This blog post compares the Delphi and Electron frameworks based on Application Store Deployment, specifically whether the framework’s IDE makes it easy to deploy directly to native platform application stores by reducing deployment complexities and shortening time-to-market. This post is part of a whitepaper benchmarking the two frameworks.
The “Discovering The Best Cross-Platform Framework Through Benchmarking” whitepaper evaluates two frameworks supporting multi-platform desktop application development: Delphi and Electron.
Delphi
Delphi, encapsulated in the Rapid Application Development (RAD) Studio IDE, is Embarcadero Technologies’ flagship product. A proprietary version of the Object Pascal language, Delphi features graphical application development with “drag and drop” components, a WYSIWYG viewer for most mobile platforms, and robust style options including platform-standard and unique palettes that provide a fully customized look and feel. Among other features, included libraries provide GUI controls, database access managers, and direct access to target platform hardware and platform operating systems. The Delphi FireMonkey (FMX) framework will compile projects to native code for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Linux, allowing users to develop and maintain one codebase reaching most of the market. Delphi has been available for over 25 years.
Electron
Electron is an open-source (MIT License), Chromium-based framework that utilizes web technologies to build desktop applications on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is developed and maintained by GitHub, a subsidiary of Microsoft. Electron combines the Chromium-based rendering engine with a Node.js server environment. As such, the user interface for an Electron application is available via HTML5 and CSS. Generally, Electron works with most Javascript frameworks such as Angular, Vue.js, and React. The HTML5, CSS, and Javascript-based technologies found in Chromium provide a rich ecosystem of user customization familiar to any web developer. Despite its relatively young age of five years, its community boasts open source packages for database access, operating system interactions, and other common tasks.
26 Benchmarking Metrics
This is the sixth in a 26-part series of blog posts looking more closely at each of the individual metrics used in the study, and how Delphi and Electron each fared on these metrics. The first can be found here.
Download the complete whitepaper here
Benchmark Category: Developer Productivity
Developer productivity is the measure of effort and code required for developers to complete typical development tasks. Productivity directly impacts product time-to-market and long-term labor costs so tools that increase developer productivity have substantial impacts on business timelines and bottom lines. Productivity can be realized in two distinct ways – reduced coding requirements due to native libraries, and IDE tools like code completion and visual design.
IDEs with greater library breadth generally result in fewer lines of code per application and produce a clean, lean codebase that minimizes opportunities for bugs or maintenance problems later in the product life cycle. Framework productivity was evaluated according to six metrics that sought to capture how
frameworks and IDEs improve product time-to-market.
Benchmark Metric 6/26: Application Store Deployment
Application Store Deployment: Does the framework’s IDE facilitates direct deployment to native platform application stores (i.e. iOS App Store, Android’s Google Play, Microsoft Store)? Frameworks with built-in deployment features reduce product deployment complexity, limiting errors that could occur or compound, and time-to-market for initial products and updates/bug fixes.
Benchmarking Results
Delphi Score: 5 (out of 5)
Delphi’s FMX framework can deploy applications for the Microsoft Store, Apple App Store, and Google Play app store for Android. In some cases, this deployment results in a platform package such as an APK or IPA which must be uploaded.
Electron Score: 2 (out of 5)
Electron applications can be packaged for the Microsoft Store but will not be deployed there directly by default. Third-party options are available. Electron apps can also be packaged for the Apple App Store but the process lacks automation help.
Download the complete whitepaper here
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