Delphi Ruined him

This is a gr8 quite funny and stressed post from Warren Postma I found while browsing:

 

Periodically I get a notion to explore the wide world of other
development tools out there.   Every time I try, I get frustrated, and I
give up.  Partly I think it's because my brain has locked into Delphi
mode so tightly that I can't think of anything else.  Partly it's
because Delphi has spoiled me rotten, and I'm absolutely floored by the
stuff that I have to deal with when I try to use any other tool.  Now
the reason I'm looking around for a new development tool to learn, is so
I can have a tool for writing cross-platform code, hopefully that will
work on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Has anyone else been in this spot, and had a look around? What did you
do?  Did you plan to have an affair with another language, and then come
home happily to Delphi, knowing it would still have you back again?

- I tried Java again recently. I was really impressed by NetBeans and
the new "matisse" GUI builder.  I am not at all impressed by Eclipse,
although I like the SWT framework the gui-builders for Eclipse that are
any good are quite expensive, and I don't feel like paying $$$ just to
play around and learn the new tool.

- I tried a few Smalltalks, because as we all know, Smalltalk should
have been a really important and powerful programming languages, but for
some reason, it never achieved success. There's Dolphin, for which a
free version exists, and there's Squeak, which is entirely free. Both
are really interesting to play with, but I must admit my brain is so
wired for the procedural style of coding that I can't bear to write a
for-loop in Smalltalk, or send messages between integers. It just seems
weird and wrong to me.  And closures and stuff.  And I think that at
this point, learning Smalltalk is about as pointless as learning COBOL.

- I'd try a LISP, but I have no idea whether a LISP gui builder RAD tool
even exists. Perhaps LISP programmers can't be bothered to look up from
their latest EMACS macros-that-generate-macros-that-generate-LISP-code,
in order to consider the needs of the GUI-building population.

- I downloaded MS Visual C# express, but I don't like DotNet, and I'd
rather not learn another Windows-only tool. Delphi does fine for
Windows. I'd really like to learn something that gets me free from
Windows completely.  Maybe DotNet is the way to go, and I should learn
to love C#, and hope that MONO achieves maturity.

- I really like Python, but every single python gui framework seems too
full of accidental complexity, or too ugly, or both. Tcl/Tk is ugly. 
wxWindows is really hard to learn.  QT is licensed in a way that makes
using it on Windows cost a lot of money.  BOA constructor is a neat toy,
but I haven't been able to do anything useful with it yet.

- For confirmed delphi bigots, such as myself, perhaps Lazarus is the
right way to cross-platform myself, but as much progress as Lazarus has
made, it's still not ready for prime time; it lacks packages, and the
LCL/FCL components/code-libraries are rather klunky and limited in
features when compared with the VCL.

So what did YOU do last time you felt like trying another developer
tool? Can you find it in your heart to say anything good about any other
development tool? Or are you a crabby old Delphi guy like me, dyed in
the wool, and unlikely ever to repent?

Warren

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