dxRAM - Richard Morris' DevExpress blog

What I am still looking for in Delphi is an application framework similar to XAF or even close.

I was a Delphi Instructor for Borland Australia for many years and developed commercial applications from Delphi v1=6. I moved to C# 2003, but reading stories like this makes me a little home sick.

The only problem that Delphi ever had is that it's not a Microsoft product.  

I, too, moved to C# in 2002 and felt very much at home in the language.  No surprise, as it (and .NET in general) was written primarily by Anders Heilsberg, the architect of the Delphi language.  Now, many of the benefits of the Delphi language (flexibility, language improvements in each release, easy component development, etc.) are manifest in .NET.  So, to Mark Brindle I suggest that C#/VS *is* the evolution of Delphi into a Microsoft product...

DevExpess QuantumGrid is very good component for Delphi but it missed the bidimode support

I work as a software developer for a small church management software company.  www.servantpc.com.  We have used Delphi for years and still use it everyday.  We are currently in development of 2 new products using Dev Express libraries and Delphi 2007 Win32.  Delphi is simple put the fastest way to built new desktop apps and will be for years to come thanks to companies like Dev Express.

To Boris Bosnjak:

I understand the whole history of Delphi and C# (In fact, I purchased Turbo Pascal for CP/M on 8: floppies, and used all versions of Turbo Pascal through to 7, I think).

I love C#, don't get me wrong at all. It makes me a lot of money.

All I was saying is that if Microsoft had done Delphi instead of VB, Delphi would have a huge following. All the years I was developing Delphi applications, clients would always want to know why I was not using Microsoft tools.

There are still a lot of language features in Delphi (Pascal actually) that should be in C#. Still, what can one do....

I gotta tell you, Delphi not being a Microsoft product was not its biggest problem. When Delphi rolled out in 1995, it was leaps and bounds technologically superior to the comparable Microsoft IDEs available at the time. A true object-oriented programming language, one of the first professional component-based development environments, exception handling, compilation to a Windows-based .EXE...I remember a demonstration where the presenter created a blue-screen exception that the Delphi IDE intercepted where VB's IDE required a reboot.

Delphi's biggest problem was that Borland refused to market Delphi to anyone else but the converted. The company decided with Delphi 3 to turn their customers into their primary marketing effort. They figured increasing their dependence on the word-of-mouth communication between independent and small development shops would be a better allocation of their marketing resources because the company's focus had shifted from the Windows developer to Java and the enterprise.

I started developing in Delphi about six months before Delphi 2. I attended every BorCon between 1996 and 2002. Delphi had a strong following domestically and internationally, but Borland completely dropped the ball with the corporate developer. We understood that Borland could not compete with Microsoft's marketing budget, but they only needed to make a token appearance so that it was easier for the corporate developer to present an argument to their managers that Borland was still a viable company and Delphi was a serious contender in the Windows development arena. Abandoning Delphi as my primary development language was a very difficult decision for me, because I was such a strong advocate for the product. Unfortunately, the Delphi job market in Los Angeles was all but gone by 2004.

It's hard to sing the praises of a product where the company that produced it won't even toot its own horn.

I would have to agree.  I've been hearing the Delphi is Dead thing for the last 5 years ... it must be a slow death ...

From what I have seen at a Meet and Greet with David I, delphi still has a bright future and there are some nice things planned.

Regards,

Stefaan

BTW: The guy revised his opinion and is back to Delphi

www.hans-eric.com/.../welcome-back-delphi

Cheers

I used to be a Delphi fan and spent my life in that IDE.  But when they released version 8, (first go at .Net), I went on the training course and the trainer opened the course by saying "of course, D8 isn't actually ready for production apps yet...!"  He was right - it sucked.

We spent the week learning C#.

After that, I realised there was a better thing than Delphi and it was C#.

No doubt Delphi will carry on for years and years - the amount of investment in it for existing apps will ensure that.  But it's missed the chance to ever be in the mainsteam, and the fact that it now incorporates C# in the IDE confirms it's now a "me too" product.  That's fine - it was originally up against VB and it beat the pants off that.

No language goes overnight - there are probably thousands of people cutting COBOL right now.  The real test is now much new development is taking place in Delphi?  Sure - lots of maintenance and version upgrades, but nothing [much] new methinks.

Richard, thanks for the plug on Toad for SQL Server!  (I'm a member of that team).  Although I have to clarify something.  Toad for SQL Server is written 100% in C#.  Although we definitely use DevExpress controls almost exclusively!!  WE LOVE THEM.  Toad for Oracle is the only flavor of Toad that is written entirely in Delphi.  Either way, we use DevExpress for just about everything.  Um, except for your Docking controls!  They are not sufficient for our needs.  We use Actipro docking library instead, they are much better than DevExpress, but we WISH DevExpress would catch up and show some love to the Winform Docking controls.

Thanks,

Lee

We use Delphi since the beginning. Also we use C#. We like using Delphi for developing clientserver applications more then C# due to our experience and libraries and framework. We do both situations. In case we need to develop an internet site we choose C3 with asp.net over delphi. In other cases it realy depends on the solution. In most cases we like the smal footprint of an executable and easy installation.

Anyway we are very hapy with the latest developments with delphi, because delphi 8, 2005, 2006 were versions we bought but did not use. The latest versions 2007, 2009 are good to work with. Only we miss coderush since the change of the ide. We do not give up to mention this, because I like coderush better then the implementation of codesnippets in Delphi.

As a professional developer I claim that Delphi is the best RAD Tool you can use. Many of my applications are developed with Delphi. They are the "Cash Cows" for my company. Why: Reability, Component based development, Small Footprint and runs from Win98+ without problems (if you know what you are doing).  And yes, there are many ignorant people who are out there: They don't know Delphi but they *know* all about it. I know both very well: Delphi and .NET. Delphi wins.

Richard, Sure Delphi is excellent and is the tool of choice for me but I would like to see LINQ and Object Binding to UI or Other Objects.

Will it be possible to bind DevExpress Controls to Objects directly in D2010 as it has Enhanced RTTI support? if not then is this feature planned in near future?

Hope you are doing well--it's been a long time!

You said:

You may have also noticed the recent testimonial from EC Software the developers of Help&Manual who use ExpressBars to build a new revolutionary UI in their Delphi application.

If you want to brag about them, you should first get them to fix their short-cut keys. For example, here is a screen shot:

www.tbinc.com/.../HMHotkeys.png

To get to Write/Left Indent I have to hit Alt-W-Y-1-0. Now how your control works is great, but how it is implemented in H&M--ouch.

I've worked with Delphi since 1.0, along with vb4, and later into .net and c#. By far Delphi is the best development tool I've worked in; although Pascal isn't my favorite of the languages. C# may be a better language but it doesn't make up for much in performance. I have more issues with the .NET IDE and third party components than I care to think about, even more so than I had with VB6. I really like the class architecture of .NET compared to MFC or Win32, but the performance hit is disappointing, especially with ADO.NET. It's flexibility is great but I have Delphi apps that run circles around anything .NET can produce. But I agree Delphi's failure was its lack of marketing after 2.0, as well as issues  with data access to other vendors like SQL Server.  

Component-based development, especially like that demonstrated here, is responsible for some of the worst Delphi code going. Binding a UI straight to any database construct is (and always was) a terrible idea. It was the worst thing about D1. Sadly, most of the Delphi world never got past that.

Mark, C# has quite a few language constructs that are not in Delphi. That gap continues to widen in C#'s favour.

Many machines do have .NET installed these days, and if not, installers handle that for you.

The "Delphi ecosystem" Richard talks about is looking pretty endangered these days, with many extinctions over the last few years as developers have moved away to other languages and platforms.

But most important of all, the Delphi job market, at least here in the UK, is completely dead. So, if you're a developer who wants a job, Delphi is probably not the best of all possible career choices.

I started using Delphi when it was first released. We tried VB but when I contacted MS, they said the bug I found wouldn't be fixed for about 6 months. End of VB. I did a lot of Clipper and wanted a product that could be delivered WITHOUT run time engines. I switched to Clipper for the EXE's it created and Delphi did the same. When you shipped a product, no extra pieces, just the EXE. I'm at Delphi 7, have Delphi 8 in the box. This will be as far as I go with Delphi. Several of my add on products have long gone out of business. And I'm too old to do a "rewrite" on a product that works. Make my living with Delphi 7 and no .NET needs or wants. Yes, Borland screwed up, bad management and got away from what made them great. I have no need or worry about them going under, I haven't contacted them in years. What could they offer me?

Thanks for the enthusiasm about Delphi!  All of our vertical industry products are written in Delphi, and we love it.

It might have been nice if you threw in a discount offer on Delphi-compatible components to celebrate articles, but now I'm just being greedy.

I do encourage you to be clear and helpful in displaying your own components.  I'm still vague on the difference between ExpressPivotGrid and ExpressQuantumGrid, though I think we could really make great use of the former -- or is it the latter?

Also, the illustration in this article for ExpressQuantumGrid is, I hope, just a capabilities demo of what all is possible.  If I actually put that display if front of my clients, they would either glaze over or scream in panic.

My first programming language was VB5.  Over the years I have been through almost all of the Microsoft languages.  At first I loved .NET, yet I soon realized that the world was not really ready to install and run .NET apps.

As the owner of a small software company; I can speak from experience:  Delphi is the king of RAD.  Delphi has given us the speed and reliability to make real money in a real world.

I am a Delphi contractor. I did some development in C#, some GNU C, but popular languages, you are small fish in a large pond. With Delphi, job pool is small, but developers pool is even smaller. So rates are good.

BTW, DevEx need to implement referral program. I go to new project, show them Quantum Grid and DevEx gets an order for whole bunch of licenses :)

As a student I used Delphi (student edition) but then I got a job that required C++. I miss Delphi (sigh).

I was with Delphi from the start.  I introduced it to our department (as a contracter) at UPS back with Delphi 1.  I headed up the user group in Atlanta (ADDG) for many years.  I was a Delphi evangalist until sometime after Deliphi 2007 came out.  I made the jump to C# around that time.

There is no doubt - Delphi is still probably the best RAD tool out there.  Thats said, I have to disagree.  I know Delphi and .NET - the decision comes down to cost, support and what I can make using it.   .NET Wins.   I can't base my decisions on what I like - I have to base my decisions on what is best for the client.  Every revision of C# closes in on what's it's missing  compared to Delphi and every revisions makes what it has that Delphi doesn't that futher ahead.  As much as it pains me to say it, Delphi is a dead end.   Not too many companies are going to start new development in it.  I can not in good faith recommend it to my clients any longer.

Delphi's biggest problem was Borland.  We rarely got any support from them.  The best thing that happened was when we got Charlie Calvert to come out - but that was about it.  

I'm head long into C# now  - services, web services, web sites, applications - I certainly miss a few things from Delphi, but I've nearly written everything I need to replace - including a datahandler that darn near mimics the fantastic tbetteradodataset.    I can't stand the way databinds work in C#, but that's about my only complaint.  Everything else, especially with extensions, I just love it.    Delphi rocks..but you just can't compete with Microsofts ability to 'rev it til works' approach.  .NET 4.0 is going to have easy to use parallel processing calls.  Is that cool or what?

I miss Delphi - but the abilty to write darn near anything in one language - it's nice folks.

BTW, the deployment argument becomes more and more irrelevant every year.   .NET libraries are pretty pervasive at this point - I don't think it would hurt a shrink-wrap product much to require it.  In another year it won't even be a question.

Not trying to defend C# or put down Delphi - but to suggest that Delphi is on par at this point is just rose colored glasses.  You won't find a bigger fan of Delphi than me, but I feel you'd be doing a disservice to a new coder suggesting they learn Delphi rather than C#.  Sure, you can make money with Delphi, but 9 times out of 10, it's going to be supporting old applications, not new development, unless you blunder into a Delphi shop.   I've gotten calls from companies to support current applications, but the rate was usually too low.

I'm sure a lot of people are going to disagree with me - and a lot of this depends on where you are coming from.  I've been a contract programmer for the last 15 years and coding professionally for over 20 , so I see this from a lot of different angles - I have small clients, medium clients and large clients.  There is NO way I would recommend Delphi on a new project - even in the couple shops that are currently Delphi/.NET mix - and to me this is a critical issue.  None of my contractor friends (all of them are Delphi people as well) would either.  So yes, there are delphi shops out there - but there are few NEW delphi shops.  And that's critical for survival.  No, delphi isn't dead, but it's stagnant.    I wish it wasn't so.  Delphi is a gem and it deserved better than to be abandoned by Borland.

I welcome further discussion on the matter.

Delphi is great but it's getting behind. First, the language it self. Where are all the new innovative changes? c# is miles ahead. Second, things like refactoring and TDD. .Net has a lot of options, but there is next to nothing for delphi. Even DevExpress stopped supporting delphi with coderush.

Embarcadero need to catch up on the language-part, and somehow the community needs to catch up on the productivity tools and supporting code, examples and information.

I for one am a huge fan of Delphi and write new programs with it on a regular basis. I'm also a new fan of DevExpress, having recently purchased the excellent Grid package.

While I program in other languages too, my favorite is still Delphi and I hope it stays around for a long, long time.

Why has the school system in South Africa chosen to teach kids Delphi ?

Its like an anti westerner, anti Microsoft decision that does not make sense.

@Revealer You can have a look at the tiOPF framework It is an object persistence framework where you can link your objects and objectlists to a (any) database. By using mediator you can connect the objects to the GUI. I wrote the mediators for the DevExp controls so right now we can link an objectlist to the quantumgrid or any other DevExpress controll. Displaying 100.000 or even millions of records in a grid is a piece of cake. All code is available as this is a completely open source project.

The world's most comprehensive clinical mental health aplication MHAGIC, is written in Delphi/Datasnap and also uses DevExpress controls for all grids and some controls. Love both products. A lot of health applications in Australia use Delphi currently. It's not going away!

Our upgrade path is 64bit and multi-platform.

Delphi's would not be died because of the many tons of users used this application and make a lot of money from that.

I've worked from Turbo Pascal 4.5 (DOS Version) until now we still used the Delphi 2009. None of problem when used this thing and distribution application from this thing ...

I'm happy with that, since i got some bad experience when using Microsoft tools like VB to built our application. Since the old version of VB should have to migrate to VB.net ... all is changed -- recoding ... when Delphi didn't change anything ... just upgrade, adding some feature, distributing and .. now with help of DevExpress component make our application is better than before ...

> Why has the school system in South Africa chosen to teach kids Delphi ?

Russian schools have also bought 1 *million* licenses for Delphi.

Been using Delphi since V1 and used Paradox before that.

Delphi refuses to die and rightly so. I have built a successful software house based on Delphi and use DevExpress, REMObjects etc. Can't comment on C++ or C# as I have never needed to use them. In the end a language is just a language and it is the development environment that makes one 'better' than another in that respect Delphi delivers.

The problem is not Delphi (I used and loved it until D7). The problem is Borland. I bought D8 and became never productive. I bought D2005 andbecame never productive. Then they asked me tobuy D2006 and I refused. Why pay for a third update from D7 when the first and the second where unusuable ? I t was Borland who brought me to MS and C# Other mothers have beautiful daughters, too.

@Birger Jansen, I already looked at tiOPF a year or two ago but didn't use it. My evaluation showed that it is not efficient for my applications with large amount of data, both performance wise and storage size wise. Of course it could be a blessing for some kind of applications but unfortunately not for the apps i develop.

Pingback from  The rumors of Delphi death have been greatly exaggerated  «  Alex on Software

Delphi isn't dead? Seriously? I understand the need to continue supporting the investment of a codebase (DevExpress is a great product); I've got my own set of software products written in Delphi and continue using Delphi to pay-the-bills.

Come on! I feel sorry for the young kid that pics up the latest Turbo products, at least Borland is mostly pushing this in Brazil, India and other third-world countries.

Sadly, the first 8 years of my career were spent in the Delphi world by a development shop that bet the farm on Delphi with 20 developers for an in-house product. It was a great product at the time, but that was nearly a decade ago.

Delphi *was* managed by Borland, oh wait CodeGear, err now it's Embarcadero, into the ground. While technology has the ability to single-handedly sell a product (Delphi 2/3), Delphi has been consistently mismanaged along the way.

Does anyone really remember v4, v5 or v6? Not really, at least I don't.

2001: Hey! Everyone remembers v7 (released 2002), it was a great product, super-fast, stable and documentation was very detailed; and (most importantly) the component developers were on-the-point and developing some great controls, spurred on with a healthy coder base purchasing their product.

It was a good year for Delphi, sadly that was about the last time we received a good release; and *the* reason a large majority of Delphi shops still use it.

2003: I don't think I need to mention v8 (.net). Bad, bad, bad technology direction.

2005: I'm sure you all will remember the switch to year-releases in order to fleece the delphi-community. Sadly, the IDE in v2005 crashed all-the-time and for some reason the fantastic help in v7 was whacked. Coders (not shops) didn't buy it, component developers didn't sell much and porting components was a pain (assuming you could keep the IDE up for more than 5 min).

2006: What the hell was this release for? Very little was changed as it was still buggy as hell, help was still gone and I was mad they got me to pony up for another upgrade.

2007: Heck, they got v2005 finally right! The IDE is stable! Help is back!

Sadly, the eco-system had been destroyed and developers that were responsible for Delphi's success with components were already forced to give up and make a living doing something else.

2009: Unicode is here! Not much else, but it's here! I happily bought it, the idea of finally getting my products into countries outside of the US was awesome!

Course, I don't use it. PChar was defaulted to a 2-byte char-pointer (PWideChar) and if you wanted to use a 1-byte char-pointer, you need to change it to PAnsiChar.

But that sounds simple enough! Search-Replace Dummy! Not! Certainly not for tcp/ip, network or programs that work at the byte level. "Baremetal"? isn't that what's great about Delphi vs .NET? Go ahead, try it, most likely you'll find your components are no longer being developed and you need to do it all yourself. It's not a click-dblclick, search-replace. Walking pointers, pointer hacks, etc in std-C style is *not* something that's exotic.

I have no idea why PChar was not kept a 1-byte pointer, it certainly would have made porting a lot easier.

2010: ??? Well, Embarcadero needs to pay-off the debt it acquired for the asset purchase. It's time to kick out a new "upgrade" in the form of a year-of-release as the version number!

Can we finally expect 64-bit, multi-platform targets to Linux (poor Kylix), MacOS or (gasp) Windows Mobile?

Nope. Delphi is a maintenance-release product, to be released every year in order to make money from the development shops which are stuck in this dead-end technology.

We *will* get get Gestures (roll eyes) and (for sure) fixes to the new language-features of Generics (so buggy people don't use them).

Personly, I'm hoping for a compiler flag to tell the compiler if a unit uses ANSI or UNICODE strings by default.

Yup, I'm pissed off. Flame it or not, it's hard to argue that Delphi is just reaching it's prime and the developing community will continue to grow and grow! Delphi has been in a decline for a long-long time, with 100% of the thanks going to development shops which invested tons of cash on product development; and the idea of switching to a different language and re-writing the whole thing just isn't financially feasible. Good news for today's equivalent to COBOL programmers (I'm one of them), but any chance I get for new development *is not* in Delphi.

For the time being, I'm stuck just like you, which is great news for Embarcadero... and any component developers out-there that made a great product, got a customer base and continue to stand by it; making the hell of our collective-development-lives a little easier with components that will work with the latest version of our dead-end development technology. Thanks DevExpress.

I don't know about Delphi as I have never used it before.

I am more of a Microsoft Visual Studio guy. I started out with VB 6.0 and had a great experience, now I use Visual Studio.net..but more than that I am prefer Lazarus (www.lazarus.freepascal.org) over MS products as they are open source and are usable on multiple platforms..secondly pascal is more like C and has greater flexibility. The IDE in Lazarus is like VB6.0 and its possible to make an application very quickly

I'm a Delphi developer. D2009 was good enough to stop me moving over to MS products. At last after several years of terrible versions, delphi got back on track with D2009 which is stable, fast, compact and the help works.

The Delphi-pascal language is fantastic and should be no1 and be respected by newbies and pros. Much better to work with than C++ or C# for most applications, powerful, fault tollerant and clean. Ask any delphi developer, they love the language, what more does a developer want. Unfortunate references in Colleges and University to Pascal being a learning language did a lot of damage to Borland. An injustice.

What on earth were borland doing 2002 to 2006 no-one seems to know - terrible. I agree - miss-management and marketing and they wouldn't respond to developers warning them.  What about it's future? If Embarcadero cut the b.s and unintelligible over-complex product range, repackage it as a compact, modern, sexy, fully functioning IDE, re-label it, and push it very hard to students free & plentiful, and to loyal developers cheap.. it could survive and i hope it does, but is it likely?  You tell me.

I hate to mention this - but just do a search for Delphi on any of the job boards and you'll have the answer that's most important to me - and should be atop your priority list when thinking about which tools to learn.  VS is a good development environment, .net is a good framework to build on and my future is important - maybe more now than ever since I may be looking for work at any time.  I searched Careerbuilder for Delphi jobs and found 23 in the entire country - and most of those are for familiarity with languages "like Delphi", probably for companies rewriting Delphi code with C#.  A search for jobs with keyword "ASP.NET" returns well over 1,000 jobs and asp.net is only a small slice of what's out there if you know Visual Studio, C#, VB.Net, or any of the other skills that are in demand now - even with a bad economy.  I'm sorry to say, but Delphi is pretty much dead - if you're interested in career potential for your future... it's just not worth investing time using/mastering Delphi.

@Vince, Yes there are simply no jobs available for Delphi.

Delphi is quiet attractive for one man ISVs with low support cost. It is just when you would like to expand your work force it is quit difficult to get good/any delphi developers.

Hope this changes in near future as the new versions look quiet promising.

I think the most impressive application built with Delphi is:

Delphi itself !!!!   (at least it was built with Delphi since v3 I think)

The IDE, the framework (VCL) and the compiler !!!

Microsoft simply cannot say that about VB.NET or C#.

Why MS does not build C# with C# (Entirely) ???

Since 2002 I'm a .NET developer, but still missing Delphi  :-(

My programming life began in Turbo Pascal and migrated to Delphi 1.0...then Delphi 3.0 and 5.0.  I eventually switched to C++ Builder (v3.0, then 5.0, then 6.0, then BDS 2006...or something like that).

We now use C# courtesy of VS2008, but I've never fogotten my roots.  I look back on those "days of discovery" with warm feelings.  Delphi changed the programming landscape forever in 1994, and for that reason alone, it should hold a place of honor at the development table.

And of course, our developer palette included TurboPower products like Async Pro, Orpheus, etc. :)

May Delphi continue to live on!

I have used Delphi/TP products since Turbo Pascal 3 and I am currently working (not exclusively) with Delphi 2009 and DevExpress products. It is still a great platform.

The problem of the circle "lack of programmers <--> Lack of jobs" can only be broken by making deals with Universities and schools around the globe.

In the 80's Turbo Pascal was widely for introduction to programming courses, but now it is very hard to find a University that uses Delphi. That may change but only with marketing effort.

Last week's virtual CodeRage developer conference was a good place to hang out if you are a Delphi