Joseph MItzen

Heh, I proposed a ternary operator in 2012 and learned that Craig Stuntz and another individual whom I can't recall had already submitted a QC request, even including proposed syntax, in 2008! So it only took 17 years, but Ian Barker is waxing poetic about how the ternary operator shows that Embarcadero, almost unique among programming languages, listens to feedback from its users (yes, he really wrote that). I don't think he realizes that almost all other languages are open source and their features are totally driven by their users. The funny thing is that, to the best of my recollection, Embarcadero actually used the same syntax Stuntz and friend proposed in 2008!

Well, that right there is some low-hanging fruit FOR AUTOMATIC CODE FORMATTING.

It shouldn't be a headache. A language should have a style guide. The IDE should enforce the style guide. There should be a simple setup section to configure the options. Other IDEs handle this just fine, e.g. JetBrains....

Modern IDEs enforce style guides. Modern IDEs were 64-bit a long time ago. Modern IDEs don't break, remove features, then promise to restore them "at some point". Modern IDEs have enough software developers assigned to them to have all features completed before shipping. Modern IDEs don't ship in an incomplete state. Delphi, C++Builder and Interbase, for some time now, do not have enough developers to continue to adequately maintain the products. We've seen code completion break for two years, failure to meet the Android 64-bit requirement date, the current fiasco, Interbase's Python driver fail to work with boolean fields for two years (!!!) until I embarrassed Ian Barker about it after his Interbase webinar when he'd bragged about the driver support, and my favorite, something breaking in the C++Builder tool chain such that, for two years now, all cross-platform compilation has ceased to work and they've taken it out of the product description. Could you imagine paying $1600+ for a cross-compiling C++ toolchain and then the cross-platform feature just disappearing? You can't charge 3 times the cost of Visual Studio, or 6x-16x the cost of a Jetbrains IDE, and have such basic features as code formatting and refactoring disappear. These are almost as basic functions as an undo option or find and replace. They're core to what an IDE is supposed to offer. Imagine giving a sales presentation to a potential IDE purchaser alongside Microsoft and Jetbrains sales reps (in another lifetime I worked at a company where just these kinds of presentations were sometimes held). Imagine what the MS and JetBrains reps would say during their presentations in response to the revelation that your IDE lacks code reformatting and refactoring? THAT'S why this is a big deal.

Why would anyone in the future use a product that breaks like this and suddenly ceases to support most of its previously targeted platforms? This is the kind of thing that leads to a death spiral, not a bright future. It's more than a year later, and it still only targets Windows now.

The future ain't what it used to be.

Maybe Delphi is the last refuge of Python 2 diehards?

When 100% of Delphi developers were Windows users who just wanted a button they could push to cross-compile their code to Linux, they gave us a new framework and attempted to get the IDE itself to run on Linux. Linux desktop was barely even a thing then. In the modern era, when nothing cool starts on Windows anymore and according to Stack Overflow's survey less than 50% of developers develop on a Windows box, they give us a cross compiler and a Windows-only IDE. Delphi wasn't burned... it set itself on fire, repeatedly. It's no different from their decision that you have to pay $4,000 to target a free operating system.

Forward-looking statements relate to investors and profitability projections and have nothing to do with software feature roadmaps. More importantly, Idera is a privately-held company so no law about forward-looking statements would apply to them! They don't make roadmaps because in the early days they were notoriously late with everything (long before Idera bought them). They took polls to decide on the top five most-desired features and then shipped a version of Delphi that included none of them. Other things slipped past deadlines and users rightly called them out on this. That's when the road maps dried up. They just didn't want to be embarrassed anymore when they failed to deliver on time.

Who's "we" though? This is going to be another thing where the entire rest of the world does something and Embarcadero becomes the last to follow suit five or more years later (see supporting DVCS, type inference, etc.). ARM is a thing now, and it's never not going to be a thing. Samsung, HP, Asus all offer ARM laptops now, not just Microsoft.

There were never millions of Delphi users. That was a mistaken belief that got out of hand.

2025 is all about tariffs and dire wolves.

Whoops, missed the first one. That one said.... "Absolute Database is a file-based DBMS like Access, SQLite, FoxPro, dBase, Paradox. These are databases that were not originally designed for multi-user operation. When accessed over a network, the data from these files is always transferred. That has always been the case. While multi-user operation is possible, it should be limited to a maximum of 2 concurrent users. If you want to implement database access over a network and/or with multiple users, you need a server database like MySQL, MS SQL Server, or Oracle. This is a basic principle for approaching planning. The less data that is transferred over the network, the faster the access to the databases and their processing."

They can't... Donald Trump imposed a 15% tariff on English Wednesday (the United Kingdom announced they would challenge this via the World Trade Organization). Gemini translated it as... "Hello, I'm sure much has already been said here about Absolute Database and its practical application. It's not about ABS being a fast database, but rather about it being a desktop database that was written in Delphi itself and can be easily integrated into your Delphi project. A desktop database is generally only operated with a maximum of 2 users. I use it for demo projects that I can conveniently pass on for people to try out my projects. ABS is also very good for applications where I only use the data privately." I'm still not sure what the advantage of ABS is over SQLite and DuckDB unless you just want to use something written in Delphi, but there you go.

You should really show some examples of how the framework is used (meaning code examples) on your webpage.