I'd just like to say a few words on how well I think that Elevate WebBuilder fits
the requirements of many developers today, particularly Delphi developers. In the
last year, I've done a lot of thinking about the tools I use, and what I need from
them. What I think of course doesn't apply to everyone, but it might help someone
in their thinking.

The key for me was that mobile is here. A friend who moved from Delphi to .Net a
long time ago had been telling me that the desktop is dead for most purposes, and
given that I develop both my own products and for others, and I was doing desktop
stuff, I knew it to be "wrong", but it is also right of course - it is fading. You
cannot develop for desktop alone. Apple's iOS was for a long time the main target,
with Android a second stage. Delphi recognised this too, and started targeting iOS.
But while they floundered getting something sensible together, the world changed,
and our customers are not just using iOS, and not only Android as a primary target
too, but Windows phone and the web and anything you can think of. I was not happy
with the way XE4 turned out, with language changes too. I like the single UI
platform to target, and that wasn't available in the "pascal" language options, nor
C# offerings. EWB came along at the right time for me, and I have been amazed at
the close control it gives. I can easily respond to the screen size of the device
that is running it (particularly with the new option coming in 1.02 that I've been
hacking in recently myself). I've been listening to the Tablet Show podcast
recently, and I am a fan of the "application theme" rather than "device style",
given that our application is going to be used across multiple devices. EWB does
this nicely - making my own theme to style our application has been easy.

The Tablet Show and other things has had me thinking that JavaScript is indeed the
modern assembler language. It is very much cross platform, and capable of doing a
lot with HTML5/CSS. I even woke up one morning and thought "one day there will be
an operating system that just does JavaScript". And then I realised that was Chrome
OS! But Microsoft seem to be making JavaScript a first class language on their
devices, and I heard that you can take 99% of any JavaScript application and run it
as-is on Windows 8. Sure, you probably want to adjust styling, but that's a good
option. All platforms, one language? What could be wrong? Well, JavaScript itself
is a horrible language. What you need is a higher level language to write in, and
have that compiled to JavaScript. There are already options out there, with things
like TypeScript, but nothing is "the winner". But if you are a Delphi programmer,
then the winner is obvious, at least to me. Elevate WebBuilder allows me to use all
my Delphi skills and knowledge, and write these cross platform applications. Okay,
it isn't perfect: the editor is basic, but it is functional; using SSL is very
slightly awkward, but these are minor things in comparison with the speed at which
I can code advanced stuff without having to think about learning the language. I
can use high level class based code that I am familiar with, and it works as I
expect. On the odd occasion that the browser fails to understand what I'm asking
(usually because I call a function on an uninitialised variable for example) I can
use the Chrome debugging facilities to see where it is failing, and that is easy to
see what part of my source code it is failing in. Heck, I have exceptions to use
and catch if I want to get fancy.

So far I have just experimented with encapsulating the application I've written in
Adobe AIR, and it worked fine. Soon I will be doing this for real, and will report
further. But for now, it all looks good. My application can be used on the web, and
is served by a web service written using the RemObjects SDK using Delphi.

Heck, I decided this was worth putting into a blog post, so I did:
http://matthew-jones.com/thoughts-on-elevate-webbuilder-and-the-developer-requiremen
ts/

/Matthew Jones/

Matthew


I only had a little play before disappearing into the removing TMS from my apps morass but I suspect you're right. I also liked what I saw and am hopefully going to get back to it soon.

I lurk over on some of the EMB ngs and there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the way things are going. Someone has now started a rumour that EMB are quietly looking for a buyer.

I don't think they've brought anything out (and I include unicode in that a) because I don't want it b) because there were already other options out there and c) because they alienated anyone who didn't want unicode) that says to me its a must buy, or even worth spending my money to see it its worthwhile. I accept I'm a slightly different case because I'm a hobbyist  but that means I'm spending my own not company money (and I know that applies to a lot out there if they are the company) and my own time.

I think EWB looks like the right approach and I'll be even more sure when I can ask it to just compile my Delphi project <vbg>


Roy Lambert

These things are different for everyone. I thought Unicode was a sensible addition
because it actually changed little, and if it mattered you could just change String
to AnsiString and carry on. For code that just moves text internally, you could
ignore it, and it would compile in old and new compilers. But I don't aim to beat
that horse over here - just say why I think EWB works well for me.

As for taking your Delphi code and just compiling it, that won't ever happen of
course. The web/browser is a different platform, and even simple things like a
modal form don't stop your code. But the idioms are not hard to adopt (well, for me
anyway - I've been writing state-machines for 30 years or more!), and it is cross
platform. But I do have some simple "stand alone" utility class code that I just
copied from Delphi and compiled as-is in EWB. It saved a lot of time getting going.
And of course we can share. My JSON utilities have grown a bit further, and I will
share those sometime.

/Matthew Jones/

Matthew


>As for taking your Delphi code and just compiling it, that won't ever happen of
>course.

Agreed hence the <vbg>

Bloodly shame though

Roy

Matthew,

<< As for taking your Delphi code and just compiling it, that won't ever
happen of course. The web/browser is a different platform, and even simple
things like a modal form don't stop your code. But the idioms are not hard
to adopt (well, for me anyway - I've been writing state-machines for 30
years or more!), and it is cross platform. >>

I've been doing some thinking on this, and I would like to eventually remove
most of the async requirements in the EWB framework with something that
handles the all of this for you.  It's just a PIA having to deal with things
like transaction commits, etc. in an async fashion since so much of the UI
depends upon the results of such operations.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Matthew,

Nice read, thanks very much.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

I listened to Hanselminutes yesterday, after being pointed at it by a friend who
knows me as the last desktop hang-out.
www.hanselminutes.com/373/a-desktop-developer-moves-to-the-web-with-mark-rendle#

He talks about javascript, and needing higher level tools, and I feel very lucky to
be a "Delphi" developer with EWB to use already.

What I'd like to know is how we can get more income for Tim so that he can put more
resources into EWB. This is a critical time and it needs to be moving rapidly with
minimal distraction IMO.

/Matthew Jones/

Matthew,

<< What I'd like to know is how we can get more income for Tim so that he
can put more resources into EWB. This is a critical time and it needs to be
moving rapidly with minimal distraction IMO.  >>

Yeah, me too.  I think the real difference will be with EWB 2.0 when I
open up the IDE.  Then, I'm no longer the major hold-up with the framework,
and can concentrate on the things like the compiler/code editor.  At that
point you'll see things start to rapidly improve quickly.

Thanks,

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com