[HN Gopher] Oxygene: A modern language built on the foundation o...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Oxygene: A modern language built on the foundation of Object Pascal
        
       Author : luismedel
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2024-09-06 07:55 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.remobjects.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.remobjects.com)
        
       | wrs wrote:
       | Well, _that_ was under the radar. I used Object Pascal back in
       | the MacApp days and figured it had disappeared forever. And
       | Microsoft is allegedly a customer? I'd like to hear more about
       | that...
        
         | tecleandor wrote:
         | I never trust those "these are our clients" claims unless they
         | tell me about a project. That could easily be "one guy with a
         | microsoft.com email bought a license once".
         | 
         | It's just I've seen people doing it!
        
       | nxobject wrote:
       | It's worth noting that this is commercial software that costs
       | money - even for academic purposes - but I assume that the access
       | to support and the full-time support engineers it funds is worth
       | is for some business customers.
        
       | kstrauser wrote:
       | Ouch, those prices though. It's 100% their right to choose how
       | they want to distribute their language, of course! But there's no
       | plausible scenario where I'd ever write with a proprietary
       | language implementation, let alone one I had to pay for. There
       | are too many free/Free options to voluntarily lock myself in for
       | any of the kinds of things I ever work on.
        
         | romwell wrote:
         | It's the Delphi pitfall :(
         | 
         | Still the best IDE I've ever used, but that was because in
         | 1990s Ukraine _everything_ was pirated. Wouldn 't be able to
         | use it any other way.
        
         | lysace wrote:
         | ($1k per named developer the first year, $750/yr for renewals.)
         | 
         | They may know that the realistic target market is a few hundred
         | licences, tops.
        
         | mikewarot wrote:
         | Lazarus is a pretty good open source alternative, except the
         | documentation, and the tools to build said documentation, suck.
         | 
         | As for the price, inflation adjusting $50 in 1983 to today is
         | $160, so the personal use price isn't horrible.
        
         | tlb wrote:
         | I don't have a big problem with the money: it's a fraction of
         | month's salary. The usual problem with commercial languages is
         | the freedom to set things up how I want and spin up new
         | environments quickly. Mathematica, for instance, is a
         | significant pain to run on my laptop, desktop, and a cloud
         | machine.
         | 
         | I think there's room to innovate in licensing. I would err on
         | the side of making it easy to install at the cost of some
         | piracy. A great language could 100x its market share by losing
         | 1/2 to piracy, so 50x overall.
        
         | theamk wrote:
         | It is competing with Delphi, which has about the same price
         | 
         | https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...
        
       | msk-lywenn wrote:
       | They also have their own swift implementation apparently? That's
       | the first time I see an alternative implementation of it.
       | https://www.remobjects.com/elements/silver/
        
         | magicalhippo wrote:
         | It's also for various platforms, so you can write Swift code
         | comiling to a .Net executable say.
        
       | sksk wrote:
       | For those wondering why are they charging per developer etc. This
       | case study helped me understand what they actually are selling:
       | https://www.remobjects.com/elements/casestudies/curacaoweath...
       | 
       | Their landing page and generally content on their page is
       | terrible but maybe nobody stumbles on their site randomly looking
       | for this. People are reacting to their pricing after seeing the
       | title but I dont think that's what they are selling...
        
       | pkphilip wrote:
       | Won't it make more sense to go with the Embarcadero
       | implementation of Object Pascal (Delphi)? That is available free
       | for users as long as you make less than USD 5000/year using that
       | tool
        
       | speed_spread wrote:
       | Too bad there's no details on the "modern" features vs Object
       | Pascal. Or are they hidden?
       | 
       | Anyway, seems interesting. I gather that their business model is
       | to find large institutional customers looking for a way to scale
       | out their legacy code (Delphi, etc.) to new platforms?
       | 
       | I wonder where they find developers willing to learn their tools
       | when the entry price to learn is non-free. Also, a closed
       | ecosystem nowadays means depriving the devs of the rich
       | ecosystems that have grown around open languages. Which can be a
       | good thing... (looking at npm, ahem)
        
         | 1899-12-30 wrote:
         | The new features are hidden in the documentation
         | https://docs.elementscompiler.com/Oxygene/Delphi/NewFeatures...
         | 
         | Given that it doesn't support vcl I don't see a reason to ever
         | move to it for existing delphi applications which I assume are
         | mostly fat clients.
        
       | OhMeadhbh wrote:
       | I am at once compelled by the sweet tone of Pascal and recoil in
       | site of mercantile connivance. In truth I do honor the allegiance
       | to business practices of old. I did in my time employ compilers
       | from cheerful Centerline and stout StepStone. Yet it is the
       | winter of our commercial compiler discontent. Though I tremble at
       | the visage of Wirth's ghost, redime te captum quam quas minimo.
       | 
       | (sorry, been reading Shakespeare recently.)
       | 
       | It's nice to see there's still a market for a commercial
       | compilers, I'm not sure there's enough benefit for my work to
       | justify the price tag. Would love to hear from people using it
       | what they think of it. And it reminds me a bit of Modula-3, or at
       | least where Modula-3 seemed to be headed.
        
       | Lerc wrote:
       | I have often thought that there's scope for a descendant of
       | Object Pascal to take on a new name to coalesce all of the new
       | ideas while freeing up the namespace occupied by legacy features.
       | 
       | This is not it.
        
       | pshirshov wrote:
       | > Download Trial
       | 
       | Rest in peace.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-09-09 23:00 UTC)