[DUG] Seattle questions

Mon Apr 11 23:44:51 NZST 2016

As I said this was my perspective, my experience.

There are a wealth of commentators with their opinions on what is good, coming from a scientific background I like to look at the data, so an automated index rather appeals to me – its sort of factual with all its limitations of how it is compiled, data rather than opinion.

A couple of the points you made seem to be contradictory – you say Microsoft is more natively cross platform and refer to Embarcadero as proprietary – I tend to look at Embarcadero as a much less proprietary vendor than Microsoft and almost all out there, even Oracle with Java.   Also I don’t see that having a large free/open source variant (Lazarus/free Pascal) out there as a bad thing.   If Embarcadero ever did bite the dust financially I reckon most people would like to see and would work to Delphi becoming open source, much like Firebird.

About zero terminated strings – the point I am making is that Delphi is not so prone to buffer overflows simply because it does not continue until finding a null terminator – the length for native Delphi strings is at the beginning.  (Yes it supports null terminated strings but that is beside the point I am making about its default safety)

Most of us were not expecting so much focus on iOS or Android even 5 years ago, nor Bash appearing native on Windows (later this year).  I saw commentary that Google may be contemplating moving away from the Java API and all proprietary aspects of Java because of the on-going strife with Oracle.   So the IT market will continue as always to be unpredictable and changing and the longest lasting tools will be those that are the best designed and do not get sunk as being too embedded in an eco-system that moves out of market popularity

Overall I see Delphi in a sweet spot in the market, a legacy language not tied to any major OS vendor and hence well placed to respond to new architectures, and these will continue to surprise.

There are two things I think Embarcadero/Delphi could do that it is not: 

1 - Some student program – give away value tools for IT students to get them used to Delphi, new young Delphi programmers, as well as C/C#/Java/Python/PHP/Ruby which most of them are working with – after all it was designed for that - as a teaching language.

2 – Some way of running Delphi programs in a browser – in a way its the last major OS they haven’t ported to as a target platform.

From: Jolyon Direnko-Smith 
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2016 8:21 PM
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List 
Subject: Re: [DUG] Seattle questions

Um, John.... Delphi has had zero terminated strings since Delphi 2 and still does.  They are zero-terminated AND they have a payload descriptor which specifies the length.  This can actually lead to problems when a string is both terminated by a zero but also ends up CONTAINING a zero (i.e. an additional zero within the string length described for the string, BEFORE the terminating zero).

Surveys don't mean anything when it comes to credibility.  TIOBE in particular (not a survey incidentally, but an automated index) is poo-poohed when it shows Delphi in decline but is suddenly now reliable?  And there was a recent bit of an upset when someone (at Embarcadero but supposedly with no particular axe to grind... yeah right) managed to finally get the TIOBE index to count "Object Pascal" in the Delphi numbers, something which some parts of the Delphi community have always claimed was why Delphi was under-represented in that index.  So as of February this year, Object Pascal does now count towards Delphi (even though there is a LOT of non-Delphi Object Pascal activity) and the difference it made was ... negligible.  In fact, no difference at all, despite some people posting some spurious comparative claims about performance in the last 12 months (in the TIOBE index).  A proper analysis of TIOBE shows no such thing unfortunately.

On the ground I can say that Delphi skills are in shorter supply (in NZ) than ever as the result of there being no new "intake" and the old guard continuing to drift away (or retire).  And as well as corporates not having heard of Delphi or believing it to be "out of business", there are also many who do know full well what the current state of affairs is and for precisely those reasons are actively engaged in removing it, and their dependency on it from their businesses.

It is difficult to think of Delphi "still going strong" when it is hardly "strong" now.  However, I doubt it will ever disappear.  Programming languages never really die.  Even Gupta, PowerBuilder and Omnis are still going after all these years, supported by eye-watering prices (if you need to ask you can't afford it) paid by a tiny user base (sound familiar?).  Consider that the cost of a new user Delphi "Ultimate" license is now over NZ$10,000.  You don't need to sell many of those to make a bit of money.  Which is a good thing, because you won't (sell many that is).

As for outliving C# for the reasons you gave.  I think Pascal will absolutely live on, so Wirth's legacy is secure.  FreePascal is getting a LOT of attention these days, not least on the back of the popularity of devices like the Raspberry Pi, which you can use FreePascal on.  Even Lazarus, the Delphi-like IDE.  But the Delphi incarnation of Pascal .. ?  I'm not so sure.  Certainly not for the reasons you mention.

C# is now also "officially" cross platform and could be argued to have been so for a long time (thinking of Mono in general and Xamarin more recently in particular) and in a far more complete and robust fashion than FireMonkey.  .NET core is a "natively cross-platform" framework, rather than a lowest common denominator cross platform runtime environment "bolted on" and reliant on on-going support from the underlying platforms for the approach to even remain viable.  If Google ever decide to end of life the NDK (e.g. if they decide that the Java SDK + ART delivers all the performance that developers need) then FireMonkey has no place to go on Android.  For example.

If nothing else, Delphi faces a problem in being proprietary to Embarcadero.  With Microsoft now embracing Open Source, expensive proprietary, closed systems such as Delphi look increasingly out of place.

Worth noting is that FreePascal is also open source, also cross-platform and has been for longer than Delphi and supports many more platforms than Delphi.

Apologies if this comes across as doom or nay saying but if Delphi is to be assessed properly in the current context then we need to make sure we are properly across that context and not looking at it through rose tinted specs.

On 11 April 2016 at 16:33, John Bird <johnkbird at paradise.net.nz> wrote:

  My perspective, and its a partial one.  But I work in a house using both XE8/Seattle and C#

  Q1 – XE8 is fine (our current production version) and all the comments about Seattle I have heard are good – large projects more stable in particular.

  Q2 
  ·         Which is more effective at producing finished product. (Faster to market)

  Both are fast – Delphi compiler and single file deploy is still very hard to beat.

  ·         Which is more effective at meeting customer’s needs. (Faster customisations)

  Everyones opinion will differ on this

  ·         Solution performance. Which is better. (How snappy is the solution to use)

  Delphi performance is hard to beat.   A lot of .NET is also very good these days.   But not all.

  ·         Security. Which is better. (.NET seems inherently flawed in this respect)

  Delphi does not have zero terminated strings – this has to be a huge advantage as buffer overflows in strings are likely the main security weakness in C family of products.  Runtime languages such as ..NET and Java have a spotty reputation too.   Security is ultimately much more than the language, but to my eyes Delphi starts with less weakness.

  ·         Deployment. Which is easier? 

  Single file vs a folder structure of hundreds of files – and the issue of figuring which files of those files to deploy for a new version.

  ·         Does the Delphi team sit comfortably alongside the .NET team ?

  Yup, 3 teams using both.   Each team prefers one or other, but uses both.   Remember Anders Hejlsberg designed both

  ·         Which product fits better with latest business strategies such as IOT and Cloud ?

  Everyone’s opinion varies according to what they know and like.

  Q3 – WPF - Yes with differences – merits in both

  Q4 – Credibility - refer surveys – latest TIOBE index has Delphi at Number 11, at half to two thirds popularity of C#.   Higher than Objective C and Swift still.  Java, C and C++ are still the biggest

  http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index

  Q5 – IOT/Cloud - Delphi does Web Services, IIS and DBs, and cross compiles to Win32, Win64, OSX, iOS, Android and linux server soon.  Others can add more specific cloud points.

  Q6 -  Where - Europe seems strongest bastion of Delphi, but everywhere.   Maybe not India – they all want to seem to do SQL Server, C# and Oracle there so they can get jobs in California.

  Q7 – Cost - Cost is reasonable to me.   If it has to be free looks like Free Pascal is a decent alternative too - never had to look at it myself.

  Q8 – Support - Mainly good.   Generally resolve any issues within days or hours – and its usually the way I’m doing it that is at fault

  Q9 – Developers - Mainly older developers tis true.  But only mainly.   Some of them think that Delphi may still be going strong when C# fades from popularity – mainly for the reasons of:

  a – its a good language (Thanks Nicholas Wirth – designed as a good formal teaching language)

  b – its already cross platform, so competes with the biggies of C and Java with advantages over each.

  From: Tony Blomfield 
  Sent: Monday, April 11, 2016 1:21 PM
  To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List 
  Subject: [DUG] Seattle questions

  I hope the group does not mind me asking a few business oriented questions about Seattle.

  I have had Seattle since its original release, but so far have not used it. I have become quite cynical about Delphi as a result of my XE2 experiences.

  1.       I’d like to hear from anyone that is using Seattle in full production, general thoughts about its features, and productivity.

  2.       If there is anyone also using .NET? It would be particularly useful if they could compare from a Business perspective the pro’s and cons. For example.

  ·         Which is more effective at producing finished product. (Faster to market)

  ·         Which is more effective at meeting customer’s needs. (Faster customisations)

  ·         Solution performance. Which is better. (How snappy is the solution to use)

  ·         Security. Which is better. (.NET seems inherently flawed in this respect)

  ·         Deployment. Which is easier? 

  ·         Does the Delphi team sit comfortably alongside the .NET team ?

  ·         Which product fits better with latest business strategies such as IOT and Cloud ?

  3.       Does Seattle have any comparative presentation layer to compete with WPF ? Does anyone used it ? Does it support well MVVM ?

  4.       Market credibility for Delphi is low. Most International Corporate clients have never heard of it, and those that have are very cynical. How to overcome this marketing hurdle?

  5.       What is the Delphi developers strategy for Cloud deployment ? 

  6.       Which country has the greatest penetration of Delphi Seattle ? Where are the best developers available ?

  7.       How do you feel about the high cost of Delphi compared to VS ?

  8.       How is the support for Delphi ? User groups, and Embarcadero maintenance contract ?

  9.       And finally:  How is the market availability of Delphi developers these days ?

  Thanks very much,

  Tony

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