Delphi is back!

[Mike Metcalfe]

Derek Keats talks about the decision by the DBE to dump Java and rather teach school learners Delphi. Plus schools must use MSOffice. WTF!

--

Mike Metcalfe

082 903 8268

mi...@webtide.co.za

www.webtide.co.za

[Johan Beyers]

Yeah, it's a disgrace. However, pitted agains java, Delphi doesn't look that bad....

--
Johan Beyers

Cell: 082 928 6657

skype: johan_beyers

     ujuzi: noun

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[Jean Jordaan]

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Johan Beyers <jo...@juizi.com> wrote:
>
> Yeah, it's a disgrace. However, pitted agains java, Delphi doesn't look that bad....

I was at a software expo a couple of weeks ago. There was a restaurant
front-of-house application there written in Delphi. Techies were
flocking over to marvel that it exists. (Crusty old techies, not young
ones.)

--
jean . .. .... //\\\oo///\\

[Mike Metcalfe]

My first programming language was pascal and I'm sure Delphi still rocks but it's old. Python is a algol 68/pascal derivative but it's got OO and functional language concepts built in. Surely all these "new" concepts should be introduced early in a programmer's life - one day all languages will be like python ;-)

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[JC Brand]

I would love to know the backroom machinations that were required to
push this through.

AFAIK, Delphi is proprietary and with a single vendor (Borland), so does
this mean that licenses will have to be bought from Borland?

I just recently read about the French Gendarmerie that migrated 37 000
desktops to Ubuntu.

The city of Munich has migrated all their desktops to Linux and the
Italian province of South Tirol now use LibreOffice on all their computers.

All the articles document savings in the millions of Euros.

And here in South Africa our government reintroduces Delphi in our
schools and further entrenches a dependence on Microsoft.

On 10/09/2013 05:49 PM, Mike Metcalfe wrote:
> My first programming language was pascal and I'm sure Delphi still rocks
> but it's old. Python is a algol 68/pascal derivative but it's got OO and
> functional language concepts built in. Surely all these "new" concepts
> should be introduced early in a programmer's life - one day all
> languages will be like python ;-)
>
>
> On 9 October 2013 16:43, Jean Jordaan <jean.j...@gmail.com

> <mailto:jean.j...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Johan Beyers <jo...@juizi.com
> <mailto:jo...@juizi.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, it's a disgrace. However, pitted agains java, Delphi doesn't
> look that bad....
>
> I was at a software expo a couple of weeks ago. There was a restaurant
> front-of-house application there written in Delphi. Techies were
> flocking over to marvel that it exists. (Crusty old techies, not young
> ones.)
>
> --
> jean . .. .... //\\\oo///\\
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Plone and Pyramid, South Africa" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
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> <mailto:plonesa%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Mike Metcalfe
>
> 082 903 8268

> mi...@webtide.co.za <mailto:mi...@webtide.co.za>
> www.webtide.co.za <http://www.webtide.co.za/>

[Christian Ledermann]

really? MS Office and delphi?
when there is
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/
and
http://www.libreoffice.org/

which are both cross platform and free.

Do the schools in SA have enough money to throw it out of the window?

I migrated a german secondary school from windows to Linux in a former job.
The pupils loved it. No confusion because of the allegedly strange interface
and so many more programs to explore.

The teachers hated it because it challenged them to
rethink their approach and could not teach along the lines
'now click the third item in the second menu' anymore.

And they had the full 45 mins of class, no bluescreen or lengthy reboots
which took away 15 mins when teaching on windows.

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:46 PM, JC Brand <janc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would love to know the backroom machinations that were required to
> push this through.
>
> AFAIK, Delphi is proprietary and with a single vendor (Borland), so does
> this mean that licenses will have to be bought from Borland?
>

not borland anymore: http://www.embarcadero.com/

> I just recently read about the French Gendarmerie that migrated 37 000
> desktops to Ubuntu.
>
> The city of Munich has migrated all their desktops to Linux and the
> Italian province of South Tirol now use LibreOffice on all their computers.
>
> All the articles document savings in the millions of Euros.

;)

> And here in South Africa our government reintroduces Delphi in our
> schools and further entrenches a dependence on Microsoft.

:(

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Best Regards,

Christian Ledermann

Nairobi - Kenya
Mobile : +254 702978914

<*)))>{

If you save the living environment, the biodiversity that we have left,
you will also automatically save the physical environment, too. But If
you only save the physical environment, you will ultimately lose both.

1) Don’t drive species to extinction

2) Don’t destroy a habitat that species rely on.

3) Don’t change the climate in ways that will result in the above.

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[Izak Burger]

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 6:46 PM, JC Brand <janc...@gmail.com> wrote:

AFAIK, Delphi is proprietary and with a single vendor (Borland), so does
this mean that licenses will have to be bought from Borland?

Small correction, it has changed hands a few times and is now owned by Embarcadero:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarcadero_Delphi

The new version does look like a decent product, you can easily build cross-platform mobile apps (andriod/ios7/etc). But that is not really a selling point for schools. The new version only has a 30 day trial, but one of my facebook contacts says the version prescribed for SA is one of the older ones. So old in fact that it might not run well on new versions of windows.

Like Mike, Pascal is also where I started my programming "carreer". Towards the end of my Pascal days I wrote a couple of programs in something called "Turbo Pascal for Windows", which was a version of Object Pascal, the precursor to Delphi. At that point, right when I was supposed to move on to Delphi, someone introduced me to Linux and wrecked it all... :-P

[Ewald Zietsman]

Interestingly:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Delphi is still in the top 20 languages according to the TIOBE index. It was 12 Oct 2012. Pascal is 14. COBOL is 20!

--

[Johan Beyers]

But losing traction at a rate that should make it functionally extinct in 2 years...

--
Johan Beyers

Cell: 082 928 6657

skype: johan_beyers

     ujuzi: noun

         experience, expertise - knowledge, intelligence - comprehension

[JC Brand]

On 10/11/2013 09:51 AM, Johan Beyers wrote:
> But losing traction at a rate that should make it functionally extinct
> in 2 years...

Not if the dep. of basic education has their way!

[Rijk Stofberg]

So, how about an avaaz petition then?
If we believe the Dept. is missing the point, let's tell them!

[Tobias Brandt]

I also thought about an Avaaz petition. How easy is it to get that going?

--
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking."

John Maynard Keynes

[Rijk Stofberg]

Seems pretty easy.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/

So, we gonna do this? What does the community say?

[Mike Metcalfe]

+10

Mike Metcalfe

082 903 8268

mi...@webtide.co.za

www.webtide.co.za

[Gustav Franzsen]

Rijk

Hier is goeie content om te gebruik vir die motivering wat saam met die petisie kan gaan:

http://dkeats.com/index.php?module=blog&action=viewsingle&postid=gen21Srv8Nme0_40332_1381256759&userid=7050120123

Ek dink dis iets wat ons MOET doen ... fok ... IEMAND moet wyer hieroor raas?  :)

Gustav

Gustav Franzsen
www.kwaailight.com
www.savingsometrees.com

[Ewald Zietsman]

Do it.

[Tobias Brandt]

There were some follow up posts on Derek Keats' blog:

Why Delphi is a bad choice for teaching programming in SA schools

http://dkeats.com/index.php?module=blog&action=viewsingle&postid=gen21Srv8Nme0_10500_1381334291&userid=7050120123

Quick response to the Department of Basic Education's defence of its decision regarding CAT and IT

http://dkeats.com/index.php?module=blog&action=viewsingle&postid=gen21Srv8Nme0_63907_1381426604&userid=7050120123

I also raised the issue on the Cape Town Python User Group list

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ctpug/9SgFsltlAUc

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Gustav Franzsen <kwaai...@gmail.com> wrote:

[JC Brand]

On 10/11/2013 10:47 AM, Rijk Stofberg wrote:
> Seems pretty easy.
> https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/
>
> So, we gonna do this? What does the community say?

Good idea +1

[Rijk Stofberg]

Excellent!
So here are the questions we have to answer as a start:
- What change to we want?
- Why is this petition important?
- Who can make this happen?
- What is the text of the petition?

[Jean Jordaan]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 5:15 PM, Rijk Stofberg
<ri...@upfrontsystems.co.za> wrote:
> Excellent!
> So here are the questions we have to answer as a start:

[...]
- Where can we steal from?

I'm sure there must be well-thought-through precedents that we can build on.

[Rijk Stofberg]

hehehe... thinking like an FOSS hacker :)
Good point Jean.

[Jean Jordaan]

To start with old beardy himself, for points of reference:

http://www.gnu.org/education/misc/rms-education-es-translation-to-en.txt
http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-why.html
http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-system-india.html

[Rijk Stofberg]

Here is News24's take on this affair.
http://www.news24.com/Technology/News/Anger-at-dropping-of-open-source-for-matric-CAT-IT-20131010

[Mike Metcalfe]

I like this comment of the News24 article

"... perhaps the public protector should look at the possibility of a bribe by Microsoft for the exclusive use of their products in schools."

Maybe we should address the partition to Thuli? 

--

Mike Metcalfe

082 903 8268

mi...@webtide.co.za

www.webtide.co.za

[JC Brand]

On 10/11/2013 02:08 PM, Mike Metcalfe wrote:
> I like this comment of the News24 article
>
> "... perhaps the public protector should look at the possibility of a
> bribe by Microsoft for the exclusive use of their products in schools."
>
> Maybe we should address the partition to Thuli?

Although I don't rule out the possibility of a bribe, I think focusing
on that would miss the bigger picture.

The bigger picture being that we don't want our schools beholden to
monopolists and subject to legislated vendor lock-in.

Those are the issues I believe need to be addressed.

[Rijk Stofberg]

Agreed JC.
I was also wondering about addressing the 2 issues separately.
We are potentially dealing with:
- proprietary software, ala MS Office, and the accompanying vendor locking, etc.
- 'outdated' programming language

[Tobias Brandt]

I agree that speculating about bribes might take the discussion away from the central issue of vendor lock in and open platforms.

From the replies I received on the CTPUG mailing list, it seems to me that the case against Delphi as a language is a less open and shut case although Derek Keats still made some good points against it.

However backtracking on the FOSS in both cases (MS Office and the Delphi compiler) should be opposed.

 

[Mike Metcalfe]

JC, I agree that chasing a bribery case is a dead end, but if the public pressure from a petition doesn't influence the Minister, Thuli may be the only one we can turn to - the public, our learners, need her protection from these arseholes.

[Jean Jordaan]

> To start with old beardy himself, for points of reference:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/education/misc/rms-education-es-translation-to-en.txt
> http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-why.html
> http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-system-india.html

This is a good entry page for FSF points on education:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnu-education-website-relaunch

Possibly educ...@gnu.org could also mobilize resources for a petition.
Conversely, I see http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-cases.html is
pitifully sparse, compared to all the experience that is out there ...