Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

Which is especially sad because their IDE was the best WYSIWYG GUI editor in existence, then and now. The only alternative that got even close was VB6. If they had made the transition to large screens and responsive design I think they could have dominated mobile app development when it rolled around.

They didn’t just get lost, they got sucked into Pan’s labyrinth.

View on HN

The weird thing is I love Lazarus for the GUI but I'm too used to VS Code to deal with their source code editor. Coupled with the non-C-based language, I kind of feel like I couldn't write a complex program in it if I tried.

For example, if I wanted to display a .webp in a desktop GUI, I'm confident I could manage it in Python, Zig, C++, C#, and even Java although I don't have a lot of experience with it. With Pascal, I won't have my Python libraries, nor my out-of-the-box C interoperability. In fact, I don't think I've even learned how to use a library with Pascal.

I don't know if in Delphi the editor is better, or the documentation is more accessible. It feels like it has a lot of potential but barriers for entry make it not as interesting as just programming something in Python with Qt.

For Lazarus, use the BGRAImage package for webp.

the omnipascal extension for vscode works pretty well.

In Delphi that would be a 10 minute task.

- Create project

- Drag image viewer component into the form, a couple of buttons to open an image selector

- Compile executable

- Done

Yeah, Delphi (and for me now, Lazarus) still provides a substantially richer desktop experience than the web framework of the day. After having written some beautiful, rich apps with this tool, tweaking css makes me want to puke.

Even thinking of css makes me want to puke. It’s just unbelieveable how far the DX has fallen, and everyone is okay with it! Imagine starting your project from implementing poor man’s TForm and TDBEdit. And all new devs actually believe that it’s completely normal.

Yeah that's what blows me away about the fpl/laz open source UI framework, along with the whole library from fpl/laz. Labor of love I guess...it is right up there with sqlite and and linux itself as one of the greatest open source projects in history.

Definitely, Delphi, C++ Builder, Qt, Windows Forms, WPF, heck even MFC.

On Web projects I happily focus on backend and devops, every time I touch CSS there is a new tool in town, apparently now everyone is supposed to be using Tailwind.

Then and now doesn't ring true to me, not since WinForms.

(Which, to be fair, is obviously very strongly inspired by VCL; and C# has quite a few things from Delphi the language, as well.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com