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MS the only way ?
ever heard of codeblocks ? mingw ? clang ? powerbasic ? purebasic ? xojo ? libre office ? python ?
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Or even better Lazarus/FreePascal. Just like Delphi, but with a better pricetag. And available for more host and target environments...
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1984 - Turbo Pascal 2.0 - $29.95
2018 - Delphi 10.2 - $1500.
Wow.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Wow indeed, though adjusted for inflation it's not quite so dramatic. Back in those days I was living off £30 a week...
.. and contrarily, I remember looking at PC adverts for systems costing over £1K, which you can get now for well under that.. and you can get the entire .NET framework for nothing.
Weird.
I quite enjoyed Turbo Pascal. Just never had a good use for it.
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I had a job coding in DOS/Turbo Pascal from 1988-1991. After that all development was converted to C++ and Windows. In 2000, the company was sold to an international company, and I just performed a cursory search, and the software does not seem to be available any longer. A million lines of code down the chute...
Does anyone remember the OWL framework? 
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Does anyone remember the OWL framework?
I wrote my final project using it...
An almost heretic move those days not to use COBOL...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I worked at an automated manufacturing facility from 1986 to 1998; two years ago, they shut it down... all of the code written that was specific to that site... gone.
In the early '80s, the company invested $250,000,000 to upgrade the facilities.. I still don't understand the thought behind shuttering the place; I guess it wasn't making a high enough profit margin.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Does anyone remember the OWL framework?
Yes - thanks for reminding me how old I am 
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yes ... I tried to use Borland OWL in 1996-97 for one of my projects, but I finally went for VC++/MFC instead ...
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bcc and TurboDebugger. TWindow. Good times. And, again, thanks for pointing out how old I am.
onwards and upwards...
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Sure do. I remember stuffing like 35 3.5 floppies into the disk reader to install. You had to set aside one or two of the early disks because they had to be re-installed at a later stage. I used it to write a natural language parser in C++ in 1993, on OS/2 because that was the only operating system which could reach enough memory to do chart parsing.
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OWL was the coolest framework way ahead of MFC... I miss it...
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A_Griffin wrote: though adjusted for inflation it's not quite so dramatic
Adjusted to inflation it would be around $70... $1500 is a magnitude larger than that...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Yes, OK. I actually had a decade earlier in my head, which would more or less double it - even so, it's still an order of magnitude away.
So I exaggerated used poetic licence.
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A_Griffin wrote: adjusted for inflation it's not quite so dramatic
Beer was 70p a pint, today it is £3.50 so inflation doesnt account for that increase.
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No - but beer might account for (some of) the inflation of certain waistlines
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Its the red wine for me. Lethal stuff.
Still, dropped another 2 kgs, getting there...
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It ran great on my Apple II clone
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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Well, that's kind of comparing apples and oranges. And if that would be a stretch, if you compare the capabilities of Turbo Pascal 2.0 and Delphi 10.2.
But in general, yes, it is a shame that Embarcadero went way overboard with their pricing, that's why I stick with FreePascal/Lazarus instead...
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I still use Delphi 6 for maintenance of a codebase where I work.
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Both C++ Builder[^] and Delphi[^] have free versions called Starter versions. These went away for a few years but are back.
If I recall correctly they compile to windows only. The other versions for Andriod, IOS, Windows or whatever else they support are expensive.
I also have Delphi 2006 (to support some old apps) but their more recent offerings will compile the code just fine.
Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than master of one.
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It's embarcadero. They are still hanging on currently, but one of their feet has stepped in grave since years ago, which serves the right. Their doom came from their greed.
Who in the right mind would want to fork out 2,500 US dollars for an IDE, when there are Visual Studio Community and Intellij IDEA Community and Android Studio?
Also the online learning resource for their Delphi is too few, while Java and C families have plenty.
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I use Delphi regularly. On Delphi XE7 these days.
I still don't see any of the other popular IDEs deliver the same blinding-fast compile time and self-contained EXEs. Deployment is true xcopy-deployment with no runtime dependencies other than Win32. So for me it delivers great value.
I will however agree on the pricing issue. Major reason why I don't upgrade the IDE often . Embarcadero releases a new version every year or so, but I find it harder and harder to see what's new. At least they are still working on the product.
One application I maintain is built using Delphi 7 (from 2002). The EXEs still work flawlessly on Windows 10 - even look like proper Windows 10 applications. That may be more a testimony to how well MS backwards compatibility works, but still...
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