Delphi 13 Florence Released

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/announcing-the-availability-of-rad-studio-13-florence/

89•andsoitis•4mo ago

Comments

brightball•4mo ago

I was surprised to see Delphi still getting pretty solid use in some circles. I had no idea.

Talked to a dev who was an advocate for it some years back.

ivan_gammel•4mo ago

If you build for a small number of professional users with a known target platform and you know how to solve distribution, then RAD tools (or any platforms supporting desktop targets) are the best choice and they offer superior UX compared to browser-based apps.

I myself now prefer to build admin tools on Java/Swing, because it’s much faster and easier than building a web app (Claude Code does that job quite well). Delphi probably offers even better dev.speed/quality/UX.

johannes1234321•4mo ago

Yeah, getting a webapp up and running for small amount of users is tedious. Either complicated install or permanent hosting cost and permanent cost for keeping maintained. A desktop tool has a lot less security vectors as it's all local.

Of course there is electron, but that has its own set of complications.

For simple tools RAD is great.

zeroc8•4mo ago

Since Firemonkey draws on Skia anyway, they could also provide something similar to Flutter/WASM.

I love the Flutter/WASM idea, but cannot get warm with the widget in widget approach flutter uses. Having a designtool like Delphi's would be nice.

Tobias42•4mo ago

Have you tried Vaadin? It's like writing a Swing application that compiles to the web. Or at least it was when I used it last, about 7 years ago.

drob518•4mo ago

It’s the COBOL of the 1990s.

gramie•4mo ago

Not a good sign when the website (granted it's the blog website, not the main one) for a commercial development tool is unreachable.

Sad, because I still have a soft spot in my heart for Delphi.

drob518•4mo ago

Yea, well said. Me too.

nunobrito•4mo ago

Delphi was the only compiler where the Help documentation was really helpful and used without needing internet. For each library they provided real-world examples on the documentation so we could learn how to use them.

I've never found bettern tool for building desktop GUI apps so easily. I've dropped Delphi back in 2010, moved to Java and tried the web/mobile world but nothing comes close to that top-notch quality.

Irony of destiny: Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.

innocentoldguy•4mo ago

My first programming job was writing Delphi code. Their documentation was excellent. All of the documentation I've used since then has been sad and disappointing.

andsoitis•4mo ago

> Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.

Delphi can compile native apps for Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.

nunobrito•4mo ago

Thanks for that info. Was reading and seems to be available since edition 10 upwards with the enterprise license: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76356995/how-to-target-l...

Fantastic toolchain.

browningstreet•4mo ago

Ironic when you get a Cloudflare error page for something that should be CDN'd and static-able anyway.

Here's where I'll add: it's really weird to me that Embarcadero now owns Ultra-Edit.

zeroc8•4mo ago

And Sencha. They are just buying stuff so that they can milk their remaining customers. But outside of Delphi/C++ Builder and maybe Interbase back in the day, I haven't seen them doing anything worthwile.

runjake•4mo ago

Here's the summary snippet from the post because the server is dead:

  "Embarcadero is very happy to announce RAD Studio 13 Florence along with Delphi 13 
   and C++Builder 13 is available to customers starting today. The RAD Studio 13 
   Florence release offers a 64-bit version of the RAD Studio IDE, an updated C++Builder 
   Clang compiler, Delphi language extensions, AI components, an AI companion, along with 
   a number of enhancements of existing features, and a significant focus on quality."

kev009•4mo ago

Some interesting trivia, Netflix' cofounder Marc Randolf spent time at Borland.

RAD Studio is kind of the closet experience to VB6 where you simply drop controls on a form and can easily wire it up.. with a much better language.

The tools were/are too expensive and Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily, and it's been extractive rather than growth oriented since. There is the Lazarus/FreePascal project which offers an alternative.

tylerflick•4mo ago

> Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily

And hiring Anders Hejlsberg

selectnull•4mo ago

Microsoft did a lot of bad things over the years, but Borland drove themselves over the cliff on their own. Instead of focusing on developer tools, they wanted to reinvent (and rename) Borland every few years in the 90s.

Bad management, bad decisions, bad products (Delphi 7 was peak). MS had nothing to do with that. And I'm sure Anders made a right move to abandon the sinking ship.

I'm still pissed at Borland for all those bad moves.

elzbardico•4mo ago

Borland decided that they should target management instead of the developers as their focal point of product development. They ignored the Web for Delphi and decided that web development front would be covered by JBuilder, a paid and slow evolving product that could not compete against the fast iterating and free Eclipse.

elzbardico•4mo ago

And yes, naming themselves inprise was peak 90's wallstreet cringe.

drob518•4mo ago

It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools. Microsoft could easily squeeze Borland by simply making MSDN tools free. Borland tried to diversify with databases, word processors, and spreadsheets, but Microsoft countered with Office, trying them altogether, and it became the default in every single business. Borland had great technology and was super innovative and I used Turbo C++ and TASM for years. But in the end, they just couldn’t find a cash cow market to keep them afloat.

selectnull•4mo ago

> It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools.

Just to be clear: we are talking the 90s here. Everybody was charging for developer tools (). MSDN was not free, far from it. From today's viewpoint where every compiler imaginable is free and the tools are better than ever (except there is nothing like Delphi and VCL), the 90s were a heaven for tool makers.

I'm talking about the Windows ecosystem.

drob518•4mo ago

Correct, but Borland didn’t die in the 1990s. That was its heyday. As I said, I used Turbo C++ during that period and I spent good money on it. But the tools commoditized and Microsoft eventually made MSDN basically free in the 2000s (there might have been some nominal charge, but it was low). And that was when Borland eventually got acquired, in 2009.

therealmarv•4mo ago

The could have been the Jetbrains (before Jetbrains existed) and even bigger than Jetbrains.

zeroc8•4mo ago

I remember thinking back then that Jetbrains had their pricing right.

Not free but low enough so that invidual developers and companies wouldn't think twice about bying a license.

Borland/Inprise/Codegear/Embarcadero just priced themselves out of the market.

stuaxo•4mo ago

Just offload themselves to JetBrains, and have Delphi opened.

ksec•4mo ago

Open Sourcing Delphi along with Commercial licensing to Continue development is on my wish list if I ever become a billionaire.

zenlot•4mo ago

Delphi is still great, even though the usage declined and not many people, especially newcomers know about it (or C++ Builder).

It is still probably the best drag and drop experience for UI components, with Qt Creator being a runner up.

A bit shame, as most likely the popularity declined due to draconial licencing model at the time. Now they have Delphi Community edition, which is free.

If you have some free time, try it, you won't regret it. Especially good for hobby projects.

_zamorano_•4mo ago

I don't think any of those are better than WinForms.

After all these years, I still use WinForms for prototyping, nothing faster comes to mind. If I need a mockup to show to my manager in 15 minutes, nothing beats WinForms.

kwanbix•4mo ago

What do you mean by WinForms? I understand it is a framework/library? does it come with its own IDE? Delphi is great for this, how is WinForms better?

zeroc8•4mo ago

WinForms used to have a designer similar to Delphi. I've used them both, Delphi's was better.

oniony•4mo ago

Visual Studio was/is the IDE.

bruckie•4mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms

benjiro•4mo ago

Never mind ... clearly i am the issue.

breve•4mo ago

> literally memory segfault on not even complex code. Memory pointer issue or something

That sounds like your own misunderstanding of Object Pascal.

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Delphi 13 Florence Released

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