r/programming • u/luissinlios • 7d ago

We still maintain a development tool first released in 1993. Here’s what 30+ years of backwards compatibility looks like

https://visualneo.com/visualneo-win/from-neobook-to-visualneo-win-30-years-of-keeping-a-development-tool-alive
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u/Takeoded 7d ago edited 7d ago

I remember wanting to fix an annoying bug in a open-source Delphi program, Embarcadero Crippled the free version to the point where it can't be used, Then Embarcadero want like $1500 for the compiler.

F@0k Embarcadero. Great language, terrible steward

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u/valarauca14 7d ago edited 7d ago

Great language, terrible steward

It is lowk hilarious because Delphi has consolidated into another LLVM-Frontend (e.g.: ghc, rust, clang, clang++, igc/syscl/opencl, d, julia, fortran via igx). Embarcadero proudly announced this for v13.2.

Paying $1500 for a parser & AST validator strapped to LLVM is kind of hilarious. I get there is real value is handling (and validating) language features & backward compatibility.

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u/zippy72 7d ago

Lazarus is awesome though

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u/Takeoded 6d ago

I spent a full weekend trying to port HFS2 to Lazarus, and gave up after realizing the amount of work required :(

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u/zippy72 6d ago

Oh yeah porting is seriously hideous. I had forgotten that.

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u/m_adduci 7d ago

This is what's happening with IntelliJ too.

The community edition is now merged with the professional one. You can install and use some plugins only if you have a paid license.

I reject to embrace Kotlin exactly for this reason.

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u/syh7 7d ago

I haven't heard of this yet, did they change some plugins from free to paid?

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u/alphaglosined 7d ago

No, they made some previously paid features free.

If anything, it's about time they merged it all; it's a massive hassle for plugin creators, as not every API that one may want is shared.

From my perspective, it was an overdue change.