project managers, not users or customers.

Back to the future of mobile dev on Delphi, there may be bug fixes and additional capabilities, but things such as the inability to create widgets or deploy to Intel based devices etc cannot be addressed by adding more and more stuff into FireMonkey.  The problems there are baked in to that hardware code approach.  e.g. no support for Intel x86 based Android devices.

It is also highly unlikely that you will ever again see a .NET solution from Embarcadero, so if Windows mobile platforms (other than Surface Pro) are or could be important to you (or perhaps more importantly, to your customers - potential or actual) then XE is a dead end.  Similarly the VCL is essentially in a freeze-dried state.

RemObjects now has a C# offering in the form of Hydrogene.  Just as with Oxygene, it supports Java (and therefore but not only Android) as well as .NET, iOS and OS X.  Also just as with Oxygene, it favours genuine platform native implementations over portable abstractions, but source can be written in a cross-platform manner where desirable and appropriate.  To an extent.

With RemObjects you can also mix C# code with ObjectPascal (in the form of RemObjects Oxygene).

RemObjects C# is far and away the cheapest option at $699 for all platforms (.NET, Java, Cocoa) when considering fully capable editions of the available multi-platform options.  Even if you add in ObjectPascal, it remains the cheapest option in terms of licensing cost.

The fact that your development is conducted against the platform native API's also means that if you or your developers ever need to resort to asking for assistance, then the entire community of developers for those platforms will be of use.  An expert in Android development might only speak a Java dialect of the Android SDK's, but the core vocabulary and syntax of those SDK's is the same, you just need to speak their answers with the RemObjects C#/Pascal accent.

But if your question involved a FireMonkey or Xamarin.Forms widget, for example, then your pool of resources is limited to those who know FireMonkey or Xamarin.

Developing at the platform level(s) also means you will be better prepared to switch to entirely native development (i.e. Eclipse, Xcode and Objective-C) should the need or desire arise in the future.

I would say that's my 2 cents, but I think it's a bit more than that.  :)

As I think people may already know, I myself opted for RemObjects C# and ObjectPascal.  I have Delphi 1 thru XE5, but this is used only for what you might now call "legacy" Win32/64 VCL development.

On 11 July 2014 12:04, Leigh Wanstead <leigh.wanstead at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stephen,

C# actually is Xamarin android, iOS :-)

I think Xe6 price is cheap compare to Xamarin solution :-)

But Xamarin allows you to write xamarin.forms for android, iOs and windows 8 phone in a single code base with native look for each platform. :-)

The key word compare to Xe6 is native control for each platform :-)

Regards

Leigh

On 11 July 2014 06:04, <stephen at bertram.co.nz> wrote:

Hi All

I have XE5, but am really only using it in Win64 mode.  To date I have not done any mobile development or Firemonkey apart from a few small apps to find out if it does what it is supposed to.  At the moment I'm in Europe for a few months enjoying myself and not thinking about coding, but when I get back I will be into a few projects and deciding on my development environment of choice.  To this end I would like to hear from anyone who has upgraded to see if there is any advantage for me.

Are the XE6 bug fixes significant?
Is the Android and OSX/iOS deployment better?

And the key question (I can hear the screams from here) - How does XE6 rate against C# and Objective-C?

I look forward to the discussion :-)

Stephen Bertram

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