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Delphi Renaissance

Posted by Hemos on from the back-from-beyond-the-pale dept.

bongo69 writes "The TIOBE Programming Community Index is reporting that Delphi is experiencing a revival, this coincides with Borland recently releasing Delphi 2005 allowing users to target both win32 and .net platforms, which to some, is a welcome alternative for .net developers reluctant to use Microsoft Visual Studio or the opensource alternative SharpDevelop."

2 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Languages die for a reason by ites · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The reason is only rarely technological. Borland's languages, from their Turbo- series onwards, were always significantly better than Microsoft's, but the market chooses tools based mainly on intertia and marketing. Microsoft advertised their way to dominance. Remember that so-called "Visual C/C++" was simply a wrapper around a few poor tools, with Visual Basic being the only component-based system, producing slow interpreted code, while for yearsBorland were producing fast compiled OO apps with Delphi.

    There's a reason why some people dislike using MS tools and adore Borland's tools. Often, though, the developer does not have the say in such choices.

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  2. Price and licensing killed Delphi by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Delphi is some kick-ass technology. It's a solid language, it compiles like *lightning* (essentially instaneous since ~1997), zero link times, and the provided libraries are great. Maybe not greater than .net, mind you, but an excellent alternative that was there many years earlier.

    Delphi used to be the darling of the small developer and hobbyist programmer. Not only did you get all of the above benefits, but the standard edition was only $70. An absolutely brilliant alternative to Visual C++ and Visual Basic.

    But then Borland quietly upped the price and changed the licensing. It used to be Standard for ~$70, Professional for ~$500, Enterprise for ~$1000. Then they changed it so the cheapest edition you could use in a commercial environment was $1000+. The only other version is Personal, around $100, but it is strictly license-bound to be used for learning the language and writing applications that other people don't use. Borland essentially made a one-line change to the license that forced programmers to jump to a product that costs 10x more. The result? Delphi web-sites and tutorials and hobbyist-written programs in Delphi dropped like a rock. Too bad, Borland.