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Comment by meredydd | Hacker News Reader

The short answer is, "the Web happened". The Web platform is a stack of approximately five[1] different programming languages (SQL/Python/Javascript/HTML/CSS). Each layer generates source code for an adjacent one, creating a level of cascading complexity which makes it impossible to create a workable a WYSIWYG GUI editor like (eg) Delphi's.

We cut the Gordian knot in Anvil (https://anvil.works) by replacing pretty much everything in that stack with one language (Python). You need to get rid of that complexity if you want to get anywhere close something like Delphi.

Anvil got pretty well reviewed on HN a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15584124

[1] - You can quibble about the exact number of languages, but they all have syntax and they all have source code you need to edit and run to see a result. And a successful injection into any of them is usually game over.

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I like Anvil, but the use case is different.

I sometimes have to write little enterprise apps to do little things around an ERP What I want is to do that little thing and build it into an installer that my IT team can just install.

Honestly, if you're looking for a local (Windows) executable, those old 90s tools (VB, Delphi, Xojo [aka RealBasic], even C#) are still great! They're just as good as they were in the 90s; it's just that demand has moved to the web (or mobile).

If what you want is a 90s-shaped experience (installable desktop app), then the best of 90s-era dev tools still kick ass. (It's sad that open source stuff hasn't caught up, but that's mostly because everyone's been focused on...the web.)

I don't really see it as a 90's shaped experience. Business applications (ERP in particular) are still very much based around a desktop client. In fact many of the attempts to move ERP to the browser have been significant compromises, or the web client becomes the cut down version.

Part of that is the eco-system of Windows. Most businesses are running Office, and the ERP's come with close integrations with Excel in particular. And before anybody says it, the web version of Excel and the Google equivalent are very significant compromises for power users like accounts staff. I think the desktop application remains the gold standard of enterprise software.

Most of the 90's stuff transitioned from VB to VB.NET and C#.NET and along the way lost some of their ease I feel. I couldn't code in any of those old favorites due to compliance issues demanding up-to-date software. So it is back to Visual Studio and WPF...

what's the best cross-platform solution of that bunch?

Lazarus is very similar to Delphi and is Open Source (L/GPL)

If you're looking for the '90s GUI experience, you likely cannot find better. It works on Windows, Linux and Mac and possibly the BSDs.

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Just imagine a Lazarus but for Python. It would be the worlds most popular application.

Boa-Constructor. We had that years ago but it never got popular for whatever reason, at the time it seemed spectacular. Think it's in the Debian repository.

http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net

Thanks for that, I found some later work on bitbucket. I would love to understand what held this back from success.

I suppose no-one would take it seriously now unless it used Qt.

https://bitbucket.org/cwt/boa-constructor/overview

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