2021-01-22, 23:16:08
Seems we have some similar backgrounds, assembler and Turbo Pascal is what I started out with, in that order.
Nowadays most of my work is done in DataFlex, Javascript, C++ and some C#.
Of course bash scripting etc.. are also commonly used.
The Vimalin project was started around 2013 and I looked around for something that I could easily use for cross platform development.
As a user of both VMware Fusion as well as VMware Workstation, I decided that it had to support both OSX and Windows.
I considered C++, but the toolkits for nice cross platform frameworks where a bit daunting.
Objective C and Xcode was attractive, but it would mean having to write from scratch for a windows port and having to maintain 2 code bases if I ever wanted to make Vimalin cross platform.
I also remembered my Delphi background so took a look there. A framework called Firemonkey (FMX) was fairly new and I could get it to work on OSX.
So that's the path I ended up choosing.
It would not be my decision now, but once you have an existing code base that works well.. it's not that easy to change.
Right now, I'd say that if you want to use pascal then go for freepascal. Right now it is too big of a refactor for me to switch. I looked into that when I was looking for a Linux port, something I started, but had to postpone. It is similar to VCL, but very different from FMX.
Of course nowadays there's considerable more choice for cross platform development.
You can use .net on macOS, there's rust and there's go.
You can even use Swift for cross platform development.
If you're a javascript developer you can go for something like electron.
A lot more possibilities and several more mature alternatives than at that time.
--
Wil
Nowadays most of my work is done in DataFlex, Javascript, C++ and some C#.
Of course bash scripting etc.. are also commonly used.
The Vimalin project was started around 2013 and I looked around for something that I could easily use for cross platform development.
As a user of both VMware Fusion as well as VMware Workstation, I decided that it had to support both OSX and Windows.
I considered C++, but the toolkits for nice cross platform frameworks where a bit daunting.
Objective C and Xcode was attractive, but it would mean having to write from scratch for a windows port and having to maintain 2 code bases if I ever wanted to make Vimalin cross platform.
I also remembered my Delphi background so took a look there. A framework called Firemonkey (FMX) was fairly new and I could get it to work on OSX.
So that's the path I ended up choosing.
It would not be my decision now, but once you have an existing code base that works well.. it's not that easy to change.
Right now, I'd say that if you want to use pascal then go for freepascal. Right now it is too big of a refactor for me to switch. I looked into that when I was looking for a Linux port, something I started, but had to postpone. It is similar to VCL, but very different from FMX.
Of course nowadays there's considerable more choice for cross platform development.
You can use .net on macOS, there's rust and there's go.
You can even use Swift for cross platform development.
If you're a javascript developer you can go for something like electron.
A lot more possibilities and several more mature alternatives than at that time.
--
Wil