Compulsive Hording, Delphi edition
Fear of being deprived causes hoarding. Side effects: IP Theft, using GPL without attribution, vendors behave badly.
Do you have the following behavior traits while coding?
Buying, downloading or archiving too many libraries/components that you may not have a need for right now and don't have hard-space for.
Ongoing difficulty deleting or uninstalling your old or unused libraries/components, regardless of their actual value.
Feeling a need to save these libraries/components and being upset by the thought of getting rid of them.
Conflict with others who try to remove libraries/components from the cloud, or being served copyright legal letters...
Unable to switch to languages where hoarding is much less - Java, C#, Python.
Spending lots of money on libraries/components to continue endless subscriptions.
Monitoring certain sites to check for fresh libraries/components uploaded to download them (fresh meat!, tonight we party!).
Secretly upload libraries/components which your employer has paid for, to earn “Likes”.
Delphi’s unpopularity caused by bad vendor practices, endless subscriptions.
I’ve often been asked, why is Delphi so unpopular? Why are vendors doing this? Why do I have to annually renew my Software Assurance to Embarcadero…?
Embarcadero’s aim is to do the least amount of work possible and ship it! Then, they breed “co-dependence” by making resourceful developers develop 3rd-party libraries, when in fact, Embarcadero should be adding these features to the VCL/FMX.
And this is intentional. *sources, state that.
“They” love you until you are poor to the point where you have no money to pay for subscriptions. Forums which emphasize compulsive hoarding - like B4*** and DownloadI*** exists for this reason.
When you complain, you get your reputation slandered and defamed.
Side-effects of this business practice: Compulsive hoarding, slander/defamation gangs, paid “open source”, abuse of GPL licenses and more…
Two Communities
Delphi has two communities - the legal and illegal community.
The legal community is based on question & answers. The illegal community are based on compulsive hoarding. This is caused by vendors (example - TMS, DevExpress) who intentionally expire their downloads (i.e., deny access) to force customers to pay-up their endless yearly subscriptions.
Hoarding (Definition)
The compulsion to continually accumulate a variety of items that are often considered useless or worthless by others accompanied by an inability to discard the items without great distress
Embarcadero does the same - limiting installs to 2 installs. If you decided not to renew your subscription - too bad. This may cause stressful situations, and potential business failure due to non-payment of subscription.
Slander/Defamation gangs
Ever seen how those endless newsgroup wars erupt?
In Delphi, nearly everything is paid open source. Somebody has to maintain their Delphi subscription, so Pete pays Paul, Paul pays John and so on.
When Paul doesn't get enough money, he has to make choices. Either he forfeits his Delphi subscription for next year or move to a more profitable language.
When a Delphi developer complains about Delphi, he has to state, Statements of faith - How long you subscribed. All the good deeds that you did in the Delphi community,
So, what happens? TeamB, former Borland employees, BTP (Borland Technology Partner) and vendors would login to anonymous VPNs and start endless flame wars on the newsgroups for shit and giggles, posting slanderous, defamatory and libel to their customers.
Both TeamB and Borland Employees doesn't know how to stop these flame-wars. If you go see Unity forums, QT, or Unreal forums, they have content since 2000's, around Delphi 7 era. Their moderators know how to break-up fights, stop harassment and even remove their moderators.
It came so bad, that nobody wants or dares to posts to Embarcadero newsgroups, and years after the original incidents happened, they still continue their slander and defamation.
If you complain about paying for Delphi, you get comments about your character, that you are a poor, stupid or ill-willed or undisciplined developer.
Delphi’s Unpopularity
As a side-effect to formerly Borland’s and Embaracdero’s business practices, when you talk about Delphi, StackOverflow's 2017 review shows that Delphi is one of the most disliked computer languages.
The most disliked languages, by a fairly large margin, are Perl, Delphi, and VBA1.
In 2023, there is now very small community of Delphi developers.
Delphi is dying. Literally.
The latest stack overflow poll shows a measly 2,831 or 3.28% replying, with “learning to code” in Delphi at 49 (double-digits!), and other coders at a mere 193 (3 digits!).
Paid “Open-Source”
Since Embarcadero sells C++ Builder and Delphi as two different packages, this leads to Delphi developers unable to recompile C++ objects to import to Delphi.
Thus, there are certain vendors who sell stupid, useless Delphi versions of the same libraries derived from C++ open-source libraries. Their purpose is to collect annual rent on open-source.
Very vintage VCLs
Very old unmaintained software touted as new!
Delphi’s string manipulation, TDataset are very old. TDBGrid hasn’t received many updates since it was first released in 1995.
When was the last time you saw a Delphi-based web-framework on TechEmpower? How slow is Delphi’s web-based framework, when Rust frameworks, such as NTEX, ?
When was the last time you saw IntraWeb.JS or some Delphi-based Web-framework.JS on Javascript benchmarking?
Delphi’s Ribbon is a very old classic Ribbon control. Constantly updated to the latest version, but, no new features.
Same goes to the Delphi vendors. Selling subscriptions with old components. Few or very little new features.
Very slow run-time
Third-party vendors have to maintain the lowest common denominator, so new language features are often not used. Very slow run-time means Flutter, Rust, Go, Java, Swift are much faster.
Delphi’s RAD component/model means peppering components
Delphi’s component model means not-thread-safe and dependent on the ATOM table.
IP Theft
This compulsive hoarding behavior leads to IP theft. Employees or contractors often steal, re-upload or put into private drives, paid components. Upload for “likes!” Many Delphi developers are well-liked individuals. Due to compulsive hoarding, a strange pilfering (hording mentality) has developed. Gotta keep that code for self!
Embarcadero’s lawyers to enforce endless renewals, yet Delphi cuts you off.
Is Delphi a subscription or a time-limited purchase?
If Delphi is a subscription, then there is no point to purchase Delphi. How much money can you earn in a year before you are forced to pay Taxes or Renewals to endless subscriptions?
Delphi’s Community Edition is nagware
If you played P2W games, they put their goodies behind a paywall. When you get benefits,
If you compile a big project, they start to prompt. What’s the deal?
In order to apply to use Delphi, once your company's total revenue reaches US$5,000, or your team expands to more than five developers is to put you on an endless Delphi subscription, and if you don’t pay, and you accidentally get unregistered or Delphi comically Delphi loses it’s personality, too bad.
The low amount - US$5,000 means you have to be dirt poor, a kook, somebody who has taken vows of poverty, to qualify to use Delphi Community Edition.
Here are some interesting minimal amounts:
Epic Game’s Unreal Engine - 1 million dollars
Unity3D - US$100,000
TrollTech AS - US$250,000 for small business.
Embarcadero does bare minimum, sells an endless subscription, and despite earning millions, doesn’t have money to pay or support a useful report-writer, some useful tool for Delphi.
Proof of poverty needed.
They need you to be poor to qualify. They should isolate this to per Delphi developer’s profits.
For example, if you are an automobile business selling cars and want a custom CRM system.
How to briefly explain Delphi’s price increase and toxic community?
TikTok Fugitive
IntraWeb is managed by a TikTok fugitive (Twitter link). His words are the truth. So truthful, his words are above the law, that the owner, Chad is now in St. Kitts.
Delphi’s beggar community vs. General Outsider Deals
Instead of supporting GExperts, CNPack, or open-source. Embarcadero tells how Delphi’s open source must eke out a living, while collecting endless subscriptions.
If you have the right connections, Embarcadero will give you a free copy of Delphi! Embarcadero supported that Microsoft person who did 1 video, while Delphi developers doing open-source don’t get a lifeline. https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage
Endless subscriptions cause business failure
Don’t you love to expand your business and hire more Delphi developers? You can’t because of the crushing renewal prices.
With Delphi, you just can’t justify hiring all those extra developers! Getting cut-off and custom vendor fixes once you stop paying.
Once you add “source code” purchase to your product, you have sodomites Delphi-developers who will put your software to download for US$10 a month.
Would you use Delphi?
https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/10/31/disliked-programming-languages/