Are we just "Cash Cows"?

[Bill Meyer 337]

14 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Well, the next MacBook Pro will be ARM64.

If that exercise works out, will any of the Macs remain x64? There already is a Windows for ARM64. The only constant is change. 

Mac who???

[Bill Meyer 337]

14 hours ago, Lars Fosdal said:

OMG, Yes! 

A year ago, I was able to reduce the total unit dependency cycles in a large app by 25%. The build time reduced by a factor of 8, even though the cycle count is still embarrassingly high.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sherlock said:

Yeah, all the cool kids want to JavaScript, while banks and insurance companies are going out of their way to pay regal salaries to those old COBOL geezers. COBOL delivers, where JS just looks shiny.

This exactly what does anger me the most.

See, pascal/Delphi is more secure than C++ and C#, less than Rust but it can be there, it is secure for many reason but mostly due the declaration of variables before using them when entering procedure, now to be secure right, all those variables should be initialized in right place and right time just like Rust and forced to be eliminated/freed at the right time, while i hate to lose the initialized variables and this what is unique for Delphi. but Delphi can have them both, and there is chance to make this happen, yet it will not, it seems no time for research it on contrary they went and added inline variables for near zero benefits and will be busy the next decade making LSP works, because that LSP must be the soul of the Delphi language, all the advances (if they can be called that) in the language for years are side ways movement, unlock that god mode with low level access and support it with higher rightly managed stuff and you will have best language ever that fit any type of programming, spend more time on the RTL and compiler, hmmm let me rephrase that because they already spent and spending with no result, either bring the right people or at least let go of the people who don't understand the era of the second decade from the second millennia, and you will have the fastest and most scalable Language, kill the LSP or at least put it in the fridge for the next year as nothing for our application will change if it did work or not.

 

for more information try search "Microsoft Rust", the language invented by Mozilla to secure their products and eliminate bugs and security holes, is been tested now by Microsoft labs for almost a year to be used in the low level part of OS kernel and Hyper-V kernel, many articles out there even many blogs from Microsoft itself explaining what are the power points of Rust, most of them are VERY doable in Delphi.

[David Heffernan 2345]

1 hour ago, Kas Ob. said:

See, pascal/Delphi is more secure than C++ and C#, less than Rust

Security is not a property of the language. It's a property of the code. And the code is written by programmers. They determine how secure a piece of code is, not the choice of language.

 

1 hour ago, Kas Ob. said:

it is secure for many reason but mostly due the declaration of variables before using them when entering procedure

Hard to see how that brings security. 

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

Hard to see how that brings security. 

In C/C++ it way easier to convert a simple bufferflow into security hole, let you take over the system in full if not only the application, parameters passed in registers and memory allocated buffer along with the way stack in Delphi preserve itself with the locals, makes it way harder to run code passed by a parameter, unlike C and many other languages there is many ways to do it, and it is easier and and even when you are expert programmer, the candidate code to be abused code can easily escape your eyes and mind, the stack is the cause in 90% of those security holes you see in an application/OS written in C/C++. while the stack is sacred and better protected against simple and complex abuse in Delphi, i am not saying it is impossible to do an abuse, but it is near impossible to predict the abuse outcome, mostly it will end up in AV at random address, defusing the greater lost by running hand crafted malicious code.

 

27 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

Security is not a property of the language.

No, it is not, there is no language that secure 100%, and no language will not protect any one, if this one doesn't have clue, but some languages are prone to easy abused generated machine code than others, Delphi is listed under the better and more secure language and code, not the best of course but it can be.

[David Heffernan 2345]

24 minutes ago, Kas Ob. said:

In C/C++ it way easier to convert a simple bufferflow into security hole, let you take over the system in full if not only the application, parameters passed in registers and memory allocated buffer along with the way stack in Delphi preserve itself with the locals, makes it way harder to run code passed by a parameter, unlike C and many other languages there is many ways to do it, and it is easier and and even when you are expert programmer, the candidate code to be abused code can easily escape your eyes and mind, the stack is the cause in 90% of those security holes you see in an application/OS written in C/C++. while the stack is sacred and better protected against simple and complex abuse in Delphi, i am not saying it is impossible to do an abuse, but it is near impossible to predict the abuse outcome, mostly it will end up in AV at random address, defusing the greater lost by running hand crafted malicious code.

This is just not true.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

This is just not true.

Simple and helpful !?

You want an explanation or it is not true because you say so ?

 

Do you know how did ransomwares spread in the past on many occasions and different Windows versions through the open TCP port 145 ? and Microsoft fixed it multiple times since Windows XP to just v10 last year, that is impossible to replicate on Delphi generated code, simple and short "impossible".

[Anders Melander 1782]

7 hours ago, Mahdi Safsafi said:

A programming language that is unable to attract young people would likely to have no future.

There are more developers than there are developer jobs. Some will have to take what they can get and use the tools that the job require.

That's just the way the world works. Otherwise we would all be astronauts or firemen.

[Mahdi Safsafi 225]

1 hour ago, Anders Melander said:

There are more developers than there are developer jobs. Some will have to take what they can get and use the tools that the job require.

That's just the way the world works. Otherwise we would all be astronauts or firemen.

Yes I understand that but would we be able to assume that the future for that language is good ?

[Anders Melander 1782]

55 minutes ago, Mahdi Safsafi said:

would we be able to assume that the future for that language is good ?

I wouldn't say the future looks good when you're on life support. Naturally Cobol will die for good some day, when the systems using it are finally retired, but I'm pretty sure it will outlive for example JavaScript. Of course this doesn't mean that we should all drop what we're doing and learn Cobol instead. What I meant was that this statement:

Quote

A programming language that is unable to attract young people would likely to have no future.

appears to assume that it's the popularity among "young people" that decides if a language thrives. There's some truth in that, but it's not the whole story. It's ultimately "the grown ups" that decides what tools to use to get the job done. That's why we don't have to rewrite EVERYTHING every few years when a new shiny toy appears.

[Mahdi Safsafi 225]

6 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

I wouldn't say the future looks good when you're on life support. Naturally Cobol will die for good some day, when the systems using it are finally retired, but I'm pretty sure it will outlive for example JavaScript. Of course this doesn't mean that we should all drop what we're doing and learn Cobol instead. What I meant was that this statement:

appears to assume that it's the popularity among "young people" that decides if a language thrives. There's some truth in that, but it's not the whole story. It's ultimately "the grown ups" that decides what tools to use to get the job done. That's why we don't have to rewrite EVERYTHING every few years when a new shiny toy appears.

Yeah it makes very sense.

[John Kouraklis 94]

In my view, the problem with Emba in relation to Delphi (and perhaps to C++ Builder) is not a problem of resourcing and funding.

 

It is mainly a problem of mindset

[johnnydp 20]

I've just read that:

https://community.idera.com/developer-tools/b/blog/posts/c-builder-and-platforms-support

 

Yes IMO we are just cash cows.

Many problems with quality and speed of development new things, modern tech.

When I first heard many years ago about FMX and  mobile, I just knew it that it going just nowhere.

Delphi should stay mainly (and only) Windows desktop development tool (without mobile devices support)

Programmers could have stable powerful absolute king of Windows desktop dev solution.

Of cours full Rad studio with C++ as well.

 

More features/platform = more mess, lower quality if you are not as big company as Microsoft or Alphabet, Apple, Oracle.

 

Quick patches (Especially semi automatic from Getit) instead of waiting for major/minor release is very good step forward.

So I see one small step in good direction  in last years.

 

Just unreal wishful thinking, going back to reality, waiting for 10.4.1 ; )

 

 

 

 

 

[Vandrovnik 214]

14 minutes ago, johnnydp said:

...

When I first heard many years ago about FMX and  mobile, I just knew it that it going just nowhere.

Delphi should stay mainly (and only) Windows desktop development tool (without mobile devices support)

...

I am very glad that Delphi allows me to develop for Android (while being able to test the app on Windows, too).

I was just surprised how many problems FMX still has when I started to use it...

[David Heffernan 2345]

6 hours ago, johnnydp said:

I've just read that:

https://community.idera.com/developer-tools/b/blog/posts/c-builder-and-platforms-support

A painful read from a development team that has bitten off way more than it can chew. 

[Sherlock 663]

2 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

A painful read from a development team that has bitten off way more than it can chew. 

Something tells me, it was not the team that took that bite...

[Günther Schoch 61]

58 minutes ago, Sherlock said:

Something tells me, it was not the team that took that bite...

Exactly - Comes back to my initial subject of this thread "are we just cash cows".

Promising and selling something is OK. But the necessary R&D resources (including a real test team) are the consequences.

Otherwise I could start to sell "travels to the Mars" with upfront payment. 

[Guest]

59 minutes ago, Günther Schoch said:

I could start to sell "travels to the Mars" with upfront payment. 

I would suggest to keep the upfront payment with "Stay-In-The-List" monthly/annually payments, in case missed one of those SITL you need to pay the upfront payment again to return to the list and keep your queue turn (aka index).

 

That is right, fair and worthy business model for "travels to the Mars".

[Rollo62 536]

17 hours ago, johnnydp said:

When I first heard many years ago about FMX and  mobile, I just knew it that it going just nowhere.

Delphi should stay mainly (and only) Windows desktop development tool (without mobile devices support)

I highly disagree.

For me RadStudio comes already quite close to the high goal "one source - all platforms" idea, at least when talking about simple solutions.

 

This makes a lot sense to me, instead of fumbling around with 3-4 completely different tools, frameworks and concepts.

 

Why did JavaSript can deliver what Delphi is promising ?

Because JS uses the standarized force of modern browser engines, sitting on top of the OS.

 

From my point of view, Delphi supports already a lot what those browser engines can do, plus a lot of extra stuff.

While the FMX framework with Styles should act as JS, to provide  "one source - all platforms".

 

The problem with Delphi is that it doesn't offer the standardized force of Delphi for all platforms yet, its still a long way to go.

I would love to see much more of this platform unification and abstraction work, to make Delphi the common core for all OS.

 

By the way

6 hours ago, Günther Schoch said:

Otherwise I could start to sell "travels to the Mars" with upfront payment. 

This comes sooner than you might think

Edited August 7, 2020 by Rollo62

[Darian Miller 361]

12 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

A painful read from a development team that has bitten off way more than it can chew. 

 

I think the team that originally took the bite had a shot, but then the R&D team was hobbled during the process of 'improved efficiencies'  (aka, much more of the MRR hitting the bottom line due to much less payroll.)  It was likely a business decision to quickly improve recurring income versus a lower percentage chance of Delphi taking back huge market share in the future.  Developers can be an optimisitic group, money people typically aren't.

 

On the flip side, since it likely greatly improved income, and the general desire is to keep that increased income coming in, the action probably improved the long term viability of the Windows platform support by Delphi which is where the majority of their money is derived.)

 

The dev side of me cringed when reading that post.  The money side of me said that was the risk and the lowest producer took the hit.  With SWAG* math:  100 people using RAD Studio, 75% Delphi only, 15% Delphi/C++Builder Mixture, 10% C++ Builder only.  35% C++ Builder using FMX with 75% of those targeting both Android/iOS and 50% of those relying on public play stores (vs enterprise apps.)  Therefore, keep the 95+ people happy at the expense of the rest.  (I assume macOS could drop the 95 number by a few.)

 

 

* SWAG = Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.  I have no internal perspectives/sources for these numbers.  Does anyone know the actual numbers?

[Rollo62 536]

Good guess IMHO.

I only hope that the 75% Delphi-only developer have enough vision to predict the future of desktop-only apps.

Many of them might be forced by THEIR customers, to offer a mobile or web-centric solution.

See some posts before, the TMS WebCore, what is possible with a little vision, braveness and motivation even for a small company.

 

You don't need the crystal clear glass bowl, to predict the upcoming future, the frozen glass bowl will be sufficient

Edited August 8, 2020 by Rollo62

[Darian Miller 361]

2 minutes ago, Rollo62 said:

See some posts before, the TMS WebCore, what is possible with a little vision, braveness and motivation even for a small company.

 

I have a TMS All-Access Subscription so I get all their cool tools.  I haven't played with WebCore much yet, as there is just too much other stuff on the plate at the moment.  I agree it's very forward-looking, and their VS Code target is quite impressive.  Kudos to TMS for sure.