Where is Delphi for PHP 3.0 AKA "Crocodile" at?

[ducky]

Hi everybody,

For me the problem of D4PHP is that 2 versions have been released too early; both of them seem rushed.

Frankly speaking, the first one was nothing but a beta version, the number of bugs were countless. We have been "used" as testers (so why make us pay for it?)

The second one was of course better, but still far away from a definitive, working RAD.

You know what... you can't provide a developer tool that is still "under construction", with the justification that PHP is a free language, and we are allowed to edit the components by ourselves...

If I pay, I want a tool that it actually WORKS, and I want it now, because it must help for my job. Why am I supposed to loose my days fixing the buggy components?

And I'm not talking about advanced features, I'm talking about the BASICS! Datagrid, treeview... come on.

Here I've found many friendly people to help me, but often I was told:
"this feature has not been implemented yet";
"it's not written on the documentation, nobody knows it";
"it doesn't work well / it doesn't work at all, you must build it by yourself";
and so on.

PHP is one of the most common languages for web development, but if I could fine only ONE forum (this one!) about D4PHP, there must be a reason...

I hope you could get what I wanted to say... if "Crocodile" will not fix ALL of the basic problems, don't even mind to release a new version.

Best regards

I'm affraid I have to second that....

albert

"Delphi-PHP Forums" <ducky.3u5nhn@no-mx.delphi-php.net> wrote in message
news:130146@forums.codegear.com...
> Hi everybody,
>
> For me the problem of D4PHP is that 2 versions have been released too
> early; both of them seem rushed.
>
> Frankly speaking, the first one was nothing but a _beta_version_, the
> number of bugs were countless. We have been "used" as testers (so why
> make us pay for it?)
>
> The second one was of course better, but still far away from a
> definitive, working RAD.
>
> You know what... you can't provide a developer tool that is still
> "under construction", with the justification that PHP is a free
> language, and we are allowed to edit the components by ourselves...
>
> If I pay, I want a tool that it actually WORKS, and I want it now,
> because it must help for my job. Why am I supposed to loose my days
> fixing the buggy components?
>
> And I'm not talking about advanced features, I'm talking about the
> BASICS! Datagrid, treeview... come on.
>
> Here I've found many friendly people to help me, but often I was told:
> -"this feature has not been implemented yet";
> "it's not written on the documentation, nobody knows it";
> "it doesn't work well / it doesn't work at all, you must build it by
> yourself";-
> and so on.
>
> PHP is one of the most common languages for web development, but if I
> could fine only ONE forum (this one!) about D4PHP, there must be a
> reason...
>
> I hope you could get what I wanted to say... if "Crocodile" will not
> fix ALL of the basic problems, don't even mind to release a new
> version.
>
> Best regards
>
>
> --
> ducky
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ducky's Profile: 1423
> View this thread: Where is Delphi for PHP 3.0 AKA "Crocodile" at?

> {quote:title=Dean Smith wrote:}{quote}
> In answer to your question it seems version is dead in the water, So the best possible answer here would be to open source it.
>
> I have version 1 and 2 with maintainance support will i be getting version 3 for free........
>
> I have yet to develop anything in D4PHP which has been any good. For developing now I use Codecharge Studio,Netbeans.
>
> So unless D4PHP can compete with these products dont even try.Remebering Netbeans is free.

Codecharge Studio is a paint by numbers toy without even a debugger. Netbeans is not really optimised for PHP but you would need this to compensate for CodeCharge's shortcomings.

Delphi for PHP stiull has the greatest potential of any of the current PHP IDE's and is also flawed in some seriously annoying ways. What IDE traps an attempt to save over a read only file as an unhandled "Access is denied" exception that is then suggesting that "error" be sent over the Internet by email to support@qadram.com ??. Duh. There are dozens of such idiotic things in this IDE.

However there are many upsides. Nothing comes even close to the visual designer two way tools concept. However D4PHP desparately needs an injection of talent and capability now and some kind of marketing budget in order to survive. It needs books and how-to manuals, more third party control developers and a coherent community of practice needs to be cultivated. Unfortunately the project has been leaderless and unfocussed for many months now, partly as a result of the Embarcadero acquisition and only has
a short window of opportunity to redeem itself. If we use markers of activity like blogs, forum postings, QC reports, Sourceforge developer mailing lists and Jose Leon's ability to answer email as indiators of the health of the project then one might realistically consider that the product is on a ventilator in ICU. I hope Michael Rozlog is good at software CPR. The only healthy sign is that Delphi for PHP seems to be a popular target for warez downloaders?? as thats about all Google ever seems to alert i
n its blog aggregation.

It, D4PHP also has been pitched/perceived as a PHP for dummies tool when the cruel reality is that it actually requires an expert level of PHP/Javscript to build robust enterprise grade applications. This has been the cause of much heartache for non-programmers and entry-level developers who have become disillusioned and dispirited when their dreams of rapidly gluing an application together weren't realised.

Rumour has it that the new improved roadmap is nearing completion. One can then make plans and decisions.. Also one hopes that the project to extend the VCL for PHP as a byproduct of the commercial development that qadram is doing will yield VCL for PHP benefits including insight into the flaws and limitations of the IDE that can feed into Crocodile. There are bright lights in that a book on Delphi for PHP development has been published in Portuguese recently and there are healthy numbers of developers in
Japan and so on. There are some preliminary signs that QC completions are ramping up again in anticipation of a beta of Delphi for PHP 3. D4PHP Should also benefit from being compiled in Delphi 2009 with better Unicode support. PHP itself continues to be a widespread used language and is becoming increasingly professionalised in its approach to development and architecture, standards, best practices, frameworks and so on. Its rapidly evolving thing and D4PHP can still swim with that broader PHP movement.


So while we need to be realists we also need to be fully engaged in collaborating with Embarcadero where possible as we are talking about an ecosystem of many contributors, users, vendors, components, repositories etc not just a simple monetary exchange for a piece of software. Some of the responsibility for the apparent lack of sucess for D4PHP probably has to be pinned on the users and developers who invested in this tool but didnt perhaps invest in its success.?

[PxTVmx]

Originally Posted by Steve Cooney

>
It, D4PHP also has been pitched/perceived as a PHP for dummies tool when the cruel reality is that it actually requires an expert level of PHP/Javscript to build robust enterprise grade applications. This has been the cause of much heartache for non-programmers and entry-level developers who have become disillusioned and dispirited when their dreams of rapidly gluing an application together weren't realised.

I agree 100%. And the solution is very easy: improve the documentation!

This forums are very useful, particulary the help from 405HP, but a book like "D4P for newbies" is urgent. I'm sure the user base of D4P will be very greater if there are more documentation targeted to newbies.

D4P is a good product, but it is necessary to make it more user-friendly through step by step tutorials.

> make it more user-friendly through step by step tutorials.

Agreed. Tutorials of lynda.com quality would be ideal.

Best,
Christopher

[garyk]

I'd agree with quality over a pressured early release.

Although reading from the product guys wouldn't their time be better spent working on the product rather than the road maps? :) (joke!)

I'd agree with Steve, as a long term Delphi developer I wanted D4PHP to be a tool to ease the learning curve of PHP, i.e. allow me to build an app and hide the complexity *until* I was ready or needed to embrace it. I could sit an OP novice down in front of Delphi and get them to crank out a simple app with no OP knowledge at all.

But hey I'm sure it will get there, Anders had 2 years to get D1 released which is why it was such an awesome product from day 1, come on D4PHP you can do it!

[CrimsonEdge]

I guess from the level of inactivity from the company and forums that this is nearly a dead product. Pity, because it looks attractive and has little competition.

There is a whole bunch of Dreamweaver Adobe Developer Toolbox users looking for alternatives at the moment because Adobe have discontinued this product, I guess we'll be looking at CodeIgniter et ali instead!

Adobe Forums: Forum: Dreamweaver Development Toolbox

[mylesw]

Originally Posted by CrimsonEdge

There is a whole bunch of Dreamweaver Adobe Developer Toolbox users looking for alternatives at the moment because Adobe have discontinued this product, I guess we'll be looking at CodeIgniter et ali instead!

Don't want to bring you down or anything, but I've been a CodeIgniter PHP developer since 2005/2006, and I can tell you that you won't find the answers there entirely. CI goes a long way towards helping smaller PHP projects to embrace what they should have been embracing from the start - OO and MVC framework logic. But its still not there for big projects.

I'm just finishing up a 12 month ordeal to develop an enterprise class application for a govt agency here in Arizona. This project should have been a simple 3-4 month effort. But it hasn't been that at all. Why has it taken me 12 months to do this? Because like most customers these days, they want a PC desktop experience on the web. They don't want the burden to manage the IT infrastructure for the applications but they want to get the same benefits that they used to get with PC applications but let someone else host it. They'll pay for that, because its far less expensive than employing IT staff. But the demands from the end users for interface are still high.

I bring this up because I'm both a Delphi developer but also a VERY experienced PHP developer. I'm also no slouch at Javascript, CSS, etc. So what is taking so long to get apps out the door and into production?

Two things that we take for granted with mature PC IDEs - WYSIWYG editors for complex objects (ie. Grid Tools, pull downs, menus, page templating, etc.) and Debugging. The latter being what is the pain that keeps on and on and on as you try and deploy and manage the applications. You can use CI all you like, but it won't design your forms for you. It won't handle the Javascript you need to deliver the UI your clients demand. It won't handle CSS and DHTML layout. You'll be using it with an editor (we use Eclipse) and another editor for WYSIWYG HTML editing (ie. Dreamweaver) and another editor for SQL handling (we use Firebird with IBExpert), etc., etc., etc. With this collection of tools loaded on my PC, I can eventually put together an app. But when something doesn't work, imagine the pain & suffering of debugging where it is.

The bottomline is that D4PHP fills a critically needed gap in the market - one integrated IDE that can handle most of all of this stuff. Developer efficiency goes way high with this sort of thing, as it did with the original Delphi. Debugging and app management is simplified.

Its close, but not quite there yet. But if you are a PHP developer and really want to stay a PHP developer, I believe that the best strategy is for all of us to send a message to Embarcadero that we really want this thing to succeed. Otherwise the future of PHP and Open Source development in the Cloud for enterprise customers will simply go the way of Microsoft. They can wipe the floor with us in terms of developer productivity with ASP.NET development. Unfortunately I have to admit that I can't produce apps as fast as they can. Mind you, my customers have far more choices with what they get with me. They can deploy on Linux, they can choose their DB, etc. But I still can't whip out the apps as fast as a less seasoned and less experienced MS developer can right now. That's killing me in the market and Emb need to realize that the success of D4PHP gives us engineers something to allow us to really show what we can do against the MS camp.

So I'm not excusing Codegear for the past with D4PHP. But I am saying that if we help the project along in whatever way we can, it will be to all of our advantage because the alternative frameworks (at least for the sizes of projects we are working on) won't let us beat the MS developers and gain great customers like we deserve to have.

Myles

[AzureCrystal]

Originally Posted by mylesw

Its close, but not quite there yet. But if you are a PHP developer and really want to stay a PHP developer, I believe that the best strategy is for all of us to send a message to Embarcadero that we really want this thing to succeed. Otherwise the future of PHP and Open Source development in the Cloud for enterprise customers will simply go the way of Microsoft. They can wipe the floor with us in terms of developer productivity with ASP.NET development. Unfortunately I have to admit that I can't produce apps as fast as they can. Mind you, my customers have far more choices with what they get with me. They can deploy on Linux, they can choose their DB, etc. But I still can't whip out the apps as fast as a less seasoned and less experienced MS developer can right now. That's killing me in the market and Emb need to realize that the success of D4PHP gives us engineers something to allow us to really show what we can do against the MS camp.

Myles

Well put and I agree with everything you mentioned. IMHO, at the moment D4PHP is FAR away from coming close to a mature, fast and completely WYSIWYG framework like ASP.NET. I pushed it as far as I could and the commercial application I wrote CRAWLED and had several bugs I could not find any workarounds for. If I had a second chance I would have opted for ASP.NET, and although I would have hated to tie my client to a Windows/Sql Server combo, their app would have worked properly...

I LOVE D4PHP and like you I wish the developer community would nudge Embarcadero to finish this very promising framework... Been a Delphi user since v1 and a Borland fan and user since the DOS, Turbo Pascal days :-)