In 1993, I was just 5 years old, but, when I encountered Delphi, around 2000, it was a very pleasant improvement over Microsoft's offerings: (0) Compiler: Supe

In 1993, I was just 5 years old, but, when I encountered Delphi, around 2000, it was a very pleasant improvement over Microsoft's offerings: (0) Compiler: Super-fast compilation times, unlike Visual C++; and super-fast generated executables, unlike Visual Basic. (1) Libraries: Borland's VCL was vastly more sophisticated than either Visual Basic's controls [underpowered toys] or Visual C++'s MFC [barely more usable than the Windows API itself]. (2) Core language: Of course, from Pascal, Delphi inherited a real module system [not C++'s `#ifndef` nonsense], real strings [not C++'s `std::string`, let alone MFC's `CString` nonsense] and real dynamically allocated arrays [not C's pointer nonsense, although C++'s templatized containers hadn't taken off yet]. And Delphi's object system was something a normal human being could actually hope to understand, unlike C++'s multiple virtual inheritance mess.