C++Builder 11 Community Edition

[marcodiego]

My main problem with delphi: it is "too proprietary". It was a very productive IDE in the 90's or early 2000's but lost their path and never recovered.

Some new versions broke compatibility with previous version's components. There was the case where you paid a good amount of money on some proprietary components and they simply wouldn't work in the next version: you were imprisoned in an obsolete IDE. By not being multi-platform (I heard it improved lately) you could only use it with/for win32 so it lost servers, embedded, cloud and mobile. By not being open-source nobody could improve it.

Then it had to compete with "native tools". Whoever develops for windows wouldn't quit ms' tools to use it, whoever develops for mac wouldn't quit apple's tools to use it, whoever develops for android wouldn't quit google's tools to use it, whoever develops for linux was mostly ignored after kylix.

Note that I didn't even mentioned price and license.

They improved it later, I heard. But seems more like the old case of too little too late. Most successful programming languages today are open source and multi-platform. Delphi was dependent on win32 for too long and it still is "too proprietary". You do the world a favor by porting your project to lazarus.

[georgehaake]

Delphi 7, that was a lovely vintage...

[msh]

I think it was C# with winforms that broke the last oppotunity delphi had.

[notpushkin]

Doesn't Lazarus address at least some of these concerns? (I don't think it's a drop in replacement though.)

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

[anta40]

I don't mind trying Delphi again since they support mobile targets (Android & iOS). Too bad the IDE itself only runs on Windows...

[blinkingled]

Borland's C++ compiler was _fast_. And I mean eye wateringly fast on crappy pre-AMD64 hardware. I wonder if it supports modern C++ today and is still faster than other compilers. (If I am not mistaken this new edition is a offshoot of that?)

(Yeah I am not downloading the "Community" edition if I have to provide my name address and phone number. Really if your product needs mindshare and you offer community edition the least you can do is make it easily downloadable.)

[ndiddy]

I've downloaded one of their past community editions, their sales team will call and email you. They back off when you tell them you're not evaluating the product for your work, but it's still kind of annoying.

[yazzku]

This kind of email+phone registration was common in the 90s and earlier. Oh, wait, it's 2023.

[rob74]

Fast for a C++ compiler... but still worlds away from the Delphi compiler!

[qwerty456127]

It took Microsoft some generations to stoppe requiring you to sign-in to use community edition after the trial period ends. Perhaps Borland will fix this in some years as well.

[zorgmonkey]

I've never used it, but if memory serves they are, like many other companies, using a fork clang. So I expect it will be about as fast if not slower then clang.

[kwanbix]

You don't have an email for spam? And put any phone number.

[pjmlp]

C++17, using their clang fork.

[pjmlp]

The only VB like development experience for C++.

Microsoft completely messed up the XAML / C++/CX development experience with internal politics, only to have the team responsible for C++/WinRT going on to have fun in Rust/WinRT, leaving the former in maintenance state.

[sirwhinesalot]

I can definitely understand them wanting to drop custom C++ extensions, but it's a shame they can't figure out how to provide a nice development experience for their newer UI platforms. If only .NET actually works reasonably well with it (and there's a huge managed<->native overhead) maybe it should have just been WPF 2.0?

Not that I would use WinUI anyway, microsoft cannot be trusted with UI frameworks anymore.

[germandiago]

How good is C++ Builder? Ever tried? I Saw It a couple of years ago and it looked good actually but noone seems to use it.

[gavinray]

> Come in thread

> Ctrl+F "pjmlp"

I was not disappointed.

[cfn]

You can only use this edition if you make less than 5000 USD and/or have less than 5 devs. If you do, licenses start at 1000 USD per year. Assuming a commercial app, of course.

[keepamovin]

How does this compare to developing in Obj-C or Swift for iOS? Is this like a cross-platform thing?

[aetherspawn]

Does this support macOS for apps? The website is a little unclear and “Windows and iOS” is a really odd combination of platform support.

Aside, I have used this in the past for GUI on windows and it was amazing. Like .NET but native and better.

[DaOne256]

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520504

[nurettin]

The "community edition" version of delphi had no visual editor, no way to build a bpl and it was 32bit only. I don't know thos c++11 compiler's features, it isn't immediately apparent in the mobile site.

[matt3210]

Why this instead of clion?

[pjmlp]

VB like development experience for C++.

[coliveira]

The main problem with Borland C++ is that it is still a 32bit compiler.

[peterhull90]

Borland C++ is a 32-bit compiler, I believe the latest version is 5.5 and it came out in about 2000.

There is a newer version from Embarcadero, 7.20 from 2016[1].

The compiler in C++Builder is more modern and it will target 64-bit for Windows at least.[0]

[0]: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/C%2B...

[1]: https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler

[kwanbix]

"C++Builder includes compilers for Win32, Win64 and iOS"

https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/ccompiler

[pjmlp]

Which is why there is a new clang based compiler now.

[deaddodo]

They say right on the release announcement that they have a clang-based compiler and that the system supports 64-bit binaries.

[Narishma]

This is C++ Builder, not Borland C++.

[phendrenad2]

I understand why there isn't a Mac version, but it's still a bit disappointing.