Comment by cryptoalex
6 days ago
Delphi was so ahead of its time (a mandatory remark)... I've used Delphi 1 to 4 then moved on to other things. Using .NET since 1.0 beta, and it still remains my favorite stack. The project I am currently building is a software infra for building E2EE applications, and it requires a little bit of everything - mobile apps for key management, desktop/cli apps/client libraries for actually encrypting data, sometimes a web based app, and a zero trust backend. Using Xamarin/MAUI for mobile apps, Blazor WASM for Web, Blazor Hybrid / MAUI / Avalonia UI for Desktop. All of the frameworks have their quirks, so it may take a bit of time to learn your patterns, build your base classes, but after that you pretty much enjoy the productivity of a modern high level language.
- What programming languages and frameworks are popular for desktop apps? - for me - Blazor Hybrid / MAUI / Avalonia UI / WinForms
- Are there any go-to IDEs, build tools, or libraries that make development easier? - I use MSVS 2022, VSCode for .NET, IntelliJ for $$$ at work. There are of course UI control libraries, I am using MudBlazor for Blazor WASM / Hybrid, other than that I use built-in controls that come with each framework. I try to use as little as possible of 3rd party libraries b/c my apps are security-sensitive.
- Do the above answers change if you care about code performance or efficiency (whatever that means to you)? - in my case no, I am able to find what I need in .NET ecosystem. Modern .NET supports ahead-of-time compilation compiling to native code, and that helps to reduce start-up time which is important for Desktop / CLI. Ironically, for a long running processes, like a web service, the just-in-time compilation sometimes produces code running faster than ahead-of-time compilation, b/c it learns most common execution paths at runtime, and is able to recompile on the fly, optimizing for most frequent execution paths, giving a non-trivial performance boost in some cases
- Is native desktop app development still viable as a career, or are most greenfield projects shifting to web-based alternatives - depends on the app/use case. For my project, desktop is the first class citizen, but I am building E2EE apps, i.e. end-to-end-encryption apps, aka client-side encryption, and native / Desktop / CLI is a better fit for E2EE in most of the cases compared to web apps. For those Web apps that I have it is still E2EE but in the browser (still client side encryption)
>Delphi was so ahead of its time
Borland had an amazing knack of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Turbo C++/Borland C++ (with Object Windows library) was the best C++ IDE on MS-DOS in the early/mid 90's. All their tools were excellent. They were leading the industry in the usage of C++ on PCs and should have built upon that advantage; but then they lost it all to MS Visual C++ (with MFC library) when Windows came along.
It was one of the earliest and best textbook case of management screwing up a technical company.
I went to a talk by MS Visual C++ product manager, years ago. IIRC he said that Borland did all sorts of really difficult stuff to make their C++ compiler better and more standard compliant, whereas MS concentrated on easier and more marketable stuff like wizards.