“Borland Software Corporation today announced Borland Delphi 7 Studio, featuring full support for new and emerging Web Services, integrated model driven development, and preview capabilities for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Using Delphi 7 Studio, the estimated one million Delphi developers can begin developing their skills for .NET and preparing applications for .NET without abandoning their existing work and skills on the Windows platform.” Read the rest of the press release at Borland USA.
Borland Delivers Delphi 7 Studio
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Eugenia Loli
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The first version of Delphi was the second programming environment I learned (Very Basic being the first and least used). I haven’t used Delphi for many years, but I am glad to see that it’s still around and I hope it keeps doing well.
For Windows desktop programming, there is no better tools than Delphi and C++Builder in my opinion. Microsoft keeps releasing flacid attempt after flacid attempt to be better than Borland’s tools, but I don’t believe they’ve ever even made it to the competition arena. To bad that good companies and tools tend to falter to the Microsoft Poop Factory (marketing department).
I meant are, not is.
I always thought it was great that Borland offered their Personal version of Delphi 6 for free online. As far as I can tell they won’t be offering a free version of Delphi 7.
Get real Camel. VS.NET is now the best IDE available…
Have you ever used Delphi?
I have both and the Delphi IDE is much more intuitive and easier to use, not to mention you can design your forms wysiwyg where you can see what the form looks like full screen etc. in vs.net your form is stuck in a box just like VB 6, the .net IDE is just a revamped VB 6 clone with some new features. The Delphi object and event inspector is far better than the .net one.
Don’t cut Delphi down until you have used it….
Well, sure there is a free Personal version – you can either download it for free, or get it (incl. some printed docs) for $99 from Borland.
Happy Delphi hacking!!
And BTW: Delphi is still BY FAR the best Windows IDE around – VS.NET SUCKS BIG TIME
The product won’t actually start shipping until late August.
I’d expect D7 Personal to be available for download shortly after that.
Pascal…ewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!
Pascal was the second language I learned (after BASIC)…and I used it for about 8 months and moved on to C and never looked back!
I would hate to have to program in Pascal on anything today…don’t get me wrong, I could make Pascal dance for me, but I just never really fell in love with the language
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Everything that is called Pascal and is actually used in real life today isnt really Pascal. Luckily. Most of the things called Pascal used today are variations of a language that Borland invented and called Pascal to confuse the world. Or something like that, I dont think anyone relaly knows what Borland was thinking
Actually, last time I used Borland Pascal(TP 7.0) it was still pretty Pascally…if you know what I mean…I also used Symantec’s Think Pascal (On a Mac…ewwww) at about the same time, and the syntax was pretty much identical…I never got into OOP on either of them, though…and I think that’s where most of the Pascal dialects seem to really differ, anyway, I haven’t written a line of Pascal code in years…C/C++/Java/Perl/NASM/Shell Script just about does it for me
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Pascal (the Borland dialect) is pretty much a cleaned up form of C/C++. Every line of code written in C can be expressed just the same in Boland Pascal by just doing a search/replace on some keywords. These two languages are really as close to each other as possible.
Then of course I think some things make more sense in Pascal (strings are much better and pointers are taken care of for you by default) and the default Borland libraries are really neat..
The big addition to this version is the drag and drop web components, called Intraweb from A to Z software – http://www.atozedsoftware.com/
It’s just like building a regular GUI form, pretty neat and powerful, and is cross-platform with Linux. A to Z is also creating a Java version of it, which sounds very cool.
I’m bias – have used Delphi for 5+ years – outstanding database components – i quit/got fired from a couple of jobs because I wanted to use Delphi, they wanted to use VB – i know VB well, and it’s awful for DB work. But that’s the way things go.
Download the enterprise trial version, and you’ll see how great it is…
Has anyone noticed the speed of compilation on Delphi ?
In times, when P120/16M was my platform, I moved all my win32 projects to delphi after years of c++ just because of one factor: compiler was lightning fast for win32 gui code…
Nowadays, it’s only some drivers and kernel development which is pretty tough to achieved in delphi, I guess.
Though, the speed is not an issue anymore either on Ghz boxen.
The friend of mine is working now on VS.net and I see lots of similarities with Borland Components model, constantly poking in the screen and shouting: “This is like in Borland !”
The seduced Borland architect has done a magic to Microsoft product.
Rapid Application Development. That is what Delphi is good for. For very large projects that will be supported for a number of years it isn’t ideal. However, for simple little custom apps it is the bees knees.
Pascal (and Borland’s object pascal extensions) is a safe readable intuitive language. You don’t shoot yourself in the foot all the time. Those of us who have actually used Pascal generally like it. It’s not everything to everybody, but it is cool.
Also Pascal is a precursor to Java in that Pascal has had several Pascal to P-code compilers. Then a virtual p-code machine could run your apps. Cross platform and all. Of course it was a much simpler machine, and very slow.
It does introduce some performance overheads that make it inpractical for operating systems. Oh well.
Also those who are interested might check out Modula-3, the very cool evolution of Pascal into a language that is astounding.
I first used Apple Pascal and then Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0. TP 3.0, I believe, was the first programming environment to use an IDE. I hated Pascal in school, despite scoring an A in the class.
I did a few utilities for the PC at work with TP 3.0 and it was pleasant enough. When Borland bought Wizard C, I was quite happy to make the switch. The next time I tried Pascal was when Borland released Delphi 1.0 for Win 3.x. It was delightful. Most all of the mess was gone and there was a mature application framework available.
Microsoft brought drag and drop programming popularity in Windows, but Borland made it effective. The environment still makes more sense since it’s used for C++ and Java.
Borland knows programmers, Microsoft knows…well…you can fill in that blank.
To those of you who know both VB and Delphi …
How hard is to make Win32 API calls in Pascal as opposed to VB? The way I do it in VB is generally hit Dejanews and simply copy what somebody else has written. I’ve tried the book by Dan Appleman and one from Wrox, and still I don’t even pretend to understand it .. trying to do things like convert VB strings to C strings is just too damn complicated, IMHO. (Of course, with the .NET Framework, is this even really an issue anymore?)
Correction:
“How hard is to make Win32 API calls in Pascal”
I meant Pascal/Delphi
I have always had mixed love/hate relationship with Borland products. Of course i have never been a big fan of RAD development. But I dare say that I believe with the advent of .net, like it or not, borland is definately being handed their hat and shown the door. Particularly when microsoft has Andres working on C# and vb.net. makes the future of delphi look bleak.. except for the devoted hardcore guys who will stay in until the sky falls.. but thats ok, there will always be legacy code to maintain i guess.
Taken from Windows.pas for Delphi 5:
unit Windows;
interface
function WaitForSingleObjectEx(hHandle: THandle; dwMilliseconds: DWORD; bAlertable: BOOL): DWORD; stdcall;
{$EXTERNALSYM WaitForSingleObjectEx}
implementation
function WaitForSingleObjectEx; external kernel32 name ‘WaitForSingleObjectEx’;
end.
basically, Windows.pas, and a few other units, define Delphi translations of WinAPI calls, and then a reference to the relevant DLL.
If you need a call that isn’t included (very rare – I’ve ony had to do it twice in five years), you translate the C parameters into Delphi (most have types defined for you) and reference the DLL, exactly as above.
Or you find the relevant COM version: some are imported into Delphi for you (such as ShlObj.pas for Shell/Explorer objects) or you can import them by selecting the DLL and it creates a delphi import unit for you.
Of course, I haven’t looked at the .NET stuff in Delphi7 yet, but I presume it is reasonably similar to the COM stuff.
oh, and i would say the delphi language is actually closer to java (without the garbage collector) than C++ – no multiple inheritance or templates/generics, but interfaces (a bit kludgy though) and pointers that are almost references. it’s definitely not like the pascal i was taught at school.
Looking at what borland has done by adding this intraweb thing to fill the gap of ASP.NET, I don’t like it, it seems to me like something made in a hurry to try to get side by side with VS.NET. The DataGrid in the screenshots is not even visual. I was expecting something more integrated, something like droping a normal datagrid control in the form, then customizing it with the object inspector as usual then it being translated to ASP.NET and thus to html at runtime. Just my personal opinion, I think borland needs to work more in the ASP part.
I always ask myself the question lately – why must we have drop-on-form icons for non-visual components. It seems to be the way in .NET. Lets reserve a part of our form for all these little icons now!
Also, Borland hasn’t rushed web-type services. These have been around in one form or another for quite a few years. (Since Delphi 5 at least)
Last, Borland Pascal is very different from the old TP we all used at school. Object Pascal has quite a few more quirks and niceties than just procedures, functions, and units.
Get real Camel. VS.NET is now the best IDE available…
Bull excrement!!!
Database connectivity in VS.NET still sucks as bad as it ever has. Since Microsoft hired one of the main creators of Delphi away from borland to work on VS.NET, it is more like Delphi & C++Builder; and therefore better than it used to be. However, it true MS form, the good parts of the VS.NET IDE were stolen. Mostly from Borland.
Tanj, Bert, Anders come to mind. Tanj worked on .NET as well as Anders.
Microsoft hired huge nubmers of Borlanders away from Borland, mostly offering them obscene amounts of money/stock.
They even hired Paul Gross, former head of Borland’s language group.
I have mixed feelings about the Borland IDE’s, having used them from the very beginning, Turbo Pascal up to the latest C++ Builder 6.
Visual Studio 6 seems cleaner than the recent Borland designs. And it works faster. Borland has more features, but they are harder to use. Microsoft’s debugger is better.
There hasn’t been a real comparison of the IDE’s in a long time.
Perhaps I’ll see if Delphi 7 has an evaluation edition I can download and check out.
#m
Anyone tried Clarion(www.softvelocity.com) vs Delphi ?
Seems a popular alternative,
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