Joseph MItzen

On 2/12/2024 at 10:20 PM, weirdo12 said:

They are retooling the C++ compiler chain. I get the impression that C++ is becoming more important - not less - even if it might seem like a 2 steps forward, one step back (for the moment). My gut feeling is the future has never been brighter for C++Builder.

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. 

On 2/21/2024 at 9:16 AM, Roger Cigol said:

Interested in the future?

 

Embarcadero - the future of clang - webinar

The future ain't what it used to be.

On 4/24/2025 at 2:51 AM, David Heffernan said:

What is wrong with the world of Delphi programmers that in 2025 there are still people who can't understand the difference between text and bytes? 

Maybe Delphi is the last refuge of Python 2 diehards?

10 hours ago, Brian Evans said:

Bit of a chicken and egg but Delphi has been burned before adding platform support early - Kylix and Delphi.net being two examples that just drained away developer resources and then were abandoned.

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.

11 hours ago, Brandon Staggs said:

The old excuse about different countries having different laws about forward-looking statements was mentioned in that context, if I am not mistaken.

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.

13 hours ago, Brian Evans said:

We are in fool me once, fool me twice, fool me three times territory for Windows on ARM. 

Who's "we" though?

Quote

Most popular and widely used programming languages, including C#, C++, Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, .NET, and Go, are fully supported for native development on Windows on ARM (WoA)

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.

13 hours ago, PeterPanettone said:

By the way, where does the money from the license fees of millions of Delphi users go?

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

9 hours ago, Stefan Glienke said:

2024 called and wants its news back 

2025 is all about tariffs and dire wolves.

10 hours ago, Sherlock said:

@oeko11 In English please...

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."

10 hours ago, Sherlock said:

@oeko11 In English please...

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.

11 hours ago, Rollo62 said:

I would say no, this seems to be SSL ceretificates, which are free from LetsEncrypt, but no proper CodeSigning certificates, IMHO.
Please proove me wrong

Aren't they all just random bunches of alphanumeric characters?

19 hours ago, DelphiUdIT said:

You are really confident about CoPilot or others AI ?

 

Try to reflect about the situation:

 

1) I use 10 COREs at 50%, and the CPU go to 95 degrees:  the system power down one (or more) core  ???? WHYYYYY ???? 

 

 

To lower the temperature. It may be better to load up a few cores with processes and run the rest at their minimum speed than to have processes spread across all cores. This was actually a problem with Windows and some of the very early multicore AMD CPUs. Those CPUs had to run all cores at the same clock speed. Windows, which at that time was designed when multiple cores meant multiple CPUs, would move processes onto fewer cores because in a multi-CPU system this would reduce noise and heat. On these early AMD processors that resulted in, say, one core running at maximum speed, which would then require all the remaining cores to run at maximum clock speed as well. Microsoft had to put out a patch to change this behavior.

This has become an issue again because now Intel has CPUs where some cores are high-powered and others are lower-powered but more efficient. OS schedulers now need to take this into account; I know the Linux kernel just received patches for dealing with this type of CPU more efficiently. And that's not even getting into issues with some AMD CPUs and memory, such as their X3D CPUs that have on-CPU memory. In the 16 core models (7950X3D) only 8 cores have access to the extra cache memory. Also, "AMD Ryzen has separate L3 for each quad-core cluster, so data transfer between core-clusters is slower than within a single core cluster. (And if all the cores are working on the same data, it will end up replicated in the L3 of each cluster.)" Scheduling is much more complicated nowadays in OSes! I think this lead to benchmark issues with the first of the latest gen AMD chips. Linux review sites gave rave reviews while Windows-oriented review sites gave poor reviews. Turns out there were issues with the Microsoft Windows scheduler that were affecting the performance which improved significantly on Windows after patching.

31 minutes ago, Lajos Juhász said:

because it was changed to work like in other programming languages?

 

https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/Athens/en/System.Math.SetExceptionMask

I'll bite... what other programming languages don't raise an exception when you divide by zero?

11 hours ago, Lajos Juhász said:

They did not mentioned either on the 12.2 presetntation that the premium is required, only that you have to explicitly request it and of course NDA.

Who do they feel the need to keep the details secret from? All 27 other commercial Pascal IDE vendors?

The moral here is that private variables are almost as evil as threads. No one knows, forever and for all time, what anyone else might need to access in the future.

1 hour ago, corneliusdavid said:

I don't understand why this would be a concern. Certainly, any AI built in would just be an interface to utilize your own AI account somewhere, right? Nothing would get automatically uploaded unless you hook it up and start using it. Just like Delphi has integration for git but you don't have to use git inside the IDE unless you tell it to and give it your account information.

 

Am I missing something?

It all depends on the implementation. I believe JetBrains is offering their own LLM service in their IDEs now, but they've also added a completely local LLM that can perform whole-line auto completion. If hypothetically Embarcadero was offering their own LLM service, it could be turned on by default and people might not be happy about that.

But I agree, as an excuse it seems a bit flimsy. I'm not sure why waiting longer would somehow lead to anything being more secure by design.

21 minutes ago, JonRobertson said:

So Microsoft Windows Professional, SQL Server (not Express), and most of their other "Enterprise" software aren't enterprise software applications?

Apparently not. After just checking out their SQL Server update policies, I'm flabbergasted. This... this is not right. It's a nightmare. I remember when Oracle had a vulnerability where someone could log into a certain Oracle account without a password. I had an Internet-facing system set up at the time (fortunately not running Oracle). I checked the log the same day the Oracle vulnerability was revealed and there were at least 15 attempts to log in via that Oracle user account. THAT'S why you don't mix new features and updates. No one should have to choose between potentially introducing new bugs, vulnerabilities or incompatibilities and leaving a system vulnerable while a patch is tested.

I remember a Delphi user (David Erbas-White?) running into this problem with Delphi. A new Delphi release came out that fixed a show-stopping bug he was experiencing. However, code that used to compile no longer did. Barry used to say that "If it compiles, it's valid Delphi". Marco said to David "This never should have compiled in the first place". Now David was faced with the choice of either getting his bug fixed at the price of breaking his code and requiring some redesign and rewriting, or having his current code compile but still be buggy. That's not a choice anyone should have to make. It's especially bad if the bug fixes are bundled with changes that break compatibility.

As for the Windows OS, there's a reason the professional server space belongs to Linux of various flavors. Windows still hasn't figured out updating while Linux is moving to "atomic" updating for secure servers. In this setup, the file system is a read-only copy-on-write file system. This makes the system secure against malware. The update process is applied to a new file system snapshot. If it is successful, the OS is told to use the new snapshot on its next reboot (which will then be read-only as well). If for some reason this doesn't work right the system can always boot back into the previous snapshot.  Security and ease of updating with minimal downtime (all the updating can be done while the system is still running). In this design the applications are installed via a container system, allowing installation without reboot, enhanced security, isolation of the application from the OS, atomic updating, etc.

12 hours ago, Al T said:

I'm just royalty pissed off at the "AMENSTY" pricing.  I really thought it was going to be $999 to with the idea you'll continue to pay that every year.  If they'd forgive my missing years and let me restart at the renewal pricing, I would continue to purchase it every year.  I'm just waiting for them to give me that chance to jump back on that bandwagon.  I really thought it was the "AMENSTY", but that hope was lost.

That's what the word "amnesty" is supposed to mean in this instance - a waving of penalties. I'm very surprised to discover it was just another sale. They're out and out telling you something that's not so to get you to call up a sales representative.

A former 20-year employee of Borland/Embarcadero's Delphi support once shared that they start having these sales whenever the sales team isn't making its target sales numbers for the quarter. It seems like that's a constant state now.

12 hours ago, Brandon Staggs said:

You're not comparing like things.

 

Microsoft's development tools support their platform services, which is where they are making money. Embarcadero cannot treat Delphi the way Microsoft treats VS, because Embarcadero needs to make a profit on the development system while Microsoft doesn't. I have a hard time taking rants about pricing seriously when they say "Embarcadero should do it like Microsoft." They just cannot, and that should be obvious.

 

We all know that if we want bugfixes we have to pay for maintenance, and that they come mostly as new versions, not patches. It's part of the calculus of choosing Delphi. If you want it the way it's done with VS, best just move to VS. If you want to use Delphi, you have to put up with the extra overhead involved (in many aspects) of using what amounts to a niche product. 

This isn't correct. Microsoft's tools division is not a loss leader (it currently supplies 23% of MS' revenue). Jetbrains doesn't charge for bug fixes and they're not Microsoft. They're also not a random assemblage of different software products glued together into one company. Embarcadero struggles to make a profit on Delphi because the user numbers are so much smaller and an accumulation of missteps that long predate their purchasing the product. Embarcadero can't attract new users so they have to find more and more ways to squeeze money from the existing ones. It's also hard to upsell to existing customers since most of its products aren't for developers. That's the honest truth no one likes to say out loud.

I can't find more current numbers right now, but from 2013: "Microsoft also today announced that Visual Studio 2013 has sold over 3.7 million copies since its release less than five months ago." Prices then ranged from $1,000 to $13,000. They're obviously making a lot of money on Visual Studio! A publicly traded company doesn't choose to continue divisions that lose money (otherwise there would still be Windows phones and Zunes).

12 hours ago, JonRobertson said:

I don't understand why anyone would compare Microsoft's business motives to Embarcadero's.

 

Microsoft's bottom line is based on the success of their platforms (Windows, SQL Server, Office 365, Azure, ad nauseam). They could give Visual Studio Enterprise to every interested developer for free and not need to worry about paying the bills. Or their Visual Studio development team's salaries.

 

Embarcadero's bottom line is based on the success of development tools and Interbase. They don't spend resources on Delphi and C++ Builder so they can profit from an operating system or hardware platform.

OK, first, this reminds me of an observation Jolyon Duranko-Smith once made. He observed that if anyone complained about something Embarcadero did as opposed to another major company, a defender would say it's not fair to compare them to Microsoft/whomever because those companies are much bigger. And if you counter by observing that a company like RemObjects does something that Embarcadero doesn't, the reply will be that that's because RemObjects is a much smaller company and can be more nimble. Every company ever compared to Embarcadero is always bigger or smaller; none of them are ever considered a fair comparison. 🙂

We learned during the sale to Idera that Embarcadero's bottom line is NOT based on the success of its development tools and Interbase. It paid only $30M or so for those, but was purchased by Idera for about $425 million a few years later. The bulk of Embarcadero's value is based on its database tools, not its development tools and especially not Interbase, whose market share is negligible (Enlyft estimates it at 0.13%). So Embarcadero could afford to give away Delphi... oh wait, it actually DOES give away a community version of Delphi, just as Microsoft gives away a version of Visual Studio (although MS' terms are more generous). I guess the comparison is apt after all.

Finally, here's the terms from JetBrains, which only sells development tools, most of them being IDEs (but unlike Embarcadero, they've expanded to cover everything a developer could need, such as continuous integration software, bug tracking software, etc.):
 

Quote

A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.

 

So Jetbrains doesn't charge you for bug fixes and IDEs are their core business. It's not normal to charge people for bug fixes. In fact, it's not normal to mix bug fixes and new features in the same update, something I argued with David Millington about in vain. Bug fixes need to be separate so they don't need extensive testing before application. This is how all major enterprise software works.

On 6/4/2024 at 10:37 AM, corneliusdavid said:

I think every time we register for a webinar and have to check that box that agrees to receive marketing material, that it re-flags our email address as a "potential" new sale

This is absolutely the case. A while back before the Idera acquisition I was using the GlassDoor website which lets people rate their employers. I decided while there to see what Embarcadero employees were saying. There was a very unhappy Delphi sales employee talking about the unrealistic target numbers and that the CEO was willing to do anything to hit target numbers because even they could lose their job if they didn't (this was when the previous owner was trying to pump up numbers so they could sell it for a profit). They said that management had told them they were setting up webinars to generate sales leads for them, but the salesperson complained that the only people who signed up for them were existing customers so they were useless for lead generation.

On 6/4/2024 at 2:04 AM, Lars Fosdal said:

Not only do they do this directly, but the local representative also spam the same offers, over and over.

According to the local representative - it is EMBT that do the spam on their behalf.

Just spam? You're lucky. A while back they made a big deal about giving away a 32-bit, command line-only version of their C++ compiler. I was curious what other restrictions were in place, given anyone could just download clang for free without any significant restrictions. There was no way to read the license without first installing the product, so I filled out a form to be able to download the compiler, supplying name, address, phone number, etc.

A few days later I got a phone call from an unrecognized number and as I was busy I didn't answer. There was a voice mail message left - from an Embarcadero salesperson! They were trying to sell me a full C++ compiler (I don't code in C++ and don't code on Windows anymore, and already had GCC on my system anyway). They kept calling me back for about two weeks to the point I would never answer the phone if I didn't know who it was. They were emailing me, too, weird personalized messages wanting to talk to me and get to now my needs rather than forwarding me generic marketing department emails. I joked at the time I wasn't sure if they were trying to sell me something or ask me out. Finally almost three weeks in they gave up.

On 6/3/2024 at 10:55 PM, Lajos Juhász said:

 

As any other company they need income to pay their bills,vages and profit to shareholders. To make the product more modular for some reason did not worked out for them. They have tried with the database add-on.

 

It's a privately held company; they don't have to answer to shareholders. By saying it didn't work out for them, that really means that most current users would be happy with having less features for a lower price, but this would not attract sufficient new users to make up the difference. So current users have to spend more than they want for things they don't use.

On 6/3/2024 at 10:55 PM, Lajos Juhász said:

It is not always easy to backport bug fixes due to interface changes in the source code. Embarcadero still not able to test a single release good enough to release the new versions withous some serious bugs (eg. most of the customers will not release any program compiled with 0 version). 

 

The company I am working for has a similair policy. A client can pay to get a change to be backported to his version only if that doesn't require too much code to change and we can test the product integrity after the change, otherwise the change can be delivered with a version upgrade.

There's a difference between a change and a bug fix. A bug means you paid for something that actually wasn't delivered as promised. In no circumstances should someone be able to deliver a product that doesn't work correctly and then offer to fix it for an additional fee.

12 hours ago, Darian Miller said:

It looks like we may be in for a huge loss of publically accessible information (years of data to be removed from public access AGAIN) and a much crippled support system...  all to save some money?

 

If the only motivation was saving some money they could use an open source alternative, such as

https://www.openproject.org/blog/open-source-jira-alternative/

or the brand new

https://plane.so/