Comments on: Why Delphi for PHP should have used Prado instead of VCL

By: VCL/PHP followup | Eirik Hoem's Blog

VCL/PHP followup | Eirik Hoem's Blog — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:09:09 +0000

[...] receiving quite some feedback on my post “Why Delphi for PHP should have used Prado instead of VCL” I decided to do a follow up to that post. Some of the feedback was quite interesting, hence this [...]

By: admin

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:59:46 +0000

@akash: I realize that my “most developers are not on windows” comment was a bit off. The IDE support under Windows has proven to be quite superior, but vendors like Zend are picking up with Zend Studio Eclipse, and NetBeans 6.5 introduced PHP support as well. When it comes to the VS.net vs Delphi approach that sounds right.. maybe I’m just not a Delphi-friendly person;)

@andreas: I agree that Prado isn’t doing the best job out there, but having *something* is far better than having nothing. I state this because of the lack of name spaces in PHP and possible collisions with PHP classes. What would happen if PHP introduced a class with a name that VCL/PHP already use?
@peter: There are lots of people wishing for the same.. who knows what’s coming?

@lami: I’ve not seen the demos, but I’d be happy to find something usable Vs.net is a far superior IDE imo.. pity that it does not support PHP.

@delphi-php
Yeah, it’s fairly fresh, but the team should have experience enough to create a solid architecture from scratch. Refactoring the code into something proper would take quite some time.

@pieter
I’d like to check out the latest version of VCL/PHP and perhaps do a follow up on the topic, and I will discuss the points you bring up in your comment.

By: delphi-php

delphi-php — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:02:46 +0000

Look how long Prado has been around compared to VCL4PHP? I’m sure in time the VCL4PHP will be as good, if not better than Prado. Besides, coming from a delphi developer background I’ve always liked names with the letters VCL in them

By: Pieter Viljoen

Pieter Viljoen — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:02:14 +0000

Keep in mind that the Codegear had to work quickly to get tools people in the market needed in order to stay viable. So they focused on their core competency and released a whole range of products in a spectacularly short period.

Delphi for PHP now provides the basis for the PHP community to rationalise and cleanup sets of standard component suites. So here is plenty of opportunity to extend or event replace the component libraries shipping with PHP.

Much more can be critized about PHP than just the issues raised above. The language is fundamentally ugly and flawed. Point is their is a mass market out there which Codegear recognized and capitalised on. PHP is relatively lightweight, it is effective and the Delphi IDE makes it extremely productive!

I disagree with the fact that Delphi for PHP was made for the normal Delphi guys since they are already used to the IDE. I much rather prefer to work with the Intraweb components inside the standard Delphi. TMS provides excellent extensions to the components and i do not have to change the language. So I re-use many many common routines between my normal Delphi and Intraweb applications.

So I think Delphi gives PHP developers across the world tremendous benefit.

I employed a few such developers and in just 2 weeks now have an entire web based application.

So sometimes things are not perfect, just pragmatic.

By: lami…

lami… — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:01:13 +0000

Delphi for PHP 2.0 is out and their demo videos look awesome (that is till you actually use the IDE)

Why these guys do not use Prado or support it beats me. I just tried it out and thought it was horrible. I’ll stick with Prado and ASP.Net

By: Peter Laman

Peter Laman — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:00:50 +0000

But how I’d like to have a Prado based IDE, which would guide me through the enormous forest of Prado classes!

By: Andreas

Andreas — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:00:32 +0000

You complain about the missing prefix in VCL/PHP, and use the T-Prefix of Prado as an example how it should be. The problem is, that the prado classes are obviously named after the Windows-VCL. In the Windows-VCL there are TLabel, TTable, TButton and so on. In the usual naming convention of Delphi T just prefixes a *Type* … “TLabel” just means “Type Label”. If the VCL/PHP had just used the original names from the VCL/Delphi, the classes would have been prefixed with an T, too. In fact, neither Prado nor Delphi/VCL used a product-specific prefix.

By: lami

lami — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:35:46 +0000

I just used delphi’s latest version of their IDE (Delphi for PHP 2.0) and why they still choose not to use Prado or support it just beats me.

It sucks compared to Visual Studio. I’ll be sticking with ASP.Net and Prado I guess

By: Akash Mehta

Akash Mehta — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:29:30 +0000

You have to remember that Delphi for PHP was built for Delphi developers. Delphi developers love it and have done some pretty cool stuff in the year or so its been around. The VCL for PHP also functions similar to Delphi’s VCL.

Prado, on the other hand, was a VS.net/ASP approach. CodeGear could have created VWD for PHP and used Prado. But they didn’t, because they’re Borland and they work with Delphi, not VS.net.

By the way, most PHP developers would be developing applications on the Windows platform (especially with the better IDE selection), but many would have Linux boxes available for testing. Some development shops enforce purely Linux for development, testing and deployment. I personally use both; I VNC to my linux box from within my Vista-based laptop for the best of both worlds.

By: eirikhoem

eirikhoem — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:04:45 +0000

ibandyop:
Sounds interesting. I will look into this when I get some time.

Thanks for the heads-up!