Delphi Vs Visual Studio

This is a comparison between developing software in Delphi XE+ vs Visual Studio 2015 (C#). I’ve decided not to go to in-depth with regards to syntax or run time dependencies of executables. I have experience in both although I have mainly developed web service and WCF services in C#, and mainly developed desktop applications in Delph, so that might affect some of my opinions.

Delphi Pros

•          Quick and easy to develop desktop applications.
•          I prefer the form designer, because I find it easier to use.
•          Quick to compile projects.
•          I like the code structure of interface and implementation in the same file.
•          You can develop mobile apps.

Delphi Cons

•          Code insight is slow and could be significantly improved.
•          Some areas of the IDE look dated and it needs investment to keep it up to date with its competitors.
•          Find declaration does not always work, finding the function or procedure is more time consuming than Visual Studio.
•          Hard to employ developers as there are not many about.
•          Code insight is slow to update, for example add a new property to a class and sometimes you need to compile to make that property available for code insight.
•         Unit testing using DUnit feels old and there has been little development of it over the years.

  

Visual Studio Pros

•          IDE has a more modern interface, like the option for a dark color theme.
•          Code IntelliSense is great, and I like the ‘potential fixes’ option which is very useful for adding directive or assembly reference.
•         Unit testing is easy and integrated into the IDE, making it easy to run tests while you are developing.
•          Debugging services is easier than when I have developed services in Delphi, this might have changed recently in later versions of Delphi.
•         Peek definition is a nice feature.

Visual Studio Cons

•         Slow to start-up.
•          Sometimes freezes and it is best just to wait.

Delphi vs Xamarin

Recently I have been doing some mobile development and assessing the pros and cons of Delphi and Xamarin. Here is a brief list of them, there will be more as I use both.

Delphi Pros

• Use existing familiar IDE.
• Quick to prototype and deploy to Android device.
• Easy to use interface designer.
• Large shared code base between different platforms.

Delphi Cons

• Expensive to purchase the latest version of Delphi.
• Crashes often with the loss of any recent changes.
• Slow to build and deploy.
• File size is big, 'Hello world' app will be at least 25MB.

Xamarin Pros

• Nice to use interface (C# code).
• Easy and quick to deploy app to Android.
• File size small, suspect this is due to it having to also deploy virtual platform.
• The app is quick to run on the device compared with Delphi app.
• Cheap compared with Delphi.

Xamarin Cons

• Less shared code between platforms.
• Interface designer does not feel as flexible.
• Properties inspector needs improving and is not as user friendly as Delphi.
• Online tutorials and help are not concise and some seem out of date.

I should point out the version of Delphi I used was XE5, the current release is XE7 so they might have fix a few bugs. I did go to a XE7 launch event (which I will write another blog entry about) and from what I saw and the questions I asked it is not much different and they have not done anything to improve the build time. When it comes to the speed of the build for Android it is best to build to the device rather than use the Android simulator which for both is very slow.

I will continue to add to this blog entry with other pros and cons as I come across them.

Delphi XE After 1 year

I have now been using Delphi XE now for 1 year and I think it is the best version of Delphi I've used. I have 15 years of experience using various versions of Delphi from the stable Delphi 5 to the terrible Delphi 2005 and more recently Delphi 2006 and 2010.

Here are some pros and cons of this version of Delphi.

Pros

• IDE layout is good and similar to Visual Studio and other development environments.
• Quick to run, however this might be due to the PC I am running it on (8 MB RAM).
• Code completion works really well.
• 
  

Cons

• Cost of the product, Delphi is still very expensive
• Help is not complete, have come across some help which requests more information from the user (TDataSet.CopyFields).
• You will need a fairly large screen, working on a small monitor will be annoying.

Soon I will be moving to XE3, which will hopefully have more features and will still be as stable as XE.