Comment by ak39 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ak39 | Hacker News Reader

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>>VB6 was one nice thing - build 'a program' as you understand them in Windows. Why the fuck is it so hard nowadays? VS isn't intuitive - it's a firehouse of information and I feel like you need training to use it. That is a bummer.<<

Great question. And I agree with the sentiment.

My opinion for "why is it so hard today": it has to do with the way .NET evolved right after its birth. .NET was a response to Java by Microsoft. What Microsoft did in effect was attempt to smother the Java juggernaut by introducing their own Java with J++ (Anders' team) but only available on Windows (their attempt to prevent the allure of Java's platform independence).

By all accounts that attempt was an astounding achievement from Redmond. It boasted interactive tools to create GUI drag and drop features users were accustomed to in VB6 but glaringly missing in the Java world. This was with Visual Studio 97. Then the lawsuits with Sun came. The aftermath of the J++/Microsoft Java debacle was the beginning of .NET. A "Java" for Windows with attendant crazies of the Java world. This is the reason why it is hard. Java was "hard" compared to VB6, therefore .NET had to be hard in the same way.

All analogous complexities associated with the Java world: build tools, runtime versioning tools and intermediate code compilers etc were forever required, keeping this huge katamari ball of technical debt alive for over 20 years.

Now we have .NET Core. So we've just reset the clocks and in one swoop gone right back to 1998 with a new Microsoft Java but this time it is cross platform!

22 years of a meandering path that ends up right where we started!

I am, quite frankly, exhausted.

You write:

> ...astounding achievement from Redmond. It boasted interactive tools to create GUI drag and drop features users were accustomed to in VB6 but glaringly missing in the Java world. This was with Visual Studio 97

Thay were not "glaringly missing in the Java world" in 1997 when Visual Studio was released. By that time at least these 2 IDEs with "drag and drop" were released and used already: Symantec Visual Café (a good one!), and a beta of IBM VisualAge (second part of 96). VisualAge came with specific ibm's understanding of drag and drop, however the Visual Café's experience was really similar to VB and much easier than J++ from what I remember. I tried all of them at the time including JBuilder and Sybase. JBuilder was my best for quite time.

In 96 there was also Xelfi which later became Netbeans.

The original version was an attempt at Delphi for Java and I liked it far better than Netbeans later, but I came from Delphi to Java so that makes sense.

>>but I came from Delphi to Java so that makes sense.

Same. But I have remained with Delphi. I think we are now known as the lost generation. :-)

Doing .NET and Java nowadays, started using Borland products with Turbo Basic, jumped into Turbo Pascal 3.0, all the way up to Delphi 1.0 and C++ Builder, before caving in to the MFC world back then.

Accepting new members into the club? :)

Delphi club membership is only for those who possess a ruthless, deep and time-transcending sense of commitment to these two aspects of software development:

1."No bullshit" - stick to the fundamentals and don't waste time over-engineering, relying on complex builds, producing ambiguous compiles (ok, we're still fixing this), relying on bulky runtime architectures. Have straightforward source code. Native. Straight-talking. Quick-compiling. Hard-hitting. Because Shipping Matters(tm). Only thing that matters. Shipping. No bullshit.

2. "Fiercely independent mindset" - Members know that they must use the right tools for the right job, but members must also display a strong ability to not be swayed by what employers are hiring for. Latest shiny flavour of tech, framework, language, might look good on your CV but many times the conclusion for "What is the right tool for this job?" can still be answered: "Delphi". Stand your ground.

So, if you are a CV-oriented programmer, you will most likely not want to do Delphi. There is an indelible and horribly misinformed meme out there that there are no Delphi jobs or that Delphi is dead, is old, outdated and irrelevant in modern software architectures. I have seen this ageist misinformation come out as lame attempts to ridicule Delphi programmers (jealousy?), branding them luddites and dinosaurs. We never retaliate. Quiet stoicism is a prerequisite for club membership.

Finally, the Delphi club also has a new membership protocol: always buy them a beer. No matter whether they eventually get accepted in the hallowed halls of this quiet corner. :-)

Cheers! <clink>

Still delivering stuff on ASP.NET Framework 4.7.x, have delivered a couple of Forms/WPF projects during the last decade to lifetime science R&D labs, own all Delphi books from Packt, I guess it kind of qualifies for the membership pitch. :)

I doubt there any thing today that even come close to Delphi in terms of RAD. It is unfortunate that Software as an industry is even worst than fast fashion.

.NET does come close though, given its heritage, specially now that AOT compilation is finally having a proper story (less NGEN and more .NET Native).

Delphi is a victim of its stewards management post Borland.

Last great decision, remove reference counting and back to full manual memory management on the upcoming Delphi version.

Correct. I myself used "eclipse's" parent (Visual Age) in the early days but the point I was making was not so much that "drag and drop" was missing - it was just too cumbersome and difficult even in that! In VB6, it was trivial to get a form to look the way you wanted it to look. Gridbag layout on Java Swing maimed many, and those that got off the VB6 boat soon realised that Java land was much much harder even with their GUI drag and drop tools.

BTW, I used JBuilder extensively. What a topnotch tool from Borland. Pity they didn't survive the virulent competition during those IDE wars period. I still remember settling an argument with a colleague about his insistence to use the newly arrived Netbeans, while I fired up my JBuilder IDE (Yellow Porsche splash screen IIRC), created a gui, added jdbc data controls, coded a few lines and hit compile - ALL while his Netbeans was still loading with that dastardly progress bar.

(These comments have been much needed catharsis for me.)

From memory JBuilder did have issues with its GUI builder.

Code emitted JBuilder's tools was not isolated from other code that was written for the application. It was easy to add a line of code that would make the included builder tool to not show the resultant GUI correctly.

This was from JBuilder 9 and JBuilder 2006, other than that issue it was a really nice IDE to use.

Java GUIs were weird purple garbage in those days. Horribly slow, painful to deal with.

That is what happens when one stays with AWT, does everything on the main thread, and doesn't bother to read Java UI design books like Filthy Rich Clients, or integrate component libraries like JGoddies.

However I do agree Visual Basic and Delphi were much better, and if Java hadn't happened we wouldn't have lost 20 years playing around with VMs and dynamic languages, to finally start paying attention to AOT, value types on type safe languages.

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