bloblaw

That framing makes more sense to me.

I agree there's a difference between publishing code under an OSS license and actively maintaining a project while fielding the flood of low-quality AI issues and PRs. Someone in the latter category is obviously closer to that pain.

I still wouldn't go so far as to dismiss Carmack's view on that basis alone, though. It just means his experience is less representative of maintainers dealing with that specific problem every day.

I presume we are talking about GUI programs:

A. Delphi --- easy choice (or C++ Builder if I had to use C++) B. Also Delphi --- it supports macOS (arm64 + x64), Linux, and Windows

If I have to write a CLI app, I'm probably picking Go or Rust.

That article is from 2011. I can imagine that in 13 years this may no longer be true.

Perl's still got a special place in my heart, but honestly, I don't use it much these days. I mainly bring it out when I'm processing a lot of text or writing scripts to be used by Perl-savvy teammates.

But here's a cool thing - in coding interviews for non-SWE roles (I'm in security), when they say 'pick any language', I go straight for Perl. Why? Because it's very forgiving when prototyping a solution quickly, has great data-structures without a lot of setup (auto-vivification!), built in grep and map features, etc.

> After Heilsberg moved to MS, a lot of improvements were made in VB that utlimately made Delphi less attractive

Well, not actually. With Anders' move to Microsoft, VB6 (aka, VB "classic") was discontinued. Microsoft supported Visual Basic syntax on the .NET runtime, but the vast majority of VB programmers considered this to be a different language because developing for the .NET Framework (remember this is ~2001) was a huge departure from VB Classic.

Many VB developers petitioned Microsoft to open-source VB6 or continue releasing improvements on it. Microsoft did not and chose to continue with their .NET + C# strategy.

Having worked with both Delphi and Visual Basic, I've found that Delphi had the edge, especially for professional apps. Its use of Object Pascal meant you got compiled, efficient code right out of the box, and it didn't need an extra runtime like VB.

The VCL component library in Delphi is still unmatched in native code – very comprehensive built-in (and commercial) components, and customizable. Plus, Delphi's database connectivity was unparalleled and can be setup in the designer where you could see data queried and returned live in your grid component!

Delphi also supported advanced language capabilities (when compared to VB), like inline assembly and pointers, which were essential for low-level optimization or system hacking. The robust error handling in Delphi was another plus compared to VB's older 'On Error' style.

Without an understanding of their motive, I think tying "google" to a person's mental health crisis is clickbait.

Folks dealing with mental health issues might end their lives for a variety of factors. This is very sad to hear, but the headline (and article) that attempts to connect an employer to a person's death without any evidence is unfair.

Note: I do not work for Google.

THIS!! A high-quality cross-platform GUI toolkit that can be built using Delphi's RAD designer would be a huge hit in the market, IMHO. There is literally nothing that does this now.

This is true, I did not use the platform as a user. I know it solves business problems and theyve built a big moat.

My commentary is on the company culture and focus on sales over quality. I just don’t think this is a company that knows how to organically innovate or integrate purchased innovation…and I think that makes them vulnerable to being overtaken by a competitor that solves the same business problems in a different way than they do now.

They’ll be around for decades. Just like many other formerly innovative companies hang around for a long time.

The number of them isn't as relevant as their usage. Lots of data science related modules are effectively wrappers around C code. Here's a few:

  NumPy 
  pandas 
  Matplotlib 
  TensorFlow 
  PyTorch  

These modules are critical to many of the workloads using Python (ML / AI / Data Science)

Similar statements have been made about most dominant technology when it was in its infancy. You are not wrong, but it can quickly go from novelty to necessity once folks start to rely on it.

All good points. Windows still very much dominates desktops / laptops sold (especially large corp environments)...so the default installed Edge browser + Bing is a significant share of users.

And with Edge being "basically chrome", and supporting Chrome plugins, the switching cost from Chrome -> Edge is quite small.

But for mobile, Android + iOS dominate...so that all goes to Google.

I think this could mean that Bing + ChatGPT has a really opportunity to beat Google in Search...it's gonna be hard, but I've never even considered them more than a distant 2nd option until now.