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The Sons of Khan and the Pascal Spring

How Embarcadero made Delphi as groovy as a Lumia phone. Um...

Release of XE2

  1. Then they set their backs to it, and did toil.
  2. And they toiled, and toiled, and toiled and toiled.
  3. But where the toil was too much, they bought in stuff from Europe and Russia, and stuck that in.
  4. And it came to pass that they brought forth a new Delphi, which was called XE2.
  5. And it supported not only Win32 but also Win64, natively and without runtime.
  6. And it supported also Mac OS.
  7. And it kind-of supported iOS, although this part involved invoking the FreePascal for ARM compiler running on Mac OS, and was perhaps not the cleanest-ever tool chain.
  8. (But, on the other hand, what art thou going to use instead? C# and Mono? PHP and JavaScript?)
  9. And the new Delphi had also many other new features, like the FireMonkey framework, and new database stuff, and fancy graphics.
  10. And some of it was finished.
  11. And the Sons of Kahn looked upon the new Delphi. And they were pretty bullish about their prospects.

Arrival of the users of Delphi

  1. Then one day a great noise was heard in the valley of the Scots.
  2. And the Sons of Kahn became excited, for they said: It is here. It is the Second Coming of Pascal.
  3. And soon two grizzled columns of users of Delphi came marching down into the valley, one from the one side, and one from the other. And as they marched, their grey nose-hair did twinkle splendidly in the sunshine.
  4. And great was the noise was their singing. For column of the north did sing a loud song:
    FreeAndNil! FreeAndNil!
    FreeAndNil will make you ill.
  5. And the column of the south also did sing a loud song:
    FreeAndNil! FreeAndNil!
    FreeAndNil's still a brill thrill.
  6. For a great schism had rent in twain the tribe of users of Delphi. And it concerned the FreeAndNil() system call, as you had perhaps gathered.
  7. And this argument was even fiercer than the one about whether Scotland should remain part of England, or whether it is sensible to drop bone-handled knives in the washing up.
  8. And it was the great intellectual debate of the day.
  9. (It is not fit that this strictly neutral historical record to opine which side was correct. However posts like these surely sufficeth to convince that the anti-FreeAndNil faction is as mad as a box of frogs.)
  10. Then the Sons of Khan spake unto the users of Delphi, saying: Behold! We have made a new version! It doth 64-bit and Apple and fancy graphics and everything you desired, according to the annual user survey.
  11. And some of the users of Delphi replied unto them, saying: Why? Hath FreeAndNil been marked 'deprecated', then?
  12. And other users of Delphi piped up, saying: Nice try, wiseacres. Why don't you go away and write one of those perfect programs that we hear so much about? And is it also true that the farts of your bottoms smell like loganberries?
  13. Whereupon the two factions went at it, hammer and sickle.

Apascalypse Delayed

  1. And sophisticated discussion continued in this manner for forty days and nights, at least.
  2. Yet nobody took much notice of the white papers of the Sons of Khan advocating the many XE2 improvements since Delphi 7, nor yet the YouTube demonstrations.
  3. Whereupon the Sons of Kahn were a bit perplexed.
  4. And one spake unto another, saying: if this is the Second Coming, then it is not quite as I had imagined it.
  5. And the other replied, saying: Never mind. I am confident they will all grow up, and making great apps, and teach the children the art of Pascal, and dangling honeysuckle and whatnot, and all will be well.
  6. And the great prophet M'andee-rice Davies looked up from her knitting, and she did wink. ®

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