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Top 10 Reasons to be a Delphi Developer

I found this article on the top 10 reasons to be a Delphi developer. I’m curious what your top reasons to be a Delphi developer would include.

Top 10 Reasons to be a Delphi Developer

DelphiThe job of a software developer is pretty interesting. You learn programming languages to develop a variety of software to digitize the world, but while doing this, you sometimes fall into situations where a small error takes away your sleep for many days and nights. The best of this experience comes out when you actually find the solution and give a tap to you with a smile on your face saying “OMG! Was this small issue making me restless?” It may happen with any software developer, but the final outcome is always pleasing that is why the job of a software developer is pleasing the youth across the globe.

Depending upon the programming languages you have studied and implemented the chances of being stuck in a small issue may vary. A complex language may get you restless nights many times during a software development. On the other hand, an easy programming language with simple syntax writing and other useful features can turn your life as software developer into a life that everyone would love to have. Delphi is such a programming language, which is known-as one of the easiest programming languages with easy-to-write syntax.

Top 10 Reasons to be a Delphi Developer

If you want to be a software developer, you may not want to start with a difficult language, which puts your morale down. So, to keep your passion of being a software developer up with full enthusiasm, starting with Delphi programming language will be a brilliant option. Starting your career as a Delphi Developer brings you several benefits.

Let us have a look at some of the top reasons to understand why you should be a Delphi Developer:

  1. It is a combination of programming language and Software Development Kit (SDK), which allows application development for desktop, mobile, consoles, and web.
  2. It is a simple programming language with clear syntax.
  3. Code written in Delphi, is easily readable; for example, you can concatenate strings using the “+” sign rather than any function.
  4. Documentation of Delphi is well-organized to help you give a quick start.
  5. Comes with an Integrated IDE, which allows you to easily develop GUI using drag & drop, addition of event handlers, and many other features.
  6. Supports real-time testing, making it easier and faster to find and fix issues.
  7. Supports Rapid Application Development (RAD) with features, such as an application framework and visual window layout designer.
  8. Supports client-server architecture and SQL databases.
  9. Supports complete Windows API.
  10. Allows creating components for easy integration in the IDE.

37 replies on “Top 10 Reasons to be a Delphi Developer”

Delphi is too expensive. There needs to be a Community version. It needs to be free to encourage hobbyists and open source projects.
Embarcadero continues to price themselves out of the software market with product SKUs and prices that only work for them and not their customers.

Doesn’t matter how good the software is.

Sometimes it’s not very easy for us to use Windows API. Can someone show me how to use the Windows Pointer API or the Realtime Stylus API from Delphi?

I remember times when I was eligible to upgrade some 3-5 yrs after the purchase (Early D 32-bit versions). Now 2 yrs after XE5 purchase I am out 🙂 Not enough time to even learn about new techniques and features. Definitely a step backward. I wonder whether this policy change of embt proved profitable or not.

Same feelings here regarding the heavy price. After much saving and finally upgrading to XE8 Pro(Including Mobile Add-on which added more on the price), I was out of pocket to take the software assurance. Mid year fixes came out for the IDE and I can not apply them, so I need to keep on working on the buggy IDE whilst I know there is fix, but I can not afford it!

Now Berlin is out and the only option for me is to upgrade both XE8 Pro and the Mobile including Software assurance subscription for a year. All of that is too expensive! Embarcadero, how about, “If you have any version of Delphi XE and any additional Add-on, upgrade to Berlin and only pay for the XE8 Pro upgrade and we will include the Add-on and one year’s subscription for updates on Berlin, but limited to only Berlin”?

You have my email, you are welcome to contact me. Yours faithfully since Delphi 1.0

My top reason (and I was there for D1 beta – VBK) was that it was the best way to target the dominant server and workstation platforms with native code until Linux took off and Delphi took a detour into FMX. I have XE6 and I haven’t fired it up in nearly a year (let alone considered upgrading) because it can’t target Linux, let alone IoT microcontrollers. FreePascal/Lazarus is way ahead of Delphi if you aren’t particularly interested in Android or iOS (I develop for both, but not in pascal).

I loved Delphi (I started using it in 1996) , I love Delphi, but now I am using Android Studio, Visual Studio and X-code…all for free….I would use Delphi for sure, try new feature, develop for mobile… if I can paid 150euro… no more…sorry my point of view…

Totally agree with Nico. Paying for new features ok, but paying for bug fixes: why? If you buy any other kind of product, you do not expect to pay for fixing non-working parts either.

Been with Delphi since version 1.0 and have purchased almost each and every version, though I have actually only used 1, 2, 5, 7, XE2 and 10 Seattle. The reason for not using all the intermediate versions I paid for, and my main gripe about Delphi, is that new versions of Delphi come out way too often. As i need to port legacy apps, begun under Delphi 1, migrating to a new version of Delphi takes me a year of waiting for component vendors to follow, to adapt the code, and to test it. I cannot afford the time and uncertainty of doing this every 9 months. I wouldn’t mind paying more, even 2-3 times more, to have a stable version of Delphi which would remain current for at least 2-3 years with updates and bug fixes to that version.

Like Nico Dreyer , I had been a daily Delphi user from the beginning (I beta tested the initial release for Borland). Borland truly valued loyal developers.

Whereas, Embarcadero show how little they care by demanding so called “valued developers” pay 80% of the full price to upgrade a FAULTY XE2 product I paid over $2000 for, just 8 months earlier.

By faulty, I mean over FIVE THOUSAND BUGS were fixed in the next release which I refused to pay for (again). The Australian telephone sales support rep made it clear “TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT”, that says it all. . .

I think Embarcadero’s upgrade policy is possibly the very worst in the entire software industry.

The number ONE reason to be a Delphi developer is to make Embarcadero wealthy. Many Delphi developers are migrating to Visual Studio and other up and coming tools like the open source “GO” programming language. Microsoft are welcoming ex-delphi developers with open arms and cannot do enough to help you get up to speed with Visual Studio.

Paul Taylor – Perth

To echo Paul Taylor’s feelings …

Just been on Embarcadero’s website. They have now included 1 year subscription update but still to upgrade from XE8 to Berlin 10.1 with the Mobile Add-on is $1399 USD! That is too much, if they just allowed the Add-on packs to be part of the actual product? Other’s do.

Embarcadero Management, this is why we are at the bottom of the list:
http://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html

I can speak 4 languages, English, Afrikaans, Sesotho and Delphi. I am sad to think that I might have to go back to 3.

Here in South Africa schools have reintroduced Delphi as a training language, but business seems to go C#. The number one reason is the cost of software, not the people’s salaries. Scary.

You have my email on record, you are welcome to engage. Just search in your customer database. I have been dealing with both local suppliers and the UK sales team.

Nico Dreyer – South Africa

I agree with many of those 10 points. For me also, I love the strong typing and fast compilation which brings many bugs to light right away. And single EXE deployment (at least on Windows) is wonderful.

Unfortunately I also agree that it’s just too expensive now. So I continue to develop on old versions of Delphi, and leave money on the table which Idera *could* get if the product was better value for money.

I have to echo the sentiments here that the software is just too expensive. Along with that, there have been too many releases since Delphi 2010, all of which required more cash outlay. Since 2010 there have been 10 releases, none of which were cost free.

I also find it annoying that the pro versions always require additional payment if you want the complete product.

Another disappointing practice has been my paid-for version of 2010 equates to nothing. In the past Borland etc. would always give their customers a price break for being a customer. Now an arbitrary date was given a few years ago, and my sales rep sent me an email saying “Upgrade now or your existing version of Delphi will amount to having a screen door on your submarine.” From that point I understood what Embarcadero really cares about.

I have written to various employees with my concerns and I have never been answered. I’ve been using Borland products since Turbo c and started using OOP with Turbo Pascal. I have been learning and using Java, Python, php and other related, FREE software. I have found they aren’t Delphi, but they work without the huge cash outlay.

I like how well its optimizing compiler works to make the resulting program one of the fastest there is. And while debugging you can inspect and step through the machine code line by line.

I only wish they included a line level performance analyzer like AQTime. The cut down version included with Delphi doesn’t do that nor does it optimize 64 bit. You have to pay big bucks for full AQTime to get that.

Well almost 100% people here said something related to the price. I hope embarcadero take these comments into account. Embarcadero can make much more money if they have a larger developer community.

“I like how well its optimizing compiler works to make the resulting program one of the fastest there is.”

That is simply not the case. The Delphi compilers produce very poorly performing code when lined up against comparable compilers.

Hey folks… I’m brand new to Delphi. Although there were a couple of Delphi apps where I previously worked.. started a new gig with a Delphi shop.

Looking forward to it.
😉

Delphi developer for 10 years (in companies). The reality is that I only updated applications that were soon written in other languages like Java or C#. Delphi (in real world) is legacy. This is the real market. All companies use mainly Delphi 7. So outdated IDE. I’m starting to hate my job already. Nobody invests in Delphi anymore. EBen if companies use Delphi, they can’t find developers so… ia going down for sure. Too bad. I liked it.

Best of luck Yves. If you have a large wallet then you will be fine. I am now trying to figure out how to get $1399 for a very needed upgrade from XE8 to 10.1 Berlin. XE8 is too buggy. And that is an upgrade, not a new user! Ouch!

Daniel, don’t give up. From your finger tips to the ears of the Powers at be at Embarcadero. If the pricing is better on the product more developers will return. I still find creating apps in Delphi a lot faster than any other language. I’ve been programming for more than 24 years and I am praying that the “old school” people involved in the product’s life cycle will give those people at Embarcadero a call and ask them if their ears have not been ringing?

If you are still concerned, what I can recommend is to improve your skills perhaps towards C++. There you can use C++ Builder, similar IDE. Then if something should fail, you can always go over to Visual Studio. There will always be a demand for C++ developers. The next option after that is C#.

So, Embarcadero, where are you in this discussion?

I have brilliant news!

I refer you to a current special just launched by Embarcadero:
https://www.embarcadero.com/radoffer

If you upgrade to Delphi 10.1 Berlin Pro, they will include the Mobile Add-on pack as well as 1 Year worth of Subscription! Limited time, but still worth looking at it.

Miracles do happen!

Thank you Embarcadero!

Same feelings as everyone here. Really cool platform and language, but waaaaaay too expensive. Make a darn community edition. And make it not buggy!!!

The new update 2 on Berlin 10.1 is much better. There is still quite a mind set change using Firemonkey and the WYSIWYG on Android and iOS in the designer view needs some attention but it eventually do deliver. You just need to play around and remember what works with what controls.
It does beg the question if developing in the native languages are not better? But then you have multiple source code centres to maintain.
To be honest, I am still of the opinion that Delphi/C++Builder/Html5 Builder etc, should have been the largest front-end dev community, but it is shrinking at a rapid rate; and that is where I would have started focusing on, as Embarcadero.
Maybe it is the pricing, maybe it is their arcade old style edn website, but the world is changing every two years and as a development tool house, they need to drive that change and not try and follow.

I agree with others – the price is too high.
But what I like on Delphi is the Starter edition which is free now (in 2017). It is perfect for hobbyist developers.

I use it together with RAD & Installer (http://www.rad-installer.com) to create Inno Setup installers directly in IDE.

Delphi + R&I is the most Affordable IDE on the World!

Thanks Slappy! Rad-installer looks like a nice product. Will go have a look.

Well, I’ve been reading through the replies and almost every one relates to the price. It looks like Embarcadero has made the strategic decision (or not so strategic!) to target companies and not people. The problem with that is the only people who program in it are people hired to work on Delphi projects, and you lose your base of people skilled in the language. Few if any people are going to lay out $1,400 for a programming language for casual home use, but those are the people who contribute to the skill base. Without them the language dies. Where is FORTRAN today? There needs to be something in between a free version that has no features and a $1+K “professional” edition. There was a time back in the Borland days when you could walk into a computer store and buy a fully feature Delphi compiler and development kit for $99. It had everything you needed to develop Windows apps, including database support. That’s when Delphi was exploding in popularity. Embarcadero needs to learn a lesson from history!

The problem with this list of reasons is that most of them are so generic they could apply to almost any programming language. They truly aren’t reasons to be a *Delphi* developer at all. They may suggest that whomever drew them up simply wasn’t familiar with any other languages.

> It is a combination of programming language and Software Development Kit (SDK), which
>allows application development for desktop, mobile, consoles, and web.

There’s a language and a framework? How is that different than most other languages today? C# and .NET, C++ and Qt, etc. This list doesn’t seem to have been drawn up in modern times or its author isn’t familiar with modern languages.

> It is a simple programming language with clear syntax.

Compared to…? Compared to C++, sure. But certainly not compared to Go, Swift, Python, etc.

> Code written in Delphi, is easily readable; for example, you can concatenate strings using the
>“+” sign rather than any function.

Ditto for this. Does the author think using the plus sign is really an exotic feature today?

> Documentation of Delphi is well-organized to help you give a quick start.

The documentation is NOT well-organized today at all and much of it is little more than function headers. Worse, new features often ship with the documentation incomplete. There are also no more commercially published books for Delphi; it’s not like I can walk into a bookstore and browse a shelf full of Delphi books to supplement the documentation.

> Comes with an Integrated IDE, which allows you to easily develop GUI using drag & drop,
>addition of event handlers, and many other features.

I often see this on “Why I Use Delphi”-style lists and it’s mind-boggling. Everything has an IDE today, and IDEs such as Visual Studio and JetBrains’ offerings are far more feature-rich and bug-free. For instance, Delphi was the last IDE in existence to add (partial) Git support. Even Microsoft, which makes its own commercial VCS, broke down and shipped Git support before Delphi did! And as of today you still can’t sync with a non-local repository. Meanwhile, even the free versions of JetBrains’ IDEs offer full Git, Mercurial and Subversion support.

> Supports real-time testing, making it easier and faster to find and fix issues.

Again… what doesn’t?

> Supports Rapid Application Development (RAD) with features, such as an application
>framework and visual window layout designer.

This may be a 1990’s definition of RAD, but not a 21st century one. A language with manual memory management, defined sections (a la COBOL), a lack of type inference, etc. is not RAD today. I’ve rewritten Delphi applications in Python (the benchmark today for RAD) and needed 1/5 to 1/6 the amount of code. *That’s* RAD.

> Supports client-server architecture and SQL databases.

Supporting SQL databases (for extra money!) is an exotic feature?!?!?

> Supports complete Windows API.

No it doesn’t. Its included APIs haven’t advanced since Windows 98 and you have to translate headers yourself for anything modern in WIndows.

> Allows creating components for easy integration in the IDE.

And then you have a language inextricably wed to the framework and the IDE. Better to have a library that you can simply import.

Any list of the merits of Delphi must take into account you’ve got a product that costs $3500 to target Linux (while Visual Studio is $500 or free for most), only runs on Windows, doesn’t even let you define keys, requires third-party binary fix packs to be installed to correct IDE issues, has code inspection facilities that haven’t worked for about 10 years, and a poorly-performing single-pass compiler. Its library ecosystem is frustratingly small – Torry.net lists a little over 10K components, most of which are outdated (D5-era) and/or shareware demos. C#’s Nuget repository has over 65K open source libraries and Python over 100K, for instance. Only in the Delphi world today to developers try to sell every bit of code they write rather than putting it up on Github (I guess they need to find a way to pay for the exorbitant upgrade fees!). VS offers you C++, C#, F#, Javascript, Typescript, Python, R and VB.NET for free for up to 5 devs and companies making less than one million dollars a year; Jetbrains IDEs tend to run from $89-$200 and an individual can pay $249 to get ALL of their IDEs and businesses pay $649, and one can even pay by the month. Jetbrains also offers discounts for start-ups.

Given this honest appraisal of things, it should be clear that simply saying “We have an IDE!” or “We can use SQL!” isn’t going to persuade anyone to give Delphi a try. Embarcadero needs to sit down and try to come up with reasons why someone would want the product in 2017 and improve the product as necessary to match those reasons.

>Delphi + R&I is the most Affordable IDE on the World!

Visual Studio is free for individuals and up to 5 copies for companies making under one million dollars a year. An individual can buy most Jetbrains IDEs for $89 or $249 the first year (then $199 then $149) for ALL of their IDEs. You can even pay by the month, making it $8.90 a month for a single IDE for an individual or $24.90 a month for all of them! The Python and Java offerings of JetBrains also have a free open source version.

None of this takes into account the many open source IDEs such as Eclipse, KDevelop, R Studio, etc.

Delphi is FAR from the most affordable IDE in the world.

Have you guys looked at Xojo? http://www.xojo.com. Multiplatform in every respect. Fast compiler. Decent pricing. Not the richness of Delphi when it comes to components but still worth a look. I developed several big Win projects with it. Easy to learn, clean and simple IDE.

Delphi is a very cool IDE and a cool language, but since Delphi 8 IDE has turned into shit.

I would really like the updated Delphi 7, with the updated language, with modern components, with support for x64, and also with support for XP, 7, 8, 10.

I’ve been a Turbo Pascal and Delphi developer since early 90s. Unfortunately, neither of this points actually make Delphi stand out among alternatives. The language itself is quite outdated and its native compiler results in a very inefficient code when compared to other native compilers, in certain cases even being several times slower; hell, even interpreted languages like Java seem to easily outperform Delphi now in simple algorithms. The current Delphi 10.2 Tokyo vanilla installation on a freshly formatted machine, barely works and is quite unstable – it’s a nightmare to work in with all the bugs it has.

Reasons to be a Delphi developer? None, unless you want to remain outdated and be out of job in near future with this sinking ship. I am using Delphi myself for work because have to pay the bills and can’t afford to lose my job, but I’m really depressed being stuck with this language and IDE. I regret that I went with Pascal and Delphi more than 25 years ago – should have gone for C++ or later Java…

11-“you’ll never find a job. So you better be an entrepeneur or something”.

Delphi is a great tool for me. I am running Delphi 10.2 Tokyo. I write database (Oracle) and GIS tools. (Niche) But I can run software I have written 20 years ago runs on windows 10 now (no .NET required). But if you were my son or daughter and wanted to be a programmer, I would not point you in the direction of Delphi, depending on what you wanted to do I would say PHP, Python, C#, Java or C++.

There are only 2 reasons I can think of: 1) The only job you can find requires Delphi and/or 2) You only know Delphi since you never bothered to keep up with the ever-changing software technology industry.

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