Re: Adventures in Quest for GUI RAD

tony_caduto(at)amsoftwaredesign(dot)com (Tony Caduto) writes:
> That's what was said 7 years ago..... guess what it's still around
> and going strong. This is one of the most ridiculous arguments
> against using Delphi, every year people like you say this, then 7
> years go by and your still wrong....

I wasn't the one doing the evaluation back then. I wasn't working
with Delphi then, didn't discard it then, and haven't discarded it
recently.

>>The problem with Delphi is that it is uncertain where it will stand
>>five and ten years down the road.

>>Killer question: Can you assume that apps you wrote two years ago
>>(with Delphi) will still be able to run on top of Longhorn? If not,
>>that makes Delphi a dangerous choice.

> Apps created 9 years ago with Delphi 2 will run in Longhorn, hardly
> a dangerous choice, you also forgot to mention or don't know that
> Delphi 2005 ships with Delphi .net which means you can compile code
> native win32(single exes) or target .net. it also ships with full
> C# support. Bill Gates recently mentioned that 32bit support will
> be around for the next 50 years and MS products will have to support
> them. Heck most of my Delphi apps work well under WINE on Linux...

Bill Gates also mentioned that "640K would be enough for anyone" and
wrote, in an evidently-not-well-enough-edited book, that "The obvious
mathematical breakthrough would be the development of an easy way to
factor large prime numbers." There seems to be good reason to
"reserve trust" there.

>>There are those that would criticize it for it using Pascal; it's not
>>really worth going there...

> Thats easy to say for someone who has never used it

I was merely making an observation.

There are those that will be critical about Delphi being based on the
Pascal language, which is a simple fact.

It's not worth starting any battle on the subject; there are just too
many opinions out there on programming languages.

There's certainly a set of people falling into the "Real Programmers
Don't Use Pascal" <http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/real.programmers.html>
camp, where the stated opinion is...

"If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you
can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing."

When Unix came along, which is not based on FORTRAN, it was still
observed that it might be not too bad for Real Programmers:

"Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once
was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating
system worthy of any Real Programmer-- two different and subtly
incompatible user interfaces, an arcane and complicated teletype
driver, virtual memory. If you ignore the fact that it's
"structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated by the Real
Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, variable names are
seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of the
Pointer data type is thrown in-- like having the best parts of
Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of
the more creative uses for #define.)"

PostgreSQL obviously fits into the latter category ;-).
--
(format nil "~S(at)~S" "cbbrowne" "acm.org")
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/sap.html
Rules of the Evil Overlord #78. "I will not tell my Legions of Terror
"And he must be taken alive!" The command will be: ``And try to take
him alive if it is reasonably practical.''"
<http://www.eviloverlord.com/>