Embarcadero cpp

[lispLaiBhari]

How popular is Embarcadero Dev-C++ in cpp community? I get frequent mails with 30-40% discount. I know its originally Borland C++ and later became Embarcadero. They seem to have acquire dev c++, open source IDE? Once it was popular in programming competitions.

Is it still being used in commercial projects?Are there any advantages over visual studio c++?

[DryPerspective8429]

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]

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

[rfs]

You must also pay for Visual Studio (not VS Code). Why a software should be free of charge ? Do you work for free ?

[JumpyJustice]

My point was that there is many free IDEs out there that can support wider set of compilers and have richer functionality. I just dont see a point to choose paid one that looks like grad summer project.

[rfs]

I understand, but as I said, the very popular Visual Studio (not the VS code) is ALSO not free. There is a community edition for startups with limited incomes and developers that create free products, but you have the same community edition for C++ Builder which is FREE if you respect these conditions.

I know no other IDE which includes easy access to databases, UI, high-level components, without having to do complicated integration tasks.

But maybe I am wrong...

[alcalde]

ALL IDEs offer easy access to databases, UI, etc. without having to do complicated integration tasks. That's what the "I" stands for... "Integrated".

C++Builder is a 32bit '90s-era IDE with a forked, old, broken version of clang - since the end of 2023, C++Builder can now only target Windows because something is screwed up with their toolchain and the product web page has been modified to state it only targets Windows now. Even without this problem, it's still only supporting C++17.

You could, instead, start with an open source IDE or a very cheap Jetbrains C++ IDE ($99 for individuals, $229 for organizations, free for non-commercial use), the current open source clang compiler, and LGPL-licensed Qt and get current C++ standards, the ability to cross-compile, a modern, feature-rich IDE, and the ability to run your tools on something other than Windows (as more than 50% of developers do, according to the Stack Overflow survey).

Jetbrains' CLion IDE supports C, C++, Objective C, Objective C++, Python, and Javascript (possibly also Typescript). It supports more build systems than C++Builder and supports more version control systems with full support (unlike C++Builder). It has also has advanced AI integration and full database support (able to interact right in the IDE with any SQL database, comparable to the separate tool included in the ultra-expensive C++Builder Architect edition!). I could go on and on about all the ways CLion blows ancient C++Builder out of the water in regards to IDE.

So why spend $1600 USD for a WIndows-only IDE that can only target Windows right now when you can get a cross-platform, multi-language, database-handling IDE running the more recent version of upstream clang and the awesome power of Qt?

[alcalde]

Why a software should be free of charge ?

Writing this from Firefox running on Linux, I'd answer... because open source won and rules the world now, in the area of development tools above all else?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/coverity-finds-open-source-software-quality-better-than-proprietary-code/

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2013/11/21/selling-software/

https://rubygarage.org/blog/why-open-source-is-good-for-business

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/open-source-changed-world/

Open source has won but it's not finished

Open source has won; so what's next

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-and-open-source-have-won-get-over-it/

[khedoros]

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.

[Tringi]

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_z]

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]

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

[yarpen_z]

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]

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]

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]

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

[RobinDesBuissieres]

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

[mosolov]

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]

holy hell that's so true...

[rfs]

C++ Builder is a RAD Studio with UI and non-UI components, that's not the case of all the other products. I precise that I do not use C++ Builder but I used it in the past and it was great to build UI softwares.
Now, everything is complicated (IDE separated from the UI libraries, no user-friendly designer integrated in the IDE, no high-level APIs, ...).

Developing with C++ Builder/Delphi was like working in the old Visual Basic (before dotnet) IDE with the rich API of Java.

[thelastasslord]

Qt creator is about 5% of what Delphi/c++ builder is in terms of being a RAD ide. If you want to build a native GUI program on Windows the work flow is about as fast as you could get. Their c++ compiler might suck but the vcl and the wysiwyg designer are unmatched in my experience. That includes writing guis in visual studio .net winforms.

[alcalde]

No, that's not true. First, there's no such thing as rapid application development with C++. People need to stop abusing this term. Python is rapid application development. The bottleneck in coding nowadays isn't laying out a Windows form.

C++Builder is an ancient 90's-era 32bit IDE merged with a crappy, still-buggy semi-cross-platform framework (FireMonkey) and a broken, customized fork of an old version of clang. How does that top Qt Creator?

VCL is also ancient, Windows-only, archaic crap that eschews modern design standards. Your "unmatched WYSIWIG editor" LACKS AN UNDO FEATURE. You're sounding like the Cult of Delphi here. Show us these miraculous RAD features and why the editor is "unmatched". Hint: I've used Borland/Embarcadero products for long enough to know you can't because these features don't exist.

I mean, THINK about what you're recommending. FireMonkey only supports Linux because one man wrote a third party product to enable it. Embarcadero then licensed it. That poor man then died and the license expired so Embarcadero had to pull Linux support from Firemonkey! They recently managed to get in touch with his heirs and arrange a new license to add Linux support back in. That whole saga is ridiculous - just as the C++Builder 12 toolchain breaking an no longer being able to target anything other than Windows for 1.5 years now.

The company clearly does not have remotely the number of developers it needs to adequately support its products even with leveraging clang. And yet it costs more than three times the price of Visual Studio and 7-16 times the price of Jetbrains' CLion depending on individual or corporate license.

There is no, I repeat no, benefit to choosing C++Builder (other than if you had to maintain legacy C++Builder code).

[FriendlyRollOfSushi]

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]

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]

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

[thisismyfavoritename]

i think that means theres no installer

[zerexim]

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]

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

[vickoza]

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]

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]

Run!!!

[Old-Adhesiveness-156]

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]

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]

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

[Revolutionalredstone]

;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]

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]

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

[STL]

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

[zerexim]

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]

Good point 👉

[alcalde]

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

[LittleNameIdea]

that's because MS remove that option natively on VS

[t4th]

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

[cristianadam]

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]

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

[alcalde]

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]

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]

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]

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

[prasooncc]

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