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Very true, Borland didn't pivot, they found a buyer (Embarcadero) and the top executives got paid. Then Embarcadero had to get their money, so Delphi prices ke
by Tozen 5y ago
Very true, Borland didn't pivot, they found a buyer (Embarcadero) and the top executives got paid. Then Embarcadero had to get their money, so Delphi prices kept getting raised higher. Totally out of the price range of normal users or independent developers.
Arguably what saved Pascal/Object Pascal was the open-source projects of Free Pascal/Lazarus and PascalABC (popular in Russia). Plus there were huge fans of Turbo Pascal, who got it released as freeware, as Borland had switched to selling the Delphi IDE.
This combination (Free Pascal/Lazarus, freeware Turbo Pascal, PascalABC, etc...) of open-source freeware Pascal eventually put pressure on Embarcadero to release the free Delphi Community Edition (2018). That was 5 to 10 years late in the game. A lot of user base and previous strong fans had significantly diminished.
However, it does appear that Object Pascal has found a decent level, at presently between the top 15 to 20 programming languages (were it was between top 1 to 10 in the 80s and 90s). It is possible for Object Pascal to see a bit of a resurgence, based around the free open-source dialects of Pascal and Embarcadero's strong push to put Delphi in schools (example- Turkey bought 1 million licenses for their schools or South Africa replacing Java with Delphi).