[DUG] EMBARCADERO MY GRIPE

Wed Jul 29 08:03:56 NZST 2015

RemObjects # of users - sorry, I have no idea.

Community support - there are two prongs to this...

First, the RemObjects forums are quite active with contributions both from
users and RemObjects staff thmselves.  To give an example of the type of
support you get, on one occasion during my early days with the product I
encountered a problem using a particular aspect of the Android SDK which
was traced to an esoteric bug in the compiler.  This was identified in a
few days and by the end of that week a build had been provided to me
personally to test, before the fix was incorporated in a subsequent beta
and later release build.

As a subscriber you have access to the current and previous releases and
betas and you also have a "private downloads" area where specific builds
may be provided to you.  Betas are updated on a more or less monthly basis
with full releases usually coming quarterly, along with regular updates on
the development plans (a "roadmap" if you like" via the blog, as well as
formal updates to those plans with each release (they tell you what the new
release delivers and what they are working on next).

http://blogs.remobjects.com/blogs/mh/2015/07/16/p7096

I should add that I am enjopying only *BASIC* support.  Premium support is
a cost-extra option, should you feel the need for it.

Second, "Community Support" is also on offer from beyond the strictly
delineated boundary of "RemObjects Users" itself. by virtue of the fact
that you are developing directly against the platform SDK's.  I have
learned all my Android and iOS development from the Java and Objective-C
examples online and by perusing questions and answers on Stack Overflow
couched in terms of those platform native languages and API's.  Applying
that knowledge to RemObjects elements is a trivial exercise in syntax
conversion.

On the point of Java and "one language everywhere".... something to bear in
mind here is that when you compile RemObjects Elements code - whether
ObjectPascal (Oxygene), C# or Swift - for Android, what the compiler emits
is Java byte-code.  It is indistinguishable from the output of a Java
compiler!  The front end language syntax may be different, but the output
is essentially Java.  This applies equally to consuming other Java code.
Classes etc from Java are simply consumed directly in your code by adding
the relevant JAR to your project references.

So in a way, RemObjects Elements is an active participant in that "Java
everywhere" phenomenon - when compiling for a Java platform.  In the
Oxygene compiler they have cleaned up the syntax of some of the aspects of
Java, whilst retaining this compatibility.  For example. Java has no formal
specification for the concept of a "property".  But you can still declare
properties in Oxygene for Java - the compiler emits corresponding getXXX
and setXXX methods as you would expect (even if you have not explicitly
declared these accessor methods).  Equally, if you consume a Java class
(e.g. from the Android SDK) which implements get/set methods, then these
can be accessed as if they were properties:

   Java methods:    v = o.getName(); / o.setName(v);
   Oxygene:            v := o.Name; / o.Name := v

Similarly if provide your class implementing a read/write "Name" property
to a Java developer (in a jar file) then they will see a class with getName
and setName methods, just as they would normally expect.

Equally when compiling for .net then Elements is an active participant in
that ecosystem/platform.  And ditto w.r.t iOS / OS X when compiling for
those platforms.

As I think I said, impressive and innovative technology.  :)

On 29 July 2015 at 00:25, John Bird <johnkbird at paradise.net.nz> wrote:

>   I don’t know RemObjects C# or Oxygene.   I read the site and their
> viewpoint on using native API’s is a worthwhile debate.    I would have
> these queries:
>
> 1 – Where does it rate on the number of users?   Community support, code
> snippets etc is as important as everything else.
>
> 2 – It is the opposite of “one language fits everywhere”   yet the
> language currently scoring top on the Tiobe index of programming languages
> does just that – Java.
>
> http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
>
>
> I noticed Delphi is up another few places, to 13.   Pascal is rated
> separately too at 20.
>
> On the comments about the IDE, at work have used D5 , D2007, XE2 XE5 XE7
> XE8 and each version was a definite improvement.
>
>  *From:* Jolyon Smith <jsmith at deltics.co.nz>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 28, 2015 5:03 PM
> *To:* NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
> <delphi at listserver.123.net.nz>
> *Subject:* Re: [DUG] EMBARCADERO MY GRIPE
>
>  I'll say it one more time... RemObjects manage to provide very good
> support for good quality products with extensive, impressive and innovative
> technology that does indeed "just work" (as in effortlessly, not "barely"
> LOL) at a very reasonable price.  $49 Turbo Pascal it certainly isn't, but
> lined up against the likes of Delphi and Xamarin and particularly after
> adjusting for inflation (for comparison with the $49 TP) it isn't far off.
>
> Cheap(er) = lower quality is *not* a rule, and certainly not a Universal
> Constant.
>
>
>
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