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Cross-Platform languages are not something new. For more than two decades, cross-platform development has been with us, but each programming language and technology evolved differently, adopted different architecture, and offered even more choices to consider.  Today we are going to talk about different cross-platform programming languages, why they are good and what are their disadvantages and, through this learn how to choose and use the right cross-platform programming language and frameworks. What computer languages are available for cross-platform programming? Most programming languages provide at least some form of cross-platform development. By this we mean that with one codebase – the program’s source code – you can target most major operating system and device platforms. They have their specific UI framework and architecture that can or cannot directly utilize hardware features and platform-specific functionalities. Here are the top cross-platform programming languages C++ Java Delphi C# JavaScript Dart It is not easy to compare these languages, but they all have great features and problems. For instance,  Java has a huge third party library pool with a high number of users but requires its Java Runtime Machine. JavaScript is everywhere but not secure & efficient as compiled languages. Microsoft’s C# has evolved so much, but its cross-platform frameworks are not the happiest. Dart with Flutter is getting attention because of its widget powered UI solutions for developing client-optimized apps. Still, it lacks third-party libraries and has problems with iOS development and is not an excellent choice for building server-side apps. C++ is a great choice, but it requires higher knowledge and practice about the ecosystem to develop apps fast. Delphi provides the fastest time to market option with high productivity when creating cross-platform native applications but has low open-source projects.  How to choose a cross-platform programming language? If you can efficiently utilise hardware components and system-specific features, that is a good sign, like accessing the camera, gyroscope, or OS-specific features.  Cross-Platform is one of the ongoing arguments in the software development industry. It is also noteworthy that Native and Cross-platform development is continuously evolving. While Native app development goes with a much more complex process, it stays true to the target platform, namely Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS or Android. To point out that these languages utilise a framework for building cross-platform responsive user interfaces and provide interfaces where you can use system provided APIs through them. Applications built with these frameworks should behave like native apps; if it does not, it breaks the user experience, leading to the decline of users from your product. For instance, applications built with web-powered components lack several ways that kill the native features, and it gets even hard to work with device hardware. What is currently happening in cross-platform development? Mobile market share is enormous, and most cross-platform languages target iOS and Android with their frameworks. Moreover, web apps can also do the job of a mobile app using technology like progressive web apps (PWA), which are web apps that act like a native apps albeit with some disadvantages such poor battery life and an inability to access many of the device’s hardware features.  One of the latest frameworks for building cross-platform applications is the MAUI framework by Microsoft. It is a .NET Multi-platform App UI framework for building applications with C# and XAML. It is the […]

Businesses are growing, and new challenges are rising. On the other hand, there is pressure to reduce costs by automating the tasks. The best solution is to lean on custom applications, but it takes a lot of time and is not affordable for most businesses. But do not make up your final decision about this trend. Here we present you collections of facts and information about the best low code platforms where you can grasp a new level of information about them. Solving today’s challenges means working smarter, not harder This ever-changing digital world has new ideas and practices every day, and with increasing demand for IT, businesses are required to take their things to the next level with these innovations. But it takes lots of engineering hours and overwork. Companies are overwhelmed with different software and application requirements and getting hard to fulfil all the software necessities. This is where low-code or no-code app development comes the saving. The learning curve of low code development tools is modest. Because of this, we see all these trends around no-code development tools for creating data-oriented apps or e-commerce web apps. These more rigid solutions provide a set of blocks to create a package out of it with quite limited customization options. This has both pros and cons. Software engineers can spend most of their time creating business-critical solutions for further automation when it comes to benefits. On the other hand, by entirely relying on these pre-packaged low-code tools, you might not get the results you expect, or run into intractable issues when you need something with more customization or is incapable of scaling-up like as your needs grow. Picking the right low-code solution is as important to efficiency and future growth as is recognizing that low-code is the smart choice for you to make in the first place. What is the future of the Low-Code Market? Business insiders are talking about the future of the low-code market. According to [Gartner], by 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of all application development activity. For instance, most online shops and e-commerce websites are built with low-code development tools. The lower level of technical knowledge required to out together an online commerce solution using low-code techniques has revolutionized e-commerce site creation. Until the arrival of this kind of low-code solution website owners required assistance from web developers with very specific – and expensive – development skills in order to create their online shopping solutions. Now it’s arguable that a business owner possessed of only a modest technical knowledge can create a reliable and relatively secure online shopping destination. This booming industry will probably generate revenue of more than $185 billion by 2030, climbing from $10 billion in 2019 and envisioned to progress quickly. [GlobeNewswire] Of course, low-code platforms do not fill up the software developer gap but can make things better by giving flexibility for business owners to start their business online. If you really have a significant user audience, maybe you can create more customized and scalable products with the best development tools like RAD Studio. What is RAD Studio? RAD Studio is one of the best developer ecosystems. You can use Delphi and C++ with FireMonkey or VCL frameworks to create cross-platform and native applications for Android, […]

Did you know it’s easy to make use of some truly excellent Python libraries to super-charge your Delphi app development on Windows? Adding Python to your toolbox of Delphi code can enhance your app development, bringing in new capabilities which help you provide innovative and powerful solutions to your app’s users, which combine the best of Python with the supreme low-code and unparalleled power of native Windows development you get with Delphi. Are you looking for how to build a GUI for powerful and visually stunning data visualizations? You can build publication-quality figures with Matplotlib on Delphi. Matplotlib can be used in Python scripts, the Python and IPython shell, web application servers, and various graphical user interface toolkits (including Delphi!). This post will show you how to build a Delphi GUI app, dedicated to the Matplotlib library. Watch this video by Jim McKeeth, as a comprehensive introduction about why you can love both Delphi and Python at the same time: What is the Matplotlib Library? Matplotlib is a comprehensive Python library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations. Matplotlib produces publication-quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and interactive environments across platforms. Matplotlib makes easy things easy and hard things possible. Create publication-quality plots. Make interactive figures that can zoom, pan, update. Customize visual style and layout. Export to many file formats. Embedded in JupyterLab and Graphical User Interfaces. Use a rich array of third-party packages built on Matplotlib. How do I get the Matplotlib library? You can easily install Matplotlib with pip: Or, you can choose conda install, to avoid complexities, as Anaconda is known as the most trusted distribution for Data Science related tasks: conda install -c conda-forge matplotlib conda install –c conda–forge matplotlib How do I build a Delphi GUI for the Matplotlib library? The following is the user interface structure for our project: User Interface Structure for our Matplotlib4D Project. Here is the list of Components used in the Matplotlib4D demo app: TPythonEngine TPythonModule TPythonType TPythonVersions TPythonGUIInputOutput TForm TMemo TOpenDialog TSaveDialog TSplitter TImage TPanel TLabel TComboBox TButton Navigate to the UnitMatplotlib4D.pas, and add the following line to the FormCreate, to load our basic matplotlibApp.py: Memo1.Lines.LoadFromFile(ExtractFilePath(ParamStr(0)) + ‘matplotlibApp.py’); Memo1.Lines.LoadFromFile(ExtractFilePath(ParamStr(0)) + ‘matplotlibApp.py’); You can Seamlessly Load the Matplotlib App Python File Inside the UnitMatplotlib4D.pas File. And make sure that the matplotlibApp.py is in the same directory as our Matplotlib4D.exe or inside your Delphi project folder. How to visualize data using Matplotlib on the Delphi app? Highly recommended practice:  1. This GUI was created by modifying Python4Delphi Demo34, which makes us possibly change the Python version in the runtime (this will save you from the seemingly complicated dll issues). 2. Add “Jpeg” to the Uses-list at the top of our UnitMatplotlib4D.pas code. We have to do that, because otherwise, Delphi can not understand the JPG format. With this correction, it should work. After that, the above change should look similar to this: Import Jpeg to Your Uses-list. And we can load JPG images into our TImage. 3. Set up these paths to your Environment Variable: C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38 C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/DLLs C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/Lib/bin C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/Lib/site-packages/bin C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/Scripts C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38 C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/DLLs C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/Lib/bin C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/Lib/site–packages/bin C:/Users/ASUS/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python38/Scripts 4. Creating a GUI for Matplotlib means that you will use Matplotlib outside the “normal” command-line process. You need to add these lines to all your Python code: import matplotlib import matplotlib.pyplot as […]

I’m delighted to announce that today Embarcadero has released a new version of its InterBase flagship database engine, InterBase 2020 Update 3. With this release, the company continues to improve the product’s quality and usability. UX Enhancements The most visible improvements are the user interface enhancements in the InterBase Manager utility for the Windows platform. In this release the InterBase Manager offers high-DPI support, and additional information like the version number and the current port in use, in an improved overall layout. As part of the UX improvement we have changed the fonts, colors, and overall look and feel, making these forms more modern. Noticeably, InterBase Manager now uses the PerMonitor V2 Windows UI model, and that has been migrated to and compiled with the latest version of Delphi.           The InterBase Manager window in InterBase 2020 Update 3 (on the right) compared to previous versions (on the left) In addition, the InterBase Server and Guardian property sheets have an improved UI (for example, the interface includes the entire path of the referenced folders rather than a trimmed version) and they are also made available when the database runs as a Windows Service.                           General Improvements Besides the UX enhancements, InterBase 2020 release 3 includes some additional features:  Expression Index can now be used to optimize query filters using STARTING WITH and LIKE predicates matching input expressions In IBConsole, the Object window and WISQL window now execute SELECT statements in precommitted reads mode, so they don’t stick to the transaction in the database. With this change, normal GC and sweep of obsolete versions will not be held back. InterBase 2020 Update 3 is also certified for use on more recent versions of the Windows operating system, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022. Quality Work The release also addresses customer support cases and internally found quality issues, listed in the Doc Wiki product documentation. ADO.NET Support for Change Views As part of the improvements to InterBase, the team has also added Change Views support to the ADO.NET driver. For more information on ADO.NET and Change Views, refer to the ADO.NET documentation, or read the announcement blog post at https://blogs.embarcadero.com/interbase-ado-net-driver-update-enhances-visual-studio-support/.  The new ADO.NET driver is available on GitHub and NuGet, as it is not part of the regular product installation. More Information You can find more information on InterBase and the 2020 Update 3 at the following links: If you are an existing customer, the new version of the product is available on https://my.embarcadero.com, otherwise you can download the trial version at https://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase/developer/free-download 

What is the Low-Code, No-Code Movement? As a programmer/developer or an engineer it’s not long now before you will see advertising and articles about no-code or low code development technologies or micro-services available in the market. A quick web search for “low-code development tools” and you will discover hundreds of different micro-tools that can help you build a whole store web app or any other e-commerce platform by connecting and integrating dozens of different micro-tools. But which is the best low code platform? In this article, you can find mature and stable technologies offering a low-code development platform yet still allowing you, the developer, 100% control of every aspect of the finished app and access to the full source code which you can customize – if you wish – in any way you want Are all low-code development platforms the same? Very definitely not. If you have been programming in a complex way and enjoying and suddenly someone says “hey, I can create a complete e-commerce store web app without writing any lines of code” then it feels a little like they are not a ‘genuine’ software developer. Developers write code, don’t they? Lots and lots of code. But when you think of it from the general point of view, they are developers, precisely non-coding developers. They solve problems and automate the job with pre-built micro-services.  Does this mean that this automated no-code solution will make developers who actually write code obsolete? Well, no. Lots of the no-code solutions out there offer what is in effect the customization of a set of standard features in a ready-made app. The apps stay within an online walled garden and, typically, the developer has no access to the source code and must pay a monthly fee to keep the app active and working. As soon as you stop paying your fee the app ceases to work. With those kind of solutions the developer never has access to any code at all or if they do it’s generally only a ‘slug’ or area in which to type in custom code. The paradigm is for you NOT to have the full source code, ever. In fact these kind of online behemoths are actually so heavily dependent on the cloud-based microservices they use to enable the app’s functionality that they couldn’t provide the developer with source code even if it was decided that this was a good idea. It’s not only part of their business model, it’s actually not even feasible. There are better solutions which give the control of the apps back to you and yet still offer a low-code/no-code way of creating software applications. The best solution is one which leverages online services and low-code solutions while retaining full control at the developer level. Why do low-code tools matter? If you want your product to be in the market as soon as possible, trying ready-baked cloud services could be a great choice rather than building everything from scratch. For instance, APILayer provides dozens of different neatly packaged services that you can easily integrate into your platform to handle Or you can look at components like CData with FireDAC. CData is a low-code data integration component set. You can quickly build applications that read and write live data from popular on-premises and cloud data sources with RAD Studio. Take […]