Marco Cantu has finished annotating the "Mastering Delphi 5" book, making it available as a free PDF download. This updated edition provides modern context and corrections to the 20-year-old text, focusing on the core Delphi language and VCL framework concepts that remain relevant today. While acknowledging some outdated aspects, the annotations aim to clarify the book's content for a contemporary audience and highlight its enduring value for learning fundamental Delphi programming principles. Cantu sees this project as a stepping stone towards similarly updating his "Mastering Delphi 7" book.
Marco Cantu's blog post celebrates Delphi's 30th anniversary, reflecting on its enduring relevance in the software development world. He highlights Delphi's initial groundbreaking impact with its rapid application development (RAD) approach and visual component library, emphasizing its evolution over three decades to encompass cross-platform development, mobile, and now, even web and Linux. Cantu acknowledges challenges and missteps along the way but underscores Delphi's resilience and continued commitment to providing developers with robust and productive tools. He concludes by looking forward to the future of Delphi, anticipating further innovations and its ongoing contribution to the software landscape.
Hacker News users discuss Delphi's 30th anniversary, acknowledging its past dominance and questioning its current relevance. Some commenters reminisce about their positive experiences with Delphi, praising its ease of use, rapid development capabilities, and stability, particularly in the 90s and early 2000s. Others express skepticism about its future, citing its perceived decline in popularity and the rise of alternative technologies. The conversation also touches on the limitations of its closed-source nature and pricing model compared to newer, open-source options, while some defend Embarcadero's stewardship and highlight Delphi's continued use in specific niche markets. There's a sense of nostalgia mixed with pragmatic assessments of Delphi's place in the modern development landscape.
Tracebit, a system monitoring tool, is built with C# primarily due to its performance characteristics, especially with regards to garbage collection. While other languages like Go and Rust offer memory management advantages, C#'s generational garbage collector and allocation patterns align well with Tracebit's workload, which involves short-lived objects. This allows for efficient memory management without the complexities of manual control. Additionally, the mature .NET ecosystem, cross-platform compatibility offered by .NET, and the team's existing C# expertise contributed to the decision. Ultimately, C# provided a balance of performance, productivity, and platform support suitable for Tracebit's needs.
Hacker News users discussed the surprising choice of C# for Tracebit, a performance-sensitive tracing tool. Several commenters questioned the rationale, citing potential performance drawbacks compared to C/C++. The author defended the choice, highlighting C#'s developer productivity, rich ecosystem (especially concerning UI development), and the performance benefits of using native libraries for the performance-critical parts. Some users agreed, pointing out the maturity of the .NET ecosystem and the relative ease of finding C# developers. Others remained skeptical, emphasizing the overhead of the .NET runtime and garbage collection. The discussion also touched upon cross-platform compatibility, with commenters acknowledging .NET's improvements in this area but still noting some limitations, particularly regarding native dependencies. A few users shared their positive experiences with C# in performance-sensitive contexts, further fueling the debate.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462299
Hacker News users reacted to the updated "Mastering Delphi 5" with a mix of nostalgia and pragmatism. Several commenters reminisced about Delphi's past prominence and ease of use, fondly recalling their experiences with the platform and its RAD capabilities. Others questioned the relevance of Delphi 5 in the modern development landscape, acknowledging its legacy but expressing concerns about its limitations compared to newer technologies. Some pointed out the niche areas where Delphi still thrives, such as industrial automation and legacy system maintenance, highlighting the value of the updated book for developers in those fields. A few users also discussed the merits of sticking with older, stable technologies versus constantly chasing the latest trends, with some advocating for the simplicity and reliability of mature platforms like Delphi 5.
The Hacker News post titled "Mastering Delphi 5 2025 Annotated Edition Is Now Complete" generated a modest number of comments, primarily focused on nostalgia, the surprising longevity of Delphi applications, and the author's dedication to updating a book about a relatively old technology.
Several commenters reminisced about their past experiences with Delphi, recalling it as a productive and enjoyable development environment, especially in its heyday. One user fondly remembered using Delphi 5 and versions 3 through 7, highlighting its speed and ease of use compared to contemporary tools. They expressed surprise and a touch of wistful amusement that people were still using it.
Another commenter, seemingly more familiar with the author, Marco Cantù, praised his ongoing commitment to Delphi, describing him as a "Delphi evangelist" who has steadily produced books and content about the platform. They pointed out the enduring relevance of Delphi, particularly in maintaining legacy applications, suggesting Cantù's work serves a real need within that community. This aligns with another comment which emphasized the impressive number of still-running Delphi 5 applications, emphasizing the practical value of maintaining expertise in the older technology.
A separate thread discussed the surprising fact that Delphi 5 applications can still run smoothly on modern Windows, with one user expressing amazement that it remains compatible. This sparked a brief discussion about compatibility layers and the relatively stable Win32 API, which likely contributes to Delphi 5's continued functionality. Another commenter chimed in, stating that they work with codebases originating from Delphi 1, 3, and 5, further illustrating the longevity of software built with these tools.
Overall, the comments reflect a mixture of nostalgia for Delphi's past, acknowledgment of its continued presence in legacy systems, and appreciation for the author's dedication to supporting the community still working with Delphi 5. There's a sense of quiet surprise at the technology's enduring relevance in a rapidly changing technological landscape.