[From Bill Powers (2001.08.09.1445 MDT)]
Bruce Abbott notes that Borland Delphi 6.0, Personal edition, is available
free for download (and only that way). It is, however, 144 megabytes long,
a dialup download time of around 9 hours. I asked my ISP, Frontier.net,how
to handle it, and they recommended getting "Gozilla," which can resume
broken downloads and do other nice things. I downloaded it and started to
install it.
Reading the agreement, I noted that I would be agreeing to allowing a lot
of access to my computer. When the installer asked for my email address, as
well as MY PASSWORD (no choice), I stopped the installation and removed
what was there (fortunately the uninstaller worked).
I then looked for alternatives, and through CNET found some reviews. The
most-recommended program is GetRight, which does not install any spyware or
do anything else nasty. You can run it as AdWare (fairly frequent ads) or
ad-free shareware (frequent reminders to buy it), or buy it for $25 (no
interruptions). From a first look, the program seems really nice.
Delphi is sort of the successor to Turbo Pascal. I don't know much about it
yet, but if it's learnable it may be the answer to the demise of supported
Pascal 7.0.
Best,
Bill P.