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0 pointsmikewarot4y ago0 comments

The ultimate "low code" experience I had was back in the 1990s with Delphi. You drag and drop your form elements, get everything just right. Next you hook up your event handlers and type in a few lines of code to do the actual work.

It was the best I've ever seen balance of managing complexity, yet letting you write code when you needed to.

The C++ version was nowhere near as god, it generated a ton of templates and things that just weren't necessary in Pascal.

Since then everything is expected to work across the internet, through a web browser, web server, etc. It'll never be as simple and effective as it was.

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vadfa4y ago

>The ultimate "low code" experience I had was back in the 1990s with Delphi. You drag and drop your form elements, get everything just right. Next you hook up your event handlers and type in a few lines of code to do the actual work.

Today I was thinking about Visual Basic 6, which worked more or less the same way.

I wonder what similar alternatives we have today? Gambas? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambas

redisman4y ago

The problem is that you can’t usually afford to target just a Windows 95 PC or equivalent today so such a tool cannot exist. The UI must morph and adapt and feel native across phones, tablets, retina displays, etc.

Even video games these days need to adapt to a different UX on each platform even thou they are the closest to having one unified UI across the gamut

mikewarotOP4y ago

It's unrealistic to expect a full, productive, desktop experience on any smaller devices.

Giving up on the desktop is a huge step backwards.

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bitwize4y ago

I like typing stuff in and instantly seeing the results, rather than rat wrestling widgets onto a form. Rat wrestling also makes adaptive UIs difficult; again, the solution is being able to declare your UI with layout managers that apply constraints.

The most rapid UI tool I've ever encountered is Tcl/Tk. Everything else involves incurring more tedium and misery -- even Visual Basic or Delphi.

lowbloodsugar4y ago

Delphi is alive! https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi

airstrike4y ago

> The UI must morph and adapt and feel native across phones, tablets, retina displays, etc.

Isn't that a solved problem by the likes of React Native?

mkl4y ago

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Quoting:

Highlights

- Open Source

- Written in Pascal for Pascal

- Cross-platform

- Over 200 Components

- Extendable through packages

- Package Manager with Online Repositry

- Many Frameworks

- Converts from Delphi code

- Regular Releases

pjc504y ago

You can do "drag and drop form elements and type up the event handlers" with Visual Studio and C#. The problem is that Microsoft have rather lost their way on GUI frameworks - too many of them and the latest ones are either "to be obsolete" or "not finished yet" (winui3), and winui3 has broken the interactive designer.

Theoretically it can be multi-platform https://platform.uno/

trixie_4y ago

WinForms is the spiritual successor to VB6.

Tozen4y ago

I'm not sure where the "confusion" about your options is coming from because Delphi (Object Pascal) still exists. You can get the Free Community Edition from here- https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-dow...

If a person knows Delphi/Pascal, there is no need for them to use Visual Basic 6, unless that was their feeling about such. There are several Object Pascal options to choose from, where if a person was previously exposed to Pascal/Turbo Pascal/Delphi, they would be able to get back up to speed very quickly.

As you mentioned Gambas, maybe you are thinking completely free and open-source, which Object Pascal has such too. The most obvious choice would be Free Pascal with the Lazarus IDE. For those that don't know or are confused, Delphi is a dialect of the Object Pascal programming language (check Wikipedia or Embarcadero website to verify). So the closest dialect of Object Pascal to what is used in Delphi (the IDE), would be Free Pascal/Lazarus. You can even import and convert Delphi projects (including Turbo Pascal) to Free Pascal/Lazarus. You can get Free Pascal/Lazarus from below:

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=downloads

https://github.com/LongDirtyAnimAlf/fpcupdeluxe (this is a special cross-platform installer)

There are also other dialects of Object Pascal that are free and open-source, such as PascalABC, which is a variation for .NET. You can check it out here- https://github.com/pascalabcnet/pascalabcnet

vb6sp64y ago

Vb6 still works. I just put out a new version of my project today :)

js4ever4y ago

I love this, you are a great example of dark matter developer, using old and boring tech to deliver everyday some real value to businesses

heavyset_go4y ago

> Today I was thinking about Visual Basic 6, which worked more or less the same way.

VB .NET, which is just Visual Basic now, is like that and is "modern".

jonjon100024y ago

The first one I encountered from that same era was Interface Builder, on the NeXT. And it turns out it's still around, as part of XCode on the Mac.

wonderwonder4y ago

I remember Borland C++ builder being similar. Was actually pretty good to use.

TrackerFF4y ago

It's been 10 years now, but the Visual Studio GUI/Winforms designer was (probably still is) similar - and being .NET, you could get some pretty decent software up and running without too much code - depending on which language you used.

GordonS4y ago

I used Delphi a lot in the 90's and early 00's, but I never really considered it "low code", with the exception of the drag and drop forms designer of course.

PeterisP4y ago

It depends very much on what functionality you needed.

If you needed a GUI for database CRUD operations (which is a lot of business processes and a lot of webapps now), then you could do that with nearly zero code, as the built-in behavior was all that you needed, but if you needed some interesting custom script and just a button "run it" and a textbox for results, then of course that would be nearly all your own code.

tluyben24y ago

A lot of companies, especially from Russia and Ukraine, sold visible and invisible VCL components that you could drop on the form and configure. Depending on your functionality you needed very little or no code at all. We a lot of applications that way in the 90s and begin 00s.

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