Linux is coming in the next release - there will be a blog on that soon. It already has Mac, iOS, and Android on top of its Windows support.
Honestly, I do not believe that Python or Tcl/Tk count as "good" RAD cross-platform tools. Only if you've never used something like modern Delphi to compare them to. We regularly have customers give feedback about their productivity with Delphi/C++Builder, versus Python, C#, etc, and they say they get apps completed and released twice as fast or often more. "5x" is quoted often in our marketing material, and that number is not marketing, it's based on numbers people tell us.
- David (one of the PMs at Embarcadero; I work with the blog author Marco.)
There were some other issues then (I worked for Borland at the time, QAing Kylix) including not really understanding the FOSS community and GPL-the-social-movement part very well.
There was a particularly big flap over them not stripping the corporate audit clause from the free Kylix Open Edition version targeted at OSS dev; and another regarding enforcing the mandatory "Made with Kylix Open Edition" splash screen that was linked into your app at the compiler level, since all the library code was technically modifiable per licensing.
I also seem to recall that they managed to standardize on Red Hat 7.2, which I think had the much maligned gcc 2.96 fork in it and possibly an older glibc, and then had problems with later kernel/glibc/something along those lines versions such that you were locked into the "bad" version of Red Hat using it.
I probably have some of the tech details jumbled 16 years later, but the TL;DR was that the development community for Linux is nothing like the development community for Windows, especially back then. There were simply different cultural expectations and a hugely diverse set of environments to target, along with a swiftly moving ecosystem to link against.
Upshot, Kylix more or less flopped and Borland switched gears to Java/JBuilder-based IDEs for C++ compilation (C++BuilderX), then back around full circle later focusing on single-platform IDEs for .NET/native Windows.
> Only if you've never used something like modern Delphi to compare them to.
The last time I used Delphi it was on version 5. I never used anything for desktop GUIs on Python or Tcl/Tk (or any other language) that comes even close to it. That requirement of "modern" is too outreaching.
But I'm impressed by Python's kivy (but still didn't really use it), and there are some interesting things happening on Haskell circles. I'm optimist in that Delphi's decades old title may fall soon.
David, thank you for the work on Delphi! I think my post was seen as bashing Delphi. It was not the intent; the fact that Delphi has a thriving user community willing to defend it is a proof to its usefulness.
To each his own. I work in a cross platform world with a roughly equal mix of Linux and Windows and my personal preferences are with the standard Unix toolset.
Linux is coming in the next release - there will be a blog on that soon. It already has Mac, iOS, and Android on top of its Windows support.
Honestly, I do not believe that Python or Tcl/Tk count as "good" RAD cross-platform tools. Only if you've never used something like modern Delphi to compare them to. We regularly have customers give feedback about their productivity with Delphi/C++Builder, versus Python, C#, etc, and they say they get apps completed and released twice as fast or often more. "5x" is quoted often in our marketing material, and that number is not marketing, it's based on numbers people tell us.
- David (one of the PMs at Embarcadero; I work with the blog author Marco.)