Dev-C++ Is a Low Memory Windows Native C++ IDE Built in Delphi

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/dev-c-is-a-low-memory-windows-native-c-ide-built-in-delphi/

by xeeeeeeeeeeenu • 6 years ago

154 80 6 years ago

blogs.embarcadero.com

turminal• 6 years ago

I loved this thing back when I was using Windows. Brings back good memories to hear about it again.

(good memories of the IDE, not the OS)

jolux• 6 years ago

Big fan of CLion myself but I think that serves a different niche.

marktangotango• 6 years ago

Dev-cpp, mingw, and allegro where my gateway drug back in 2000 or so, nice to hear it’s still around.

vageli• 6 years ago

Dev-cpp, mingw, and allegro where my gateway drug back in 2000 or so, nice to here it’s still around.

Same, when I saw Dev-cpp, my first thought was "bloodshed.net"; I'm glad to see a fork alive and well. This IDE in particular was a stepping stone/turning point in my career.

rualca2• 6 years ago

Me too. I haven't heard anything regarding bloodshed dev-c++ for ages, perhaps over a decade by now. Talk about a blast from the past. I still recall cutting my C++ teeth with dev-c++ writing small opengl+win32 apps with it, and struggling to find where the bloody triangle was showing up. Using dev-c++ made that experience much more enjoyable. Good times.

knighthack• 6 years ago

Blast from the past for me too - especially the 'bloodshed' part. Haven't heard that name in years.

dkh• 6 years ago

Same here! I went to a computer camp in 1999 (age 12) and started learning C++. Not able to pay for either CodeWarrior (what the camp used) or Visual C++, I stumbled across Dev-C++ on bloodshed.net and for years it became my go-to. Memories.

purplecats• 6 years ago

yes, same! I remember being a child and thinking it was so bizarre that they called it "bloodshed" dev c++ but i didn't care, i was having the time of my life.

cipherboy• 6 years ago

Same, middle school here. Took a game dev course over the summer through the local technical college. The book recommended it, IIRC. Ran it the little bit I was still somewhat on Windows before switching fully to Linux. Now it is vim and gcc...

ytch• 6 years ago

Me too. IIRC, there is no free IDE on windows at that time. I used Turbo C and Visual studio 6/.NET at school. Then I find Dev-C++, finally I can code anywhere.

seba_dos1• 6 years ago

I'm still using Allegro to make games (although it's worth noting that it received a major overhaul with Allegro 5).

wheresmycraisin• 6 years ago

Me too. If only I had a better book than Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours or whatever, I might've been a decent programmer.

rodarmor• 6 years ago

Same! (Although not allegro.) It's so good to know that various forks of Dev-Cpp are still kicking around.

macksd• 6 years ago

This is the same wave of nostalgia I felt a little while ago when there was a post about the Digital Mars compiler...

dkersten• 6 years ago

Swap allegro with SDL and you’ve got my start to programming, at age ~14.

FpUser4• 6 years ago

On Windows it is mostly meh in my opinion as it is hard to compete with the Visual Studio feature wise. Had they ported it to Linux I'd be way more interested. I am not particularly fond of native C++ IDE choices on Linux. Currently using CodeLite for that purpose.

arvindamirtaa4• 6 years ago

You double click the icon. And then you start typing code. Visual Studio has never been quite that fast.

It may not have as comprehensive a feature set as VS. But it's an excellent hackable IDE for enthusiasts.

stelonix2• 6 years ago

I will have to disagree here. Visual Studio's C++ tools are fundamental for any C++ development beyond toy "hello world" and prototypes. I've been a Linux user for 8 years now and my biggest pain is the lack of a proper C++ IDE with decent debugging. Even if you forget an IDE, there are no decent debuggers[0][1].

[0] https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/looking-for-debugger/

[1] https://scattered-thoughts.net/writing/looking-for-debugger-...

FpUser4• 6 years ago

I just checked. From cold start it takes 3 seconds for me to start typing in Visual Studio in my current project.

Dev C++ might be faster in this particular matter (been a very big while since I've used it so can't really verify) but I would not trade loosing 3 seconds a day for the whole shebang of features that are way more robust and plentiful in Visual Studio.

yulaow• 6 years ago

I used kdevelop a long time ago and really loved it. I heard it also improved a lot recently

thrower123• 6 years ago

At the time when VC++ 6 was the standard, it was worth frigging with Bloodshed if you didn't have $$$, an MSDN subscription, or some other access. Once there were the Express Editions and now VS Community Edition, it's really hard to justify the hassle for a second-rate set of tooling, unless you enjoy shaving yaks.

bra-ket• 6 years ago

wow, Delphi, that brings back memories. It must be one of the most mature products on the market by now.

the IDE looks awesome btw, I guess the main advantage vs. VS is that it's hackable.

sedatk2• 6 years ago

How is it more hackable than VS?

7thaccount• 6 years ago

I don't think Visual Studio is "hackable" at all. Are you thinking of Visual Studio Code? Aren't the two very different? The first is a very large and commercial Windows application written by Microsoft and the latter is a free/open-source IDE with numerous plugins written as an electron app.

lykr0n• 6 years ago

I have to wonder- why are there photoshopped stock pictures featuring the IDE?

brnt• 6 years ago

Somehow the IDE being written in Delphi makes a good fit with stock imagery. Maybe because both appeal to a certain audience?

arvindamirtaa4• 6 years ago

I've probably used 2 dozen IDEs over the entire time I've been writing code. But Dev-cpp will ALWAYS have a special place.

gundisclosed• 6 years ago

I was going back to home town from college and we were not having internet at home. I remember I downloaded Dev-c++ before going back and a book on c++ just for fun. Compiling my first program took 2 days ( no net, no similar friend circle ) !! Best 2 days of my life.

Dev-c++ was my first proper IDE, happy to see it around.

dukeofdoom• 6 years ago

I was a big fan of Delphi.Would be interested in a python IDE that could build phone apps from them.

fmxexpress2• 6 years ago

There is a Python IDE built in Delphi called PyScripter. Doubt it has anything specific for phone apps though.

https://github.com/pyscripter/pyscripter

edwinyzh• 6 years ago

This is another fork with different set of active commits: https://github.com/royqh1979/Dev-CPP

black3r• 6 years ago

I remember this as total pain to use compared to CodeBlocks 10 years ago, but if Embarcadero improved it and kept it low memory it can be pretty usable in our schools which often have 10 years old PCs with 2GB of RAM etc...,

deaddodo2• 6 years ago

I remember thinking the reverse, 14-15 years ago.

iKlsR• 6 years ago

Exactly. Dev was so light, CB seemed clunky and dated to me. I had Dev on my flash drive and all my projects (didn't know about VC 2007).

rualca2• 6 years ago

I remember this as total pain to use compared to CodeBlocks 10 years ago

We have radically different memories then. Bloodshed dev-c++ was always the lightest and snappiest C++ IDE around.

jariRG• 6 years ago

I think the 10 years is the key here. 15+ years ago the DevC++ was a gem, lightweight, fast usable IDE. But 10 years ago there was the free VSExpress out (not even the first, 2005 and 2008) which was far superior to DevC++ imho. (edit: on Windows)

dartharva• 6 years ago

TDM-GCC is such a better solution for Windows than normal MinGW ports. Geany + TDM-GCC is an ideal setup for introductory programming.

zabzonk• 6 years ago

I used to recommend TDM, but it doesn't get updated very often. These days I would say that https://nuwen.net/mingw.html is a much better bet, particularly in view of all the libraries that come with it.

lefty24• 6 years ago

Does it have a step by step debugger with automatic variable visualisation? If it had that feature then it would be a killer ide for c++.

rawland• 6 years ago

What's a decent Delphi (Object Pascal) IDE for *nix?

DominikD• 6 years ago

Lazarus is great.

vram223• 6 years ago

Yes. Example small app I created using it: Digital Clock created in FreePascal / Lazarus:

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2017/04/digital-clock-created-in...

ochrist• 6 years ago

Lazarus and Free Pascal are the free and open source alternatives to Delphi. There's also FMXLinux:

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/create-powerful-linux-applicat...

Source: I'm a satisfied user of Delphi, but only currently uses Professional and haven't tried out FMXLinux yet.

H_Pylori• 6 years ago

Back in the day, Dev-C++ was the ideal IDE for the C/C++ beginner. Simple, easy to use and very light in term of resources. I remember being able to run Dev-C++ on a 166Mhz Pentium I with 32Mb of RAM (which was hopelessly obsolete even by then). You could even install C libraries automatically as DevPaks.

stephen822• 6 years ago

I remember replacing it with wxDevC++ [1] in our university labs.

I was really awesome and our students loved it a lot.

[1] http://wxdsgn.sourceforge.net/

stephen822• 6 years ago

Darn typo! /facepalm...

IT was awesome, not "I" -_- ugh my nerves!

Stierlitz• 6 years ago

Any particular reason why these two posts were rendered dead?

-------

H_Pylori 1 hour ago [dead] [–]

-------

ku-man 9 hours ago [dead] [–]

Wow, Dev-C++...

Let me see 2004 to 2020... I am old...

lfowles• 6 years ago

Looks like something in their post history got them the equivalent of shadowbanned on HN.

ksec• 6 years ago

First one is no longer dead so it was rescued. Second one doesn't add anything useful.

I am not sure if all these are manual or some sort of flag / downvoted automated process. But generally speaking it is doing a pretty good job.

anta40• 6 years ago

Ahh.. nice to know after many years, eventually it's updated.

It's my IDE of choice many many years ago when I just started learning C/C++ on Windows.

Karliss• 6 years ago

I wonder what's the motivation behind this fork. Embarcadero is the company currently maintaining and selling Delphi dev tools. They also have their own commercial C++ IDE. Is it treated as demo App for their own toolchain.

dunce2020• 6 years ago

Embarcadero Dev-C++ has a low memory footprint because it is a native Windows application and does not use Electron.

Seems like they're using it as a VS Code offering/counter.

pjmlp• 6 years ago

Which is great, looking forward to have less Electron fat on my computer.

fmxexpress2• 6 years ago

One reason is that it made a great case study for modernizing an app from Delphi 7 to the latest version.

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/embarcadero-dev-c-successfully...

gordaco• 6 years ago

Wow, Dev-C++. Not the very first IDE I used (that would be Div2), but at least the very first IDE I needed to use for academical reasons, back in 2001. This is the IDE where I started committing serious mistakes, i.e. the ones that make a lightbulb turn on when you finally solve them.

vram223• 6 years ago

I used it lightly. It was nice. Remember it being fast at least for my light usage, compiling simple UNIX-style commmand-line utilities (to achieve small tasks) that I used to love to write on Windows - and still do :)

vram223• 6 years ago

While I'm on the subject of command-line utilities, here is a post on my blog about a tutorial I wrote for IBM developerWorks on the topic of "Developing a Linux command-line utility" in C:

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-ar...

vkaku• 6 years ago

Nicely done. There were many a times I had wished they had shipped this to Linux as well :)

Dev-C++ Is a Low Memory Windows Native C++ IDE Built in Delphi

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