I stopped by for a visit with an old friend today. My long lost pal Delphi 1.
You remember him, right? Lightning fast hand optimized 16 bit assembly language Pascal compiler, wrapped in a slick little GUI IDE, that enabled even neophyte developers to effortlessly build COMPILED stand alone executables for Windows in just minutes. Yeah, that’s the guy.
Boy the memories came flooding back. I just typed "Delphi" and poof, he instantly appeared ready and waiting to do my bidding. So I dropped down a button, gave a couple of quick clicks and tapped out "Caption := ‘Hello World’;". Next I reached up and instinctively pressed F9 just like I’ve done so many, many times over these last 18+ years.
That’s when it hit me and I remembered why we were such fast friends. To say that running the application was instantaneous is an understatement. It’s more like turning on a light switch. There was quite literally NO PERCEPTIBLE DELAY going from design to run mode.
So I just sat there like a kid who has discovered the light switch for the first time. F9, Alt-F4, F9, Alt-F4, F9, Alt-F4, wow…., F9, Alt-F4, F9, Alt-F4, F9, Alt-F4, unbelievable…, F9, Alt-F4, F9, Alt-F4, "hey Steve, you gotta come check this out…", F9, Alt-F4, F9, Alt-F4…
Anyway, it was a great visit, and I promised not wait so long before the next one. In fact, I think I’m gonna invite him over to meet this new guy around here we call "Highlander" and teach him some of those really cool performance tricks…
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{ 16 } Comments
Mark –
You’ve inspired me. I think I’m going to load up Delphi 1 when I get home tonight.
Nick
That brings back memories indeed! I was programming with Delphi 1 a month after I got my screen reader for Windows, good old buddy JAWS 1.20, at a time where many blind computer users didn’t even know we could already use Windows. With a little tweaking, it became very accessible to me, and the apps I wrote with it, also were this way without having to do anything further.
That was 10 years ago…
But I’m afraid I mis-placed my Delphi 1 CD somewhere. It probably didn’t survive one move I had made recently.
Marco
Yeah, this was fun. Mark and I sit right next to one another and when he got it running he was like "dude! you gotta check this out!" After, pressing F9 we sat back and laughed pretty hard.
-Steve
It’s interest to compare and contrast a snapshot of Delphi today compared to even D7. Delphi has moved away from being "Lightning fast hand optimized" and evolved into bloatware encapsulated by product activation.
For Delphi to continue being a going concern it needs to get back to its roots. I’m really hopeful that "DevCo" will be able to do this if it can get out from under Borland mismanagement.
Sadly, when I point out where Delphi has arrived, I get blasted for being negative and full of it.
Delphi did use to be truely awesome, and slowly drifted away. Whatever the cause, it is good to see that people inside the project see it and want to fix it.
Delphi definitely has the potential to be awesome again - after all, it was pretty snappy even on the 486s that were common in those earlier days, so with all the advance in computer speeds, it simply HAS to be possible to get back there again.
When I look back at what happened, I have to say that a big part of the responsibility falls in the lap of us, the consummers who buy Delphi.
By accepting D4 and accepting to pay for D5 at full price with little to no complaint, we communicated to Borland and its employees that we accepted where things were going. No one liked it, but noone wanted to rock the boat.
Why? Well, we were all used to defending Delphi from the C++ developers who considered us second class citizens just because we used a different language. Screaming out loud about D4 and having to pay for D5 would have just felt too much like admitting the C++ people were right (ego isn’t always a reasonable beast) even it it wasn’t soo.
We got used to a slowly degrading product which required regular cash influxes to fix obvious bugs. We were defending Borland from the evil MS who had previously tried raiding Borland for its best and brightest and was (by popular opinion) bent of driving it out of the market. Pay for the fixes to a bad version? Bah, peanuts we thought.
How wrong we were. We helped lead Borland down the wrong path, and it is easy to see how. Companies are about maximum profit for minimum effort, even if the employees have nobler goals. By accepting the situation, we just helped make it worse.
Seeing this, I try to be more vocal about what I, as a paying customer find acceptable and want fixed, and perhaps that is a bitter pill to swallow (there is still a lot of ego and pride out there after all), but we all need to stop and realize that unless more people say NO, it never will change.
I am glad that this IDE division sale has provided a chance for a shake up of attitudes both inside the company and outside, as I have seen more people stand up and say NO, we want better, we pay for it, we deserve it. I am equally glad to see that those inside the company are slowly coming to life again and saying We want to DO better.
The pride and spirit that drove the quality of D1 and also D2 seems to be returning, and that can only be a good thing.
I look forward to seeing the next version of Delphi, and hopefully my fears that the desire to create a return on investment for the new owners will lead to another rushed, premature release are groundless.
There used to be a Museum seciton in BDN
(I could not find now).
And If I am not wrong Delphi 1 is there for download.
If not, why not make it available for download.
Just a thought
Good stuff.
The comparison of D1 to D11 should prove fruitful…
Good blog, Mark! I agree that what we really need is for Highlander to generate the same kind of excitement. Can we get back to instantaneous responsiveness, and an F1 help system that really works? Hey, Delphi 1 and 2 really beat the odds by doing the impossible, and I don’t see why the Delphi team can’t do it again!
To C. Johnson: If there were a significant number of Delphi consumers who would blindly purchase every upgrade, I think after Delphi 4, Delphi 8, and Delphi 2005 we have a much more skeptical group out there today. Lots of people are still hanging on to Delphi 5, 6, or 7 and finding it does all they need, so they really need to be convinced that there’s something worth upgrading to. Hopefully Mark and Steve can infect the team with enthusiasm for producing a "must have" new version of Delphi!
Richard -> Those of us who aren’t eager to upgrade are not the majority and those who will actually talk about it are even smaller. After all, when people like me point out the problems, we frequently get attacked for it.
Of course, since DevCo, people have started to be more vocal in the hopes of laying a new foundation, so things are definitely improving.
I would previously have described many of the DevCo people as living in an ivory tower, but I have seen attitudes change since the sale announcement. Mark’s post here is another sign of that change which is giving me hope for the future (Finally! It has been years since I had cause to be optimistic about Delphi’s future!)
18+ years?? You must have gotten your Delphi 1 WAY before the release to the rest of the world. My best recollection of receiving the D1 box was maybe 12 years ago.
Greg: Before Delphi there was Borland Pascal and Turbo Pascal
F9 was the default keybinding to run an application in Turbo Pascal as well. My first real exposure to Turbo Pascal (and the start of my love affair) was with version 3 back in college, but I can’t honestly say I remember if the keybinding was the same that far back.
The 18+ years figure is only counting from my actual career in software development. I used TP 4.5 quite a bit to work on a help system for a product VP Expert for a company called Paperback Software back in 1988.
Mark - Tp 3.0 was the old style environment where you flitted in and out of a crudy editor to an obscure menu where you’d click e to edit, c to compile, r to run (or something like that). (as I recall, 3.0 was just 2.0 with BCD support and the like.. I think it was capable of creating EXEs unlike 2.0 being .COM only)
TP 4.0 was the first real IDE for TP, and it was was WELL worth the 100$ cdn I paid for it and the book.
There was not, to my knowledge a 4.5, but there was a 5.5 (the first version with objects) are you sure you aren’t thinking of it?
Still, TP rocked. TPW was awesome and D1 rocked my world. D2 was a great follow up, and it’s all been downhill since then.
‘r’ to run sounds right for TP3. I guess I did start my career with 4.0 (after it had been around awhile) and then upgraded without a second thought to 5.5 when it was released ( don’t think I used 5.0 at all actually).
Programming with objects was a big deal back then! Poly-whatism?
No, Tp3.x and earlier just create com, ovl and chn (chain files).
And key bindings
^KD : Exit editor.
^KS : save editor file.
^KB : Mark Blok begin.
^KK : Blok mark end.
^KC : copy marked block.
^KV : move marked block.
…
And they some of them still exists in D2006
After exiting editor.
c:compile
r.Run
and it compiles 32 lines in one go and then the next 32 line until it finishes.
From the Version 4.0+ was capable of creating EXE.
v5.5 is the first version with the objects.
I agree with Yusuf, put Delphi1 up for free download in the Museum!
I’d definately be sure to get me a copy.
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