Delphi Prism - Part 1: Opening the "box"
Hi, my name is Robert. I’ve been a closet Delphi fan for many years. <Hi, Robert>. So when Borland—sorry, Inprise—no, actually, it’s Borland, but I was thinking of CodeGear, never mind, it’s Embarcadero—said there was a super-duper new version coming, I got excited. So I’ve downloaded the trial and will blog about the experience. Now, note: Delphi is not what I use day to day—in fact, if I’m choosing a language now, it’s C#—so don’t expect production-level evaluations but rather a hacker’s perspective.
First thing: downloading it (and finding my BDN CDN login) and waiting for the 4GB to download to the slow internet of South Africa.
So let’s see what’s in the box—or, more accurately, the installer:
First up: ER/Studio Developer Edition, a database modeling tool from Embarcadero.
InstallAware Express (CodeGear edition) is an installer system—think MSI/InstallShield/NSIS, etc.
Next is InterBase 2009 Developer Edition—no need to explain what that is (Delphi fans will just know).
Mono is exciting, especially since it includes the Win32 GTK version. Cross-platform dreams are coming back.
The installer also includes the VS 2008 shell—pretty straightforward.
The included Wiki is interesting—it looks like a dated dump (September 29, 2008) of their site, with most editing disabled. That makes sense and is actually very useful for us in slow-internet countries where connecting to the wiki can sometimes be a struggle. To whoever had this idea: well done! A few articles that stood out:
- Win32 Delphi vs. Delphi Prism
- Delphi Prism Syntax compared with Win32 Delphi
- Migration Tools: Oxidizer – ShineOn
And there’s also a logo to check out: