the web pillow-smothered decent desktop UIs

Application development has gone backwards so much compared to the RAD tooling from the 90s. I really can't even properly describe it to the younger generation. :(

ah the GUI designers from Borland, light years ahead of everything else... it just worked and looked nice (compared to Microsoft shitshow that was Visual Studio back then), was very easy to learn and its the only thing in software I've seen in 20 years which deserved the title RAD.

Delphi cut the corners with their fixed positioning. It will not work for web and it works very poorly for localization (labels change their lengths and can overlap over each other).

As soon as you introduce layouts to your UI, all the Delphi simplicity goes out of the window.

This is an interesting challenge to invent a way for UI to be pixel-fixed, yet work in web and with localization. If someone would do that, you could rebuild Delphi for web.

I guess one way is to build a pixel-fixed form for English language and let AI to build a layout for this form.

We had things like expandable container groups for UI controls that could auto-resize the child controls as necessary to fit their content back in the 90s.

Granted, it wasn't as easy to set up properly vs modern web layout engines - but there is so much more to RAD applications than the UI layout by itself.

So? Many apps don’t need localisation. Responsive UIs weren’t all that important in the mid 1990s when monitors and their resolutions were all in a relatively small corridor. I remember 20 inch CRTs to be the absolute high-end that few could afford. Most PCs came with 14 or 15 inch monitors, 17 inch later.

Totally agreed. I have done both a lot of work with the Borland tools and over the years with various web based libraries and languages, Borland wins hands down, in spite of the underlying horrible mess.

This. How easy was it to put together a well-functioning Windows desktop app in Delphi, compared with the complexity of developing a Web app these days?

I love using these RAD tools but I think part of what we're forgetting is how much lower the standards were (both visual and functional) for UIs back then. Sure you could throw together a professional UI in a lot less time, but part of that was that the definition of "professional" was "looks exactly the same as every other Windows application and uses the same 5 form elements". We've just come to expect more variety so the RAD approach doesn't take you as far these days.

> I love using these RAD tools but I think part of what we're forgetting is how much lower the standards were (both visual and functional) for UIs back then.

They weren't lower then, they're lower now.

> Sure you could throw together a professional UI in a lot less time, but part of that was that the definition of "professional" was "looks exactly the same as every other Windows application and uses the same 5 form elements".

Yup. That's still the correct definition.

> We've just come to expect more variety so the RAD approach doesn't take you as far these days.

Yes, unfortunately users have been conditioned to expect myriad variations of something like Kai's Fucking "Power Tools". And most of them have even been deluded into thinking of that as a good thing. They're wrong.

Yeah they tend to have no variable window size support.

What??? WTF are you talking about?

i think it's probably coming back with this whole low-code/no-code thing.

I think they really screwed up after Delphi 7, when they did the horrible Delphi.NET.

Also, they should have had some better pricing, something like: Personal use: Free. Commercial use: Free until you are making $x a year, like Unity I think, and then different prices.

Note: I might remember wrong, as this was so long ago. I started with Delphi 1.0!

I think their original pricing scheme for the first 5 or 6 versions of Delphi was fine. The cheapest version was just $100, which even a student could buy by saving for a few weeks (get them hooked while young, etc :-P). The versions that added features focused on enterprises were more expensive but these wouldn't be needed by a lot of people (a lot of Delphi programmers were making small shareware utilities instead of big database applications).

I have a "Delphi for Kids" book which included a free version of the lowest Delphi tier. And yes, sure, I guess you can do the same with the current community version, but it does show how broadly Delphi was aimed and received.

Which is the sad thing. Even if Idera were to change their tack, it wouldn't matter anymore, as there's no broad appeal for a "desktop full stack" solution anymore.

Right now, it doesn't matter anyway. They're in that enterprise tier along with commercial Smalltalks and APLs, even if they'd give away everything for free tomorrow it wouldn't change the world of computing.

After a while they got greedy and fucked up that scheme, moving stuff that had been in the Professional edition (most importantly, client-server DB connections) into Enterprise, and other stuff (three-tier app development) from Enterprise into a new Architect edition. And then steady substantial price hikes for all editions from version to version. Shot themselves in the foot, AFAICS.

Exactly, that was my point :)

Delphi has a free community edition. The free version only targets Windows, though.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-dow...

That's kind of "too bad" it's Windows only. I would try it on Linux and/or macos.

Delphi IDE is available for Windows only, regardless of its version. I suspect @runjake meant is that the free version only targets Windows, while the architect edition of Delphi can target all of the major OS'es out there.

Yep, this is what I meant. Updated original comment, thanks.

The free Community Edition supports targeting Windows, Android, iOS and macOS. From a feature point of view, it is similar to what you get with the unrestricted Professional version. Enterprise and Architect also has the Linux compiler. On Windows you can use the tried and battle tested VCL framework, and for multi platform there's FireMonkey.

The IDE's are, however only runs on Windows (Or Wine if you're brave, YMMV).

That's a shame, I guess Kylix just died in the end ?

Yes, Kylix died. But current implementation of FireMonkey framework within Delphi fully took its place and some more.