Borland Releases Kylix 2 227
A user writes "Borland Kylix 2 is now available. Most new features are geared at Enterprise-level developers; the Open edition is still available for free download. The CLX (cross-platform component library) is covered under both GNU and Borland's license." The new features list is interesting - a fair number of buzzwords, but it also looks like they are supporting a lot of the new stuff. The white papers have some interesting topics - including gcc vs. Kylix.
Maybe too late (Score:3, Interesting)
But now I think it's too late. Kdevelop and the recently released kdestudio 3.0 gold is playing hard.
Re:Maybe too late (Score:2)
Re:Maybe too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe too late (Score:2)
Explain.
>
Where was that implied?
Re:Maybe too late (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never used Borland's Object Pascal compiler. For all intents and purposes, even going back to the early days of the Pentium, it compiles instantaneously. Give it a large project on a 333MHz PII and--bang--it is compiled and linked before you lift your finger off of the Build key. This is a huge, huge productivity boost.
Does the compiler do as much optimization as gcc? No. But it's still an optimizing compiler that gets within the "I don't care about the difference" range.
When I see people talking about needing dual Athlons to get their gcc compile times down to the single digit minutes, then I'm appalled. With Delphi you're at *zero*. That's liberating beyond belief.
Re:Maybe too late (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe too late (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe too late (Score:2)
The secret to the speed (Score:2, Interesting)
You can make C compile in a single pass if you put main() at the bottom, and all procedures and functions above all the other procedures and functions that call them. This way the compiler can compile FuctionA and then when it gets to main() FunctionA is already compiled. When done the other way, the compiler reads through main() then compiles FunctionA and then comes back and finishes main(). Its all that jumping around that slows down compiling.
I've heard but haven't seen for myself that aranging the procedures and functions like this can also result in a smaller binary. YMMV.
Re:The secret to the speed (Score:3, Informative)
The main compilation-time advantages Pascal has over C/C++ are a simple, elegant langauge syntax, no complex preprocessor, general avoidance of header files, and the fact that modules ("units" in OP-speak) are almost always pre-compiled into a format that makes linking quick (these also double as pseudo-header files). Add to all that the fact that Borland are simply very good compiler writers.
Of course, you lose stuff from C++ that some people (including myself) use a lot such as macros, templates, multiple inheritance etc. Whether you actually need these is debatable, but their exclusion certainly makes for a clean language that is pretty beginner and maintainer friendly.
Last time I used Borland Pascal, it was also pretty good at stuff like dead-code elimination - not sure how GCC compares there.
Re:Maybe too late (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, there are some things about Object Pascal that make it simpler to compile than C: no macro preprocessor, module info isn't contained in huge text files that need to be compiled over and over again, syntax is generally cleaner, and so on. But there are clones of Object Pascal and they don't get anywhere near the amazing compile times that Borland gets.
The big implementation wins, as best I can tell, are:
1. They removed the need for a traditional, general linker. Modules are written to disk in a very simple format, what seems to be a binary image that just needs a small bit of patching.
2. The compiler is simple recursive descent, without separate lexing and parsing phases.
3. Much of the core of the compiler is highly optimized, with much of the critical portion written in finely tuned assembly language.
Re:Maybe too late (Score:2)
Anyway to cut a long story short, kylix really does compile quick, like Delphi on the Pc. the "units" are pre-compiled, and it seems to have some sort of karma where it can grab a previous compile attempt and fix it rather than starting again. Well, that's my suspicion.
The "MADE WITH KYLIX UNDER THE GPL" banner is a little painfull, as it tennds to imply that the GPL is some sort of 'shareware' licence, which it isn't, and I do hope they sorted out the ugly dependency wierdness in V1. It's likely to get a download for me, because other than that, it's a winner for quick and dirty corporate GUI apps.
Re:Maybe too late (Score:2)
Thinking long and hard about a problem is great, but you can still miss something obvious that you would notice in a second if you just ran the damn thing and watched the garbage pour out.
Deplhi/Kylix was designed very much with a RAD/XP audience in mind so the fast test cycle is very important. If you're doing that properly, you should be putting lots of asserts and sanity checks in your code anyway.
When people were curious about Delphi, I would often just boot it up, and write a full GUI application with database access in about five minutes, and maybe ten lines of code. The same thing in C++ might take that long just to compile
Re:Maybe too late (Score:2)
There are a lot of pretty cool delphi (object pascal) hackers out there, and tons, tons, TONS of Windows apps written in Delphi just waiting, and begging to be ported to linux. And thank god for that
Looking for a good tutorial / learning environment (Score:2)
I think I'm a fairly experienced Linux user, on the systems administration and end user level. I think I was one of the first non programmer types to be seriously interested in the OS a few years ago when I started.
I can onviously do shell scripting, and I can also seem to read most C pretty easily. O used to do Pascal and Quattro Pro (!) programming in HS but that's a while ago and I bet I'm rusty. I'd like to get into programming proper.
a) Visually oriented. I'd like to work on both Open and Closed source apps and I think there's much more of a need for GUI apps than yet another CLI text processing tool. I could write the world's first XFree86 setup program which doesn't suck! I'd like to churn out lots of widgets and menus and a RAD tool is desoigned for this purpose. That there's free (beer) versions of these tools makes them appropriate for use on OSS projects.
b) QT based. As an end user my experience of QT apps has been they they are responsive, quick and the APIs are much more stable than their counterparts. I like the speed and crossplatformability of QT, and I'd like to be able to keep a common codebase across Linux, OSX, and Win32. My understanding is that the GTK+ port for Win32 is highly beta and quite limited in ts capabilities. QT, OTOH, works well nad has been used for a number of serious business apps - eg, TOra.
c) Easy to learn and pick up. Enough said.
It seems Kylix offers me what I want, but KDevelop and KDEStudio can, IIRC, also create pure QT apps than should easily work across platforms (correct me if I'm wrong).
Problem: where to start.
* Can I get courses in Kylix aimed at those with a fair amount of computer knowledge?
* Are there any books that anyone here would recommend on the subject of Kylix which? Kylix has only been around a short while.
* Anyone recommend any on line tutorials or web sites with same code I can load into them and get a feel for the various environments?
Re:Looking for a good tutorial / learning environm (Score:2)
Python is interpreted, so you'll won't see a lot of speed from it. Most applications don't actually need much speed, especially gui apps. However, you wouldn't want to built the SETI-at-home back end in Python, for example.
-Paul Komarek
e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:5, Funny)
I just read the "what's new" page and I got e-buzz word whip lash...
They should put up some damn warnings or something.
i.e. : Build Web Services-enabled database middleware with DataSnap(TM) that scales and interoperates with your complete e-business solution... [borland.com]
Ok, now a serious question... is ANYONE out there using this? I've read the reviews, I read some tutorials, and my interest is sparked, but I want to here some testimony.
Re:e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:1)
Also the Pascal is so fast to develop in, I've decided that I like it (horrors!) more they C/C++. (And I do like them).
Re:e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:2, Informative)
Jedi code [delphi-jedi.org]
Re:e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:5, Informative)
DataSnap is based around a couple of classes:
1. a TClientDataset class, which is responsible for representing an in-memory dataset which can be persisted as XML and has the capability to record offline dataset changes and post them back to the data persistence layer when necessary.
2. a TDatasetProvider, which links a TClientDataset to a persistence layer, such as a RBMS such as Oracle, MySQL, Interbase, DB2, or even (gasp) MSSQL. There is also an TXMLTransformProvider that can act as a 2 way mapping layer from a dataset to an XML document.
3. A TCustomRemoteServer descendant which supplies the remoting capability - placing the TClientDataSet and the TDataSetProvider on separate machines. These components can provide connections via HTTP, vanilla sockets, CORBA, etc. There are also load balancing helpers to distribute the load.
And then there are the Web Services. Yep. That works too. It's SOAP, plain and simple.
We've got a DataSnap app deployed today, handling payroll data for ~1400 retail outlets. Heck, the TClientDataset class itself is worth the investment, even if you never build a n-tier system with it.
Re:e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:2)
1) did you build it in kylix or delphi?
2) can you build a self contained SOAP server without needing IIS or APACHE?
3)Are you really telling me that I can use http as a transport layer between client and the server databases? That would be cool as hell.
Re:e-buzz word whip lash... (Score:2)
Delphi? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Why doesn't Borland just call this thing Delphi for Linux?
Notice it doesn't ever say WHAT language it uses on the website? I wonder how many developers downloaded this thing and then said, "What? I have to program in Pascal?!?!"
-Russ
Re:Delphi? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Delphi? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Delphi? (Score:1)
Re:Delphi? (Score:1)
Give me C++ any day (Score:4, Interesting)
Not trolling or meaning to start a "holy war", as this is just a personal opinion:
- Declarations are backwards, due to the awkward grammer: name type
Compared to the more logical C/C++ way: type name
- The distinction between functions and procedures (the language sports an artifical difference.) The lack of parenthesis in the declaration make it difficult to quickly visually spot functions.
- Operators, or the lack of them (no bit shifts, scope operator, namespaces?) i.e.
- Too wordy. { } are don't clutter my code whitespace, like 'begin' 'end' do.
In short, I just hate how the language looks.
It's the same as a person liking one spoken language over another. Sure they both can explain concepts, but which one is more compact, and is "fluent" for the person?
Pascal is a great teaching language, and Delphi is very impressive (Borland has always had lightning fast compiles on their Pascal languages, due to the grammar.) But I'd rather take a language I hate less (C/C++) then one that gives me a grammer that I hate (Pascal & sons.)
I like the multiparadigm support of C++.
i.e. procedural, object orientated, and generic programming paradigms.
For me, Pascal++ is just plain wrong, but if you're productive at using it, hey, more power to you!
Cheers
Re:Give me C++ any day (Score:3, Informative)
That's not actually an artificial difference. The choice behind two reserved words for procedures and functions allows the language's grammar to keep its LALR form, which means you can compile it much much faster. The form of Pascal's grammar is one of the biggest reason it compiles so damn fast compared to C++: there is no operator ambiguity. The same goes for the ":=" operator.
- Operators, or the lack of them (no bit shifts, scope operator, namespaces?)
bitshifts operators: "shl" and "shr". You can apply "and", "or", "not", etc to bits as well.
Namespace: You can delimit namespace by prefixing the name of the unit. Example: MyUnit.TMyClass.Create works perfectly.
Language preference is just that, a preference, but I just wanted to explain some of the features which you seemed to dislike. =)
Regards,
Re:Give me C++ any day (Score:2)
Is that just personal choice/comfort or a more fundamental difference?
a: integer;
int a;
dim a as Int
my $a (who cares about types anyway!
All seem to convey pretty much the same logic to me.
Re:Give me C++ any day (Score:2, Interesting)
> Is that just personal choice/comfort or a more fundamental difference?
Functionaly, there is no difference.
Personal comfort w/ respect to formatting, white space, and not needing superfluous tokens.
I like to arrange variables in a "table" format.
i.e.
intnWidth ;
intnHeight;
char*pTexels;
Now you can do the same thing in Pascal, but the C/C++ just seems more compact and unclutted:
var
nWidth
nHeight:Integer;
pTexels:^Texture;
I find this more readable too:
void foo(
intfoo
, floatfoo2
, char*foo3 )
{
}
I guess it's the same reason I like my HP calc -- RPN just seems more natural.
*shrugs*
Re:Give me C++ any day (Score:2)
Still, my favourite langauges have to be the pure functional ones like Haskell. Type inference is a godsend, and who needs mutable variables anyway
Re:Delphi? (Score:2)
Kylix 2 Already?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Kylix 2 Already?? (Score:1)
Re:Kylix 2 Already?? (Score:1)
Im not happy about this either, i spent way to much to buy kylix, and now they release ver 2 which should have been an update. Needless to say i wont be buying ver 2, and after this I probably wont buy another version of kylix ever again, nor will i recomend it to anyone.
Re:Kylix 2 Already?? (Score:1)
Re:Kylix 2 Already?? (Score:1, Troll)
No they should progress through software versons when new feature sets become available, (Note i dont care about their new features, version 2) but they shouldnt CHARGE ME for an update to the stuff i allready bought(also version 2, should be a patch for ver 1), give me a patch. If i wanted to pay for support after ive allready bought the product, i would have bought a M$ product.
Re:Kylix 2 Already?? (Score:1)
There will be a Kylix 1 update (Score:2)
Borland has told in their newsgroups that there will be a Kylix update. So no need to buy Kylix 2 if you just want a bugfix.
-1 Troll on the MQR standard (Score:2)
1. For any active product, someone will have bought it just before each new version is announced, so the date you bought it isn't relevant.
2. There is very little wrong with K1, and there is a patch for that, so "fixing the existing product" isn't an issue.
3. Since it isn't a "trick" comparing it (the non-existent "trick") to MS is either silly or flamebait.
-- MarkusQ
Waiting for C++ (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Waiting for C++ (Score:4, Insightful)
Any C++ programmers who are already programming for Linux are probably using gcc and the many tools available. Borland is trying to woo Windows programmers to Linux. Since Delphi already has a large source code base out there, making it source code compatible with the Windows version helps Windows people feel comfortable in Linux. These people would have a much harder time switching if they had to start using gcc and vim.
Once they feel they've wooed as many Delphi developers to Kylix for Linux/Windows development, I'll bet we see a C++Builder for Linux as well.
C++ is too a priority (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Waiting for C++ (Score:2)
QT Embedded support? (Score:3, Interesting)
If so, then you can write PDA applications for the Sharp device in the previous story using Kylix/Delphi/Pascal++.
Not that any non-Delphi person would want to, in my opinion ;)
Of course, I am basing all this on the assumption that Kylix actually currently uses QT as the base GUI component set, via its own intermediary toolkit abstraction. If I am wrong here, please correct me.
Re:QT Embedded support? (Score:1)
Maybe it could be hacked in, but nothing could hack
in an ARM codegenerator.
There is something called pocketstudio though, and
for m68k palms you could use Free Pascal
www.freepascal.org
Re:QT Embedded support? (Score:1)
Maybe it could be hacked in, but nothing could hack
in an ARM codegenerator.
There is something called pocketstudio though, and
for m68k palms you could use Free Pascal
www.freepascal.org
Re:QT Embedded support? (Score:2)
I very much doubt it - they only target the x86 processors.
Besides that limitation, you can do anything - commandline aps, roll your own classes to wrap APIs, program procedurally if you wanna. Of course, the less of the class libary you use, the more time you'll spend on framework code.
delphi portability? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux? I had a nice free LGPL-covered application, that
I wanted to compile using kylix open edition. But a lot of things are different.I see a lot of units, like QDialog, QForm, etc. under Linux, but they're counterparts in Windows are Dialog, Form, etc. So is there any sourcecode compatibility? Is there a tool for doing this?
Re:delphi portability? (Score:1)
I heard mosttimes it is an easy port, but not simply
a recompile.
Depends on your app.
Also check out Lazarus (lazarus.freepascal.org)
Re:delphi portability? (Score:1)
Re:delphi portability? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:delphi portability? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've ported a pretty big non-gui app. It was pretty easy. Moving from Delphi's old sockets to Indy was the biggest thing. Then I just wrote higher class classes, wrapped all the Windows api stuff in those and made a WinStuff-unit out of them. A similar one for Linux. Then some ifdefs for units and done. Now the project compiles without changes in Delphi 5 and Kylix 1.
I hear it's even easier with Delphi 6 but haven't felt like upgrading yet.
Unplanned portability (Score:2)
The way it was supposed to work was that both Delphi (6 and up) and Kylix come with CLX, a cross-platform component library for both Windows and Linux. So making an app cross-platform meant porting it to CLX (which is very similar to the existing VCL), then compiling it twice. But you've managed to achieve this without access to the Windows version of CLX. Pretty impressive.
Incidentally, there's an open source version of CLX [sourceforge.net]. Currently only runs on Linux, but...
Re:delphi portability? (Score:2)
I used K1 to port two smallish apps from D6. I had to do a few small source code changes, but it was mostly painless (much easier, say, than going from T5.5 to D1 w. the class/object change).
-- MarkusQ
They definitely don't make it easy... (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention that you *have* to have javascript enabled to even register...
I was going to check it out -- but I *refuse* to give them free reign to spam me by phone, fax, email, and snal mail for the privilege of doing so.
Re:They definitely don't make it easy... (Score:2)
You can usually trust the companies like Borland when you UNCHECK the box that says sell my info, that they won't sell your info.
Re:They definitely don't make it easy... (Score:2)
And, I went through the feature set and only one of the new features is available in the open verison.
I went through that crap once, but I won't bother going through it again. Borland are certainly going against the spirit of free software, if not the letter of the law.
Re:They definitely don't make it easy... (Score:2)
If the open editon of Kylix is *really* open they should just let you download it, not hassle you for your email address and other information. That just sucks.
Borland is a no-spam company (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using Borland products since the early eighties, and the most I've gotten is a few mailings telling me about events in my area, product updates, and an occasional bit of free stuff. I typically tweek my address to catch/track spammers (e.g. misspell my name), and I've never had anyone else send me something using the address I gave Borland. In short, I'd trust them.
-- MarkusQ
Kylix isn't Klyx (Score:3, Interesting)
Not fruit (Score:2)
Stop this stupid discussion (Score:2, Interesting)
I've tried Kdevelop and honestly, I didn't figure out how to compile the bloody thing so I dropped it. Next thing I did was installing Kylix (wow, at last an easy installation procedure) and it worked. I've build the little app I wanted in a minute and it compiled flawlessly.
So, unless you're a nerd (no negative connotation, just indicates that you want to spend a lot of time finding out the smallest details of your system), Kylix is an easy to use and nice ide.
You guys should be glad that Borland did some effort for the Linux community but no, nothing but criticism. So, cut the crap and admit that Kylix is a great tool for rapidly developing apps.
Re:Stop this stupid discussion (Score:2, Insightful)
Most pascal bashers can't even tell why C/C++ is more
superior than an advanced dialect like Delphi.
One of the major things is templates, which I'd love to
see in Delphi
Re:Stop this stupid discussion (Score:1)
Note that I didn't mean to imply that C/C++ is better
than Pascal.
But there are some rare C/C++ features that don't have a direct eq in Object Pascal. If they are really
useful is a matter of taste and implementation
Measuring developer use of OSS (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember there was a time about five years ago when most developers wouldn't even consider developing for anything other than Windows technologies and developer's magazines reflected that. These days, however, I see very little excitement about Microsoft technologies, for instance, I don't see lot of enthusiasm amongst developers about
This is just a feeling I have, and I have been trying to think of a way to quantify it, if nothing else to prove to myself that this sea-change is actually occurring and not just because I now take my information from different sources. The simple metric I have come up with is this - the number of times a word occurs on Google:
Linux - 30,100,000
Microsoft - 20,100,000
This crude metric seems to suggest that Linux has 10m more pages than all of Microsoft's products put together. Seeing as Microsoft has such a dominant position in the desktop space and is still much more of a household name than Linux, I think this is quite a clear demonstration that there is a lot more material about Linux out there than about Microsoft's products.
This came as a suprise:
"Linus Torvalds" - 640,000
"Bill Gates" - 649,00
I would have expected Bill Gates (who's a household name) to occur a lot more than Linus.
This is also suprising:
"Internet Explorer" - 2,730,000
Mozilla - 2,730,000
"Linux developer" - 20,600
"Windows developer" - 12,200
Is it just me, or do these figures suggest that Microsoft should be very worried indeed?
Re:Measuring developer use of OSS (Score:2, Interesting)
The numbers fluctuate.
Here are the ones I came up with -
Linux: 33,700,000
Microsoft: 21,700,000
Linus Torvalds: 610,000
Bill Gates: 997,000
Mozilla: 3,060,000
Internet Explorer: 3,030,000
Linux developer: 1,410,000
Windows developer: 1,720,000
I wouldn't take those numbers or yours too seriously as absolute totals, but they do make an interesting point.
Also, one thing to note may be that by necessity there could be more documentation about Linux online than there is about MS products (lack of paper manuals for ISO downloaders, etc. could be reasons), which would lead to more hits for Linux-related pages. Still, it's interesting.
Re:Measuring developer use of OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it is, but I doubt that it's clear that there is more documentation for linux than for MS products.
What we should consider is the linux howtos are mirrored a bazillion times throughout the internet, while in MS's case a lot of documentation is concentrated at support.microsoft.com or other microsoft sites.
A search for "linux networking howto" yields 2770 hits for instance.
Re:Measuring developer use of OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
MS has the worst web server technologies, period. Nobody in their right mind wants to run IIS for a large commercial site, it's too vulnerable to DoS/hacks. Apache on Win32 would fix this but people who are timid enough to run Windows as an internet server are going to be scared to death of the prospect of software that doesn't give them the option of running to mommy (read: tech support) when it breaks.
Also, NT/2k x86 machines don't scale enough to handle the load of a high traffic web site. Load balancing (LocalDirectors, etc.) helps, but why fool with a room full of 1 or 2 processor Xeons when you can buy one really expensive Sun chassis and have room to grow for years without going to the trouble of integrating a new server into the network? Not to mention that x86 machines don't run so well when you try to implement failover stuff like redundant power supplies and hotswap drives on their bus.
Last but not least, NT doesn't run EJB very well. If you want to get performance out of EJB, which is the current buzzword-compliant technology for large-scale software projects, you need a Sun box, period. I'm convinced that Sun and IBM are conspiring to cripple Java on Windows, which is just fine with me.
In most cases, the only necessary MS-based piece I've seen in recent software development is the browser.
MS may have the browser market tied up (with good reason, IE is nice now and XP, I hate to say it, is a great desktop OS), but they've already written a browser and have said under penalty of perjury that they'll give it away for free. They're in the process of eating their lunch on the server side in the big-ticket markets, which is where all the important stuff happens anyway.
Stop worrying
Just a guess.. (Score:2)
Using google for measuring popularity (Score:2)
Wine and Kylix (Score:1)
Using wine seems lame to me to run the IDE and if the apps run under it it just plain sucks
does version 2 use wine as well ?
Re:Wine and Kylix (Score:1)
Re:Wine and Kylix (Score:3, Informative)
Wine is to run windows applications
winelibs are to link against winelibaries during compilation - ie, you have a windows application, and you want to compile it under linux - easier porting.
Yes, in Kylix 1 the IDE was sluggish.
Kylix 2 has less dependecy on WINELIBS, but it is still there. You can see postings on borlands news server - http://newsgroups.borland.com .
Hopefully K2 IDE will be alot faster.
Good for business (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see where anyone has mentioned that this should be good for some businesses. In the case of a shop with split MS/Linux computers, they can write one internal business app in a RAD environment that will run on both of their systems. This allows for the good productivity of a RAD tool with the portability of Java, C, etc.
It could also be an incentive to switch over to Linux - they could have their apps written in Delphi on Windows, and then move as slowly/quickly as they want when converting to Linux without necessitating major code porting. In a slow economy, cost savings are of more obvious importance to management.
Of course, all previously MS-only code (VB, etc) would still need to be reworked, but there are benefits to be had for businesses looking at Kylix.
If Kylix takes off, it could really be a boon for Linux.
Still lacking features.. (Score:2)
Still no support of GTK. (Wtf is that gnome icon even doing in there in kylix page ?)
And is the beast still compiled against wine libs ? (Yes, the first version was compiled against wine, no matter what you say. It was, and it is)
Re:Still lacking features.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still lacking features.. (Score:2)
That will make the difference of whether I upgrade or not, I think. I'm not paying for Enterprise, nor do i need it.
borland has released Kylix (Score:2, Funny)
man... if only i cared.
--donabal
sdl cross platform game development (Score:2, Interesting)
Jedi code [delphi-jedi.org]
For a great reference and good tutorials check out The great nehe site! [gamedev.net]
Object Pascal Rules! (Score:2, Funny)
We've been using Delphi since version 1, and our flagship software (which controls a semiconductor manufacturing tool) is about 200,000 lines of Delphi 5 code. It takes about 30 seconds to compile.
We also do C++ development, with CBuilder. Our largest C++ program, about 30,000 lines, takes 10 minutes.
We've found that our object pascal code is more reliable, maintainable, and understandable than the C++ code we've developed. Even the most diehard c++-heads in our group admit that there is really no technical reason to prefer C++. The only reason they give is that it "looks better on our resume" (to that argument I reply we should be using Java).
Re:Downloaded this a while ago.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:can KDE threaten to sue? (Score:2)
Besides, part of Adobe's gripe was that Killustrator was in a similar space to Illustrator; Klyx and Kylix are different products (development vs document processing).
Re:can KDE threaten to sue? (Score:1)
That would be dangerous, since I wouldn't be surprised if Kylix is actually _older_ than klyx.
Since lyx is the original package, and klyx came only
lateron.
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:3, Insightful)
What is there not to like?
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:1)
The performance of the code generated by gcc sucks goat penis on all platforms. The performance on ix86 can be called mediocre at best in comparison to commercial compilers. On other platforms it is simply abyssmal. And this is not a troll. Anyone who has been forced to use gcc on Sparc or Alpha platforms can testify to this.
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:1)
Most people don't have numeric computational software that need the last penny.
Other computer subsystems (network, memory/cache,DISK) are the bottleneck.
There is only a very small market for ultra optimizing compilers, and you have to know them well
to get a real performance boost.
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:3, Insightful)
Developers, and especially companies, really want the grand development environment that nicely brings everything together. That's exactly why every Windows developer eventually dropped Borland's array of products and went to MS Visual Studio.
Borland here is trying to keep up with the times and learn from the past. I think this is a great step for Linux.
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:3, Insightful)
Borland lost out to Visual Studio because of that little thing called the OS monopoly. Companies wanted the assurance that their tools are very closely tied to the OS. Borland's products are still IMO much better, and given the much leveller playing field on Linux I really hope they can succeed.
Basically, if you haven't played with Delphi/Kylix before I seriously suggest you give it a shot. It's free to try, goddamit, and I'm sure most good coders can suspend their disdain for Pascal for long enough to realise that it's actually pretty damn good.
Re:Turbo Pascal (Score:1)
Then use Free Pascal, it is GPL'ed, and can compile
nearly the entire Delphi syntax.
Never mind that these are the guys... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Never mind that these are the guys... (Score:2)
Re:Borland again... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I am not a Java developer. But, I am aware that one of the biggest problems facing the JBuilder team was the diversity of Java VMs (i.e. some worked and some don't). JBuilder allows you to target multiple Java VMs with ease and that was a bane to releasing a "stable" product. They worked with the various Java VM teams (Blackdown is one that comes to mind) to make it compatible. JB3 was a blacksheep product. JB4 fixed many issues and JB5 is now the current product.
After having coded in C, C++, the forsaken VB and a slew of other languages, I discovered Delphi in 1994. I haven't looked back since.
Why? Because it has enabled me and my teams to develop applications in a fraction of the time that C++ would have required and substantially more stable and reliable than VB has ever been. My Delphi apps came in on or ahead of schedule and don't crash. IMO, Delphi is a secret weapon when you need to get high quality, database applications out to the market place when under a tight schedule.
Yes, Delphi has had its bogus releases (Delphi 4 in particular). D3 was very stable and D5 fixed D4. D6 now offers cross platform development capability (if you use the CLX library) via Kylix. The language, Object Pascal, is not the same as Pascal just as C++ is not C. I suggest you take a few hours and learn the differences between Object Pascal and Pascal. The only real downside to Object Pascal is it is more verbose than the equivalent C/C++ code. But, then again, it's also a lot easier to understand and maintain (a side benefit of its Pascal roots).
Kylix has bugs (just as any major new tool does). Blame that on both errors in the Kylix tool itself as well as buggy Linux distros (RH in particular). To me, the only bug that really affects me in Kylix is the fact that TThread is broke. Did they fix it in K2? Let's hope so.
My point being, is that you had a bad experience with a single Borland tool. Never mind the fact that many other development shops gave it high praise...you had a bad experience.
Before you blast Borland for putting out "inferior products at insane prices", I suggest you learn more about their products, read some serious critical reviews and then try the products yourself. You may come to realize just how far off base your statements really are.
As for the high prices...well, I can't dispute that. They did it to keep pace with Microsoft. Why? Because how can a product be good when it costs so little? Surely that other product that costs twice as much must be twice as good. Right? By that reasoning, I guess that means that Open Source and Free software must really suck. We know that's not true. FWIW, Borland now appears to be reviewing their pricing structure.
Re:Borland again... (Score:2)
What platform did you install it on? What kind of HW did you have in that machine? Did you address this on the JBuilder support group? Any responses to your inquiry?
Re:Borland again... (Score:2)
A statement like "We've fixed that in v.4 sounds like an NG response or from a dumbshit help desk person. If it came from the paid support staff, you'd expect them to offer you an upgrade or tell you how to acquire v.4". Did you ask to speak to their supervisor? In any event, if it came from their staff, a letter to Dale Fuller or David Intersimone may be in order. Believe it or not, they do answer their own e-mail.
And yes...v3 did suck. But I suggest you grab an evaluation copy of J5. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised.
Disclaimer -- no...I do not work for Borland and I am NOT on TeamB.
Re:Borland again... (Score:3, Interesting)
While the argument that there are powerful, free tools for Linux holds. The generally accepted Open Source model for development tools simply will not cut it in a real IT shop. Tools used by IT shops need to be stable, robust, and supported. I like knowing that I can pick up the phone and get somebody when there is a problem that I don't have the immediate time or resources to solve. That's what I pay for.
Users (business and home) want their favorite applications (or a strong competitor) available for an OS before they will accept it. These two areas are the niches where Delphi 6 and Kylix fill. D6 and Kylix do deliver what they promise. I can attest to that.
Pascal as a language is generally dead. The modernized Object Pascal is an OOP language that meets many of the requirements of C++ programs. Object Pascal is far from dead. On the Windows platform, it is very viable. Because of the type safety inherent in the language, it's pretty hard to screw up development of simple apps. Yes, for pointers you need to do a few odd things. That's why we have class refernces. These are basically smart pointers. But, the object model is quite robust and capable.
The underlying language is not dependent upon the visual elements you seem so quick to condemn. However, when a Delphi 6 or Kylix developer can sit down, write, test and deploy a SOAP service in under 10 minutes (yes..it was canned..but demonstrated at Borcon 2001)....well that's pretty amazing. Even more amazing is that with little effort, you have CGI, DSO, or ISAPI modules to fit almost any web server.
These services have all the native support of Delphi's (and Kylix's) database and internet connectivity, a highly interactive development environment and a fully capable and visual debugger.
Okay..I sound like a sales person. But, I'll tell you. After working with C, C++, VB, Powerbuilder and a slew of other languages, Delphi kicks butt on the Windows platform. The advent of Kylix and CLX on Linux will enable those same high powered productity and business apps developed using Delphi to be run on Linux. That's what it's all about...it's not a language war...it's about viability.
Re:Open Edition also updated? (Score:2)