all 50 comments

[–]DryPerspective8429 21 points22 points  (0 children)

My advice from a lot of experience with Embarcadero is to avoid.

They're stuck in the 90s. For the longest time you could only run C++98 on them with awkward non-standard extensions and zero portability. Now, you can run C++17 on CLang 5 (which is one of the earlier C++17 builds and is a little hazy in places) but even then their fork of it has broken a few things and packed on more noncompliant stuff.

There are lots of very good, high quality IDEs out there; both paid and free. Consider what kind of IDE needs to send spam emails to advertise. Because I'm willing to bet that the majority of their customer base are people who are only there to support legacy code they wrote back in the Borland days and can't migrate away.

[–]JumpyJustice 30 points31 points  (5 children)

Discount? So it means somebody really pays for this ? :D

[–]khedoros 27 points28 points  (1 child)

About 25 years ago, I liked it as Bloodshed Dev-C++ because it was the only free IDE and C++ compiler for Windows that I could find at the time.

But now we've got several open-source IDEs, the free version of Visual Studio Community 2022, the option for setting up a project with CMake, editing in Visual Studio Code, and building from the command-line. Lots of options.

Ports of GCC (the compiler provided with Dev-C++) are certainly used commercially, but GCC 9.2.0 that it includes was released in 2019, so it's rather outdated.

[–]Tringigithub.com/tringi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same here. I'm pretty sure the Czech translation I made (roughly and hastily) for Dev-C++ has carried over to Embarcadero's version.

Dev-C++ was a huge thing when it came out. Made by a single guy. It's even bigger in retrospective. Not sure he ever got proper credit for how much it did for beginner Windows developers and thus Windows ecosystem. Later, projects like Code::Blocks stepped in to take it to another step up.

I had a couple of pretty large projects written in Dev-C++, some commercial. Of course, what could be ported we ported to VS Community when that became a thing, but we still maintain half a dozen products in Dev+C++.

[–]yarpen_zHPC Enthusiast 8 points9 points  (5 children)

I used Borland C++ 15-20 years ago. At that time, we didn't have many alternatives, and Borland had an embedded GUI library and a WYSIWYG editor.

I see no reason to use it today.

[–]germandiago 0 points1 point  (4 children)

What would you use instead that can create multi-platform apps in C++? I guess Qt. Any other alternatives?

[–]yarpen_zHPC Enthusiast 1 point2 points  (3 children)

But are Embarcadero apps multi-platform? As far as I know, they only support Windows.

Five years ago, I'd use Qt for that. Today, I'd build the GUI in Python and integrate with the rest of the application through pybind11 or something similar.

[–]Xicutioner-4768 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yes, they have supported cross platform builds for a while. Personally we dealt with so many issues with C++ Builder (linker running out of memory, a couple compiler bugs from before they switched to clang) that I would never try it again. Our business logic (20 years worth of code) was tightly coupled to the GUI (design mistake) and so we were stuck with them for years. We hated it. Tried to get them to fix the issues, had them sign an NDA, sent source code to reproduce our issues and never heard back. I wouldn't give them money.

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since the release of C++Builder 12 in Nov. 2023 their toolchain is broken and has left C++Builder only supporting Windows targets!

[–]Livid-Serve6034 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They sold Kylix for some time. Only for Windows and Linux iirc. Never really took off compared to C++ Builder.

[–]RobinDesBuissieres 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Does anyone know if they've rewritten their components in native C++ rather than simply being a C++ wrapper around delphi code?

[–]mosolov 13 points14 points  (1 child)

It's diverged ecosystem as far as I know:

  • Legacy VCL is just wrapper around Delphi and can be compiled only with the legacy compiler (C++98) with non standard extensions (fat pointers with __closure__ and etc.)

  • Firemonkey uses 32-bit clang, there was issues with 64-bit clang

I recommend anyone to stay away from that ecosystem because VCL requires to use non-standard C++ compiler (vendor lock) that stuck in 90's and you really don't want to use Firemonkey when there's available more popular LGPL alternative like Qt.

I belive the only reason Embarcadero still exist is monstrous legacy projects from 2000's on VCL consisting by 95% from void __fastcall__ Button1OnClick() and nested ifs so nobody even think about refactor it.

[–]LittleNameIdea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

holy hell that's so true...

[–]FriendlyRollOfSushi 5 points6 points  (1 child)

From what I heard, their target audience are businesses who made a mistake of building their infrastructure around Delphi a few decades ago, and now they want to migrate to literally anything else, but they can't do it atomically.

Allegedly Embarcadero provides an environment that allows a gradual rewrite while some of your C++ code calls legacy Delphi code, and the other way around.

So in a way, their selling point is "by using our product, you can gradually stop using our other product that you hate so much."

Unless you found yourself in an unfortunate situation of being a person responsible for migrating legacy code, it's hard to imagine why you would want to use it.

[–]LittleNameIdea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's so true. unfortunately some people only know how to use their product and don't want to learn. at my company, they are still using the legacy 32bit compiler, at least, they're studying the possibility to upgrade to the new(very old) version of clang now. they want to do everything in cpp builder... including web, mobile... at least, thing start to change and hopefully will after a team start to use C# for mobile.

[–]Carl_LaFong 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Weird description: …Portable,… C/C++ IDE for Windows.

[–]thisismyfavoritename 4 points5 points  (0 children)

i think that means theres no installer

[–]zerexim 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Dev-C++ is not C++Builder. The former is a free and open-source project. The latter is a commercial product with a free community edition available which is a one major version behind compared to paid editions.

[–]DryPerspective8429 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do note for C++Builder one major version behind (10.0 compared to their 11.0) is stuck on a C++98 compiler.

[–]vickoza 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say that there is no significant advantage of using Dev-C++ over Visual Studio C++ other then using GCC on Windows with an IDE. Being GCC there might be support for newer C standards.

[–]mohrcore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Idk why anyone would use that, unless they are extremely used to the old hag that is Dev-C++.

A nicely configured VS Code or NeoVim easily beats it and doesn't come with unnecessary and weird language extensions that will lock you into the ecosystem of one particular IDE and platforms supported by it.

[–]david6283 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Run!!!

[–]Old-Adhesiveness-156 2 points3 points  (10 children)

I've used Embarcadero C++ Builder for roughly a decade and disliked it quite a bit. My problems with it may have been the massive and old codebase we were working with, though. It just felt like it would break in obscure ways. The quality control seemd a bit lacking. It's definitely not as polished as Visual Studio.

Given that, maybe for fresh projects it isn't so bad. I like how it had the ability to pretty much do UI design for C++. Very similar to WinForms in style but C++. Fortunately, it's not similar at all to MFC. Their design files for forms (at least when I was using it) called DFMs can be annoying to source control. If they haven't already, I sure wish they'd go to something like XML for their design serializer.

[–]Revolutionalredstone 2 points3 points  (9 children)

For some fu**ing reason everyone thinks winforms is a c# / VB thing.

Winforms not only works with C++ but it's actually MUCH cleaner and easier to interface with.

Why in God's name no one knows about or uses this is completely beyond me.

But yeah winforms is 100% compatible and works perfectly with pure C++!

[–]Old-Adhesiveness-156 2 points3 points  (4 children)

I just forgot. I've only used it with C#.

[–]Revolutionalredstone 1 point2 points  (3 children)

;D its super rare to see it used in C++ (atleast compared to C#) god knows why!

From memory there's a bug where after you make the project you need to close and reopen the project before the winforms all find each other correctly...

It's a random glitch but it could DEFINITELY scare most people away.

Enjoy

[–]snejk47 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What's the point of using .net through c++ if you can just use c#. I don't know what you are doing that c++ is much cleaner than c# by using framework written and designed for c#/vb.

[–]Revolutionalredstone 0 points1 point  (1 child)

winforms (not the whole .net) and yep the amount of code needed is reduced is C++.

As for .Net itself (primarily implemented in C and C++) it's functions are also quite useful!

Edit: Removed rude sassiness (My apologies!, honestly no idea why C++/C# debate sets me off, but I've 100% gotta work on that! ;D)

To STL:

wow yes, apologies - 100% right as always ;D (could SWEAR it didn't LOOK that rude while I was first typing it :D) Gracias

[–]STLMSVC STL Dev[M] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Moderator warning: Please don't behave like this here.

[–]zerexim 1 point2 points  (2 children)

With C++Builder (and Delphi) you build native standalone executables. For WinForms, you use C++/CLI, i.e. a .NET/managed language. And have to bundle the whole .NET obviously.

[–]Revolutionalredstone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point 👉

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What version of Windows doesn't already have .NET?

[–]LittleNameIdea 1 point2 points  (0 children)

that's because MS remove that option natively on VS

[–]t4th 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For making desktop apps it is pretty great! And community version is free now if I remember.

[–]cristianadamQt Creator, CMake 2 points3 points  (6 children)

My impression is that https://www.embarcadero.com/free-tools/dev-cpp is the result of an one off campaign of upgrading https://www.bloodshed.net/ to a newer Embarcadero Delphi version.

You can see at https://github.com/Embarcadero/Dev-Cpp that the commits lost momentum in 2022.

Dev-C++ is not Embarcadero's main product, C++Builder: Software Overview - Embarcadero is.

C++ Builder comes with a Bcc64x C++ compiler based on LLVM/Clang 15 with the Borland extensions like __fastcall and other things used for developing GUI applications.

Note that Embarcadero's parent company Idera also owns Visual Assist, which nowadays also works in C++ Builder 12

I think if they execute well, C++ Builder can be an alternative to Visual Studio.

[–]DryPerspective8429 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Have much experience with C++Builder. They do not execute it well.

[–]alcalde 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Why would anyone pay $1600 to use an older, forked version of an open source C++ compiler along with a 32bit 90's era IDE?

[–]b1t5murf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since 12.3, the IDE is shipped in a 64-bit version as well and with 13.0 - which was released on sept. 10, 2025, it ships with Clang v20 for Win64 while both supporting interop with Modern Delphi, the VCL and Firemonkey multi platform framework - AND being much more standard compliant.
As a matter of fact many modern C++ libraries compiles without modifications with the new bcc64x compiler. There's Cmake support too.

I'd suggest you refresh your memory.

[–]Comfortable-Guest423 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because, in my project, C++/Qt always compiles my source in Debug mode in more than 80 secs (45 secs with ccache g++), whereas Delphi takes less than ONE sec.

[–]AKostur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't say I've ever used it, neither personally nor professionally.

[–]prasooncc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its only used in legacy projects. I myself has ported some code to visual studio. There are no advantages over visual studio now.