6 ms·

Interview with Anders Hejlsberg on Delphi (1995)

148 points by eatonphil 5y ago

eatonphil 5y ago
This interview was in the year before he left Borland for Microsoft.
okareaman 5y ago
For an update: Talking with a legend – interview with Anders Hejlsberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qf8gRFESU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qf8gRFESU His brother interviews him. He gets philosophical about some things as he is older and says he will never work at the corporate office again. I enjoy Anders presence, which all great programmers seems to share, which is a certain calmness and reasonableness about code. I really appreciate his contributions over the years.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  What a beautiful interview, thanks for sharing.
- blondin 5y ago
  thank you!
- argsv 5y ago
  fascinating. He discovered hash tables after he released TurboPascal 1.0 and used them 2.0; https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=3265 https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=3265. So perhaps Anders of TurboPascal 1.0 can't pass certain leetcode challenges :)
  - oaiey 5y ago
    Oh absolutely. How smart people not people who can do fizzbuzz and friends.
  - fm77 5y ago
    IIRC, hash tables came with Turbo Pascal v4.0 and not with v2.0 (4 years between v1.0 and v4.0). Interestingly I can't remember what the difference was between v1.0 and v2.0 but looking at the release dates I think there wasn't much… Borland Pascal v7.0 27th October 1992 Turbo Pascal for Windows v1.5 8th June 1992 Turbo Pascal for Windows v1.0 13th February 1991 Turbo Pascal v6.0 23rd October 1990 Turbo Pascal v5.5 2nd May 1989 Turbo Pascal v5.0 24th August 1988 Turbo Pascal v4.0 20th November 1987 Turbo Pascal v3.0 17th September 1986 Turbo Pascal v2.0 17th April 1984 Turbo Pascal v1.0 20th November 1983
    - fm77 5y ago
      oh, and by the way… Young Anders Hejlsberg at age 28 in an interview... https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp01_868.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp01_868.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp02_871.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp02_871.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp03_874.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp03_874.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp04_877.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp04_877.jpg
    - argsv 5y ago
      Interesting. He started using hash tables internally within the compiler as of v2.0.
      - fm77 5y ago
        …he started…? no. He started using hash tables within the compiler as of v4.0. …he stated (in that interview) using hash tables within the compiler as of v2.0? yes! ;-) What I mean here is that Anders probably remembers that wrong which is absolutely ok, thats now what… 35 years ago…
    - fm77 5y ago
      From the Byte magazine • November 1987 • p97: "Borland says version 4.0 will outperform previous versions in compilation speed and efficiency. I compared 3.0 and my preliminary version of 4.0 in compiling the CALC.PAS program provided with Turbo Pascal. On a 4.77 MHz IBM PC with 512K bytes of RAM and an 8087 co processor, version 3.0 took 15 seconds to compile the 1272 line program. Turbo Pascal version 4.0 took just 10 seconds to compile a slightly different 1273 line version of CALC.PAS."
- milkllz 5y ago
  https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=1550 https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=1550 At the 25min point, Anders talked about ripping from C# 4. Anyone know the reasoning behind it?
  - MarkSweep 5y ago
    NOTE: this is just my perspective from observing the language evolve. Anders Hejlsberg specifically mentions the "dynamic"[1] keyword. Normally C# is statically typed, that is at compile time you know the type of everything. With the "dynamic" keyword, function calls and field access are resolved at run time. For example if you have the following code: dynamic myObj = new object(); Console.WriteLine(myObj.MyProp); It will compile fine. At runtime it will crash, because System.Object has no property "MyProp". But if the object did have the "MyProp" property, it would have run fine. This example shows how dynamic can take C# from a statically typed language like Java and turn it into a dynamically type language like Python. From a language design perspective, this is a bit of an aberration from the statically typed path C# has taken most of the time. From a language implementation perspective, this feature has a high cost. It requires re-implementing features of the C# compiler as a library in the Microsoft.CSharp namespace. This is required by features like overload resolution for method calls have to happen at runtime instead of compile time. And because compiled programs take dependencies on this library, it is hard to change it without breaking deployed programs. The supporting libraries are so fragile that there is a policy to not change them [3]. As for why you would want this late-bound stuff in the first place, it is kinda nice when interfacing with dynamic language environments. When the feature was originally released, the Dynamic Language Runtime[4] was a big deal. It enabled implemented versions of Ruby and Python (called IronRuby and IronPython) that were based on .NET. And the "dynamic" keyword ease calling into these language implementations. Additionally calling into COM was made easier by the "dynamic" keyword. It was so useful that it was added back to .NET 5 [2]. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/types/using-type-dynamic https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/t... [2]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/33060 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/33060 [3]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/27790 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/27790 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Language_Runtime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Language_Runtime
FullyFunctional 5y ago
Anecdotes: Anders is a bit of a childhood hero of mine. I got the BLS Pascal 1.2 and the shock of coming from line-based interpreted Microsoft BASIC to full-screen editor with lighting fast compiler in three keypresses (Ctrl-X, C, Return) is hard to describe. (Full-screen editing and compilation representing two quantum leaps). Studing the internals of the BLS Pascal (Z80, Nascom 2) literally boggled my mind with the genius of the code which was unlike any other Z80 code I had read. I was fortunate enough to meet the still young Anders at the "Herningmesse" where he was demonstrating Compas Pascal (running a Maze generator to attract eyeballs). He was very nice but I was too shy to ask the really good questions :) I'm still actually chasing this. I have never managed to get a working version of BLS Pascal 1.3 but I know it exist (help would be most welcome - the one Google find you is corrupted).
- cubano 5y ago
  I got the BLS Pascal 1.2 and the shock of coming from line-based interpreted Microsoft BASIC to full-screen editor with lighting fast compiler in three keypresses (Ctrl-X, C, Return) is hard to describe. (Full-screen editing and compilation representing two quantum leaps Ha. I, too, experienced this same shock when I moved, as a teenager, from MS-BASIC's editor to a Pascal-based (in my case it was Turbo) full-screen editor. Ton be honest, for the first couple of hours I can recall being very confused about how I was to approch coding with no line numbers? How was I to move to other sections of my program? What, no GOTO...help! Little did I know at the time almost all GOTO use is bad programming and that Pascal was such an elegant and dare-I-Say beautiful language to program in. It's fairly tame use of pointers (as compared with C smashing you over the head with them) really exposed me to one of CompSci's more powerful paradigms...indirect addressing. And, OMG, the incredible speed of both the compiler and the programs it generated simply blew my mind...esp. since its very possible I was using a 8Mhz IBM PC/AT at the time. My simulations literally ran 25x faster. Those were heady times to be a programmer IMHO...you literally had the count the number of bytes in your data structures to squeeze every bit of memory use out of your 64k stacks and 640k DOS limits, and all sorts of tricks were used to overcome these obstacles. ..
  - FullyFunctional 5y ago
cxr 5y ago
See also: A Conversation with Anders Hejlsberg [about C#] <https://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html https://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html>
- okareaman 5y ago
  Another really great video is Anders and Lars Bak around the time Typescript and Dart came out (about the same time.) In this video Anders explains to Lars why TypeScript will win the race to fix JavaScript's drawbacks. Lars was really happy with their Dart VM (as he should be) and didn't really want to hear how TypeScript would prevail. The thing about Anders is that he's usually right and he was. Anders Hejlsberg and Lars Bak: TypeScript, JavaScript, and Dart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM
  - blondin 5y ago
    i immediately thought about that talk too! i already knew Anders Hejlsberg but that talk left a great impression on me. in fact, after that talk, i knew TypeScript would do something more interesting than Dart. and would definitely be more successful. in fact, anyone watching that talk could tell. Anders Hejlsberg explained so well what they were doing. but the dart team displayed a lot of uneasiness. Lars Bak especially. there was another member of the Dart team who seemed less stressed during that interview. iirc they went to work on the go programming language.
TimTheTinker 5y ago
> Q. Is the compiler engine itself written in Delphi? How much does it differ from the Borland Pascal 7 compiler? > A. The compiler is written in assembly language. That's amazing to me. My first real language was Java, then Ruby, C#, JavaScript, Python, etc. -- and only a smattering of C/C++ in college. I can't imagine building anything complex in x86 assembly, let alone a freakin' compiler!
- nrdvana 5y ago
  It was by far the fastest compiler I'd ever used. A full 10x faster than their Borland C++ compiler, which was faster than gcc. Delphi didn't do as many optimizations, but the compiled code had runtime performance within a few percent of C, and the lightning fast compiles were worth it for productivity. It doesn't surprise me to hear it was written in asm.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    FWIW i wrote a small raytracing benchmark in C and Pascal (99% the same code just "translated") some time ago[0], mainly for comparing compilers for retrocoding and in my results Delphi 2 produced code that took around the 149% the time the Visual C++ 6 program took. Interestingly Borland C++ 5 was slower, though it predates Delphi 2 (also i forgot to benchmark Borland C++ Builder). (note that this is from the second table where i check compilers that can generate code running on Pentium 1 Win9x - the first table was with whatever compiler i had installed on my PC at the time) Perhaps i'll try benchmarking it again some day, including running on actual older hardware. [0] http://runtimeterror.com/tools/raybench/ http://runtimeterror.com/tools/raybench/
    - nrdvana 5y ago
      Well, yeah, maybe if you are writing ray tracers. The focus of Delphi was object oriented data structures (especially for UIs) and there isn't a lot that the compiler can optimize when the function is packed full of method calls, which is why UI in Delphi was nearly identical performance to one in C++. If you want vector math to run fast, those C++ compiler optimizations are a lot more important. Just to clarify, my main point was the speed at which it would compile the code, which was an order of magnitude faster than anything else.
romwell 5y ago
A lot of paradigms in Visual Studio owe their heritage to Delphi because of Anders. If Delphi was open sourced, or heck — if it had a free license for personal use, I would bet it would still be the dominant IDE.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Delphi, C++ Builder, etc do have free licenses for personal use actually[0][1] and they had for a while. It is just that their license is only free until you have $5k annual revenue (the site's wording might sound as if this has to come from selling Delphi software but the actual license[2] isn't that specific). [0] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter [1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter [2] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-eula https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-e...
  - romwell 5y ago
    Sure, but by the time the introduced these licenses, people stopped caring about Delphi. IIRC Borland never did that, and that's why it's no longer a household name.
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      Borland had the Delphi 7 Personal Edition, but it was only for non-commercial use only. It was distributed widely though - I personally still have a copy i got from a magazine coverdisk for example. But TBH Borland also had much lower prices - up to (IIRC) Delphi 5 you could get the most basic version of Delphi (which is good enough for a lot of tasks, especially for individuals) for $100 and that used Borland's "no-nonsense" license that was no strings attached, allowing reselling, etc. It was when they were taken over by Enterprise Envy that things went downhill for them.
      - romwell 5y ago
danzk 5y ago
It's interesting that he argued the case for only having heap allocated objects in Delphi considering C# has stack allocated stucts.
- cliffbarnes 5y ago
  Delphi also has stack allocated records, very similar to C# structs.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Delphi was great! First programming language I used at my first job. I have some hobby projects that are still used to this day written in Delphi. I haven't really updated them too much. Too much work to rewrite it. Some critical faults that have emerged overtime. Not really delphi faults. I used Paradox for the database. Which was terrible choice even back then. I recently had it complain about the length of the path to the table. In another app, for some odd reason I can't remember, I developed a custom a plugin system, using dll com plugins. As time went on, microsoft limited access to the windows registry. So now I have user running into problems with the install. The program installs, just can't find the plugins because it doesn't have registry access. At least that's my limited understanding of what is going on. And I think you can't write Delphi apps for the windows app store. But Delphi was very strait forward and simple to write apps. Fantastic! And comparing it to Python, much easier to find bugs.
- clouddrover 5y ago
  > And I think you can't write Delphi apps for the windows app store. Sure you can: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/deploying-windows-10-apps-through-the-microsoft-store-1863306656/ https://blogs.embarcadero.com/deploying-windows-10-apps-thro... And to the macOS app store: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Submitting_Your_App_to_the_Mac_App_Store https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Subm... And to the iOS app store: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Deploying_Your_iOS_Application_for_Submission_to_the_App_Store https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Depl... And to Google Play: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Submitting_Your_Android_App_to_Google_Play https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Subm...
anon2020dot00 5y ago
The company I work for is still using mission-critical applications written in Delphi. (I live in a developing country). So basically, we still find Delphi quite useful even the older versions.
pjmlp 5y ago
Here is another more recent one, which also touches on how he left Borland. "Anders Hejlsberg: A craftsman of computer language" https://behindthetech.libsynpro.com/001-anders-hejlsberg-a-craftsman-of-computer-language https://behindthetech.libsynpro.com/001-anders-hejlsberg-a-c...
usrnm 5y ago
> Exceptions are a quiet revolution--they truly simplify the way you write code. Fashion cycles in general programming and programming language design are just as real as in any other human activity. And just as fun to watch.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I still can't believe exceptions ever went out of style.
- Tomuus 5y ago
  We'll be saying this in a few years about all other forms of algabreic effects too.

148 points by eatonphil 5y ago

This interview was in the year before he left Borland for Microsoft.

For an update: Talking with a legend – interview with Anders Hejlsberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qf8gRFESU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3qf8gRFESU His brother interviews him. He gets philosophical about some things as he is older and says he will never work at the corporate office again. I enjoy Anders presence, which all great programmers seems to share, which is a certain calmness and reasonableness about code. I really appreciate his contributions over the years.

eatonphil 5y ago
What a beautiful interview, thanks for sharing.
blondin 5y ago
thank you!
argsv 5y ago
fascinating. He discovered hash tables after he released TurboPascal 1.0 and used them 2.0; https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=3265 https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=3265. So perhaps Anders of TurboPascal 1.0 can't pass certain leetcode challenges :)
- oaiey 5y ago
  Oh absolutely. How smart people not people who can do fizzbuzz and friends.
- fm77 5y ago
  IIRC, hash tables came with Turbo Pascal v4.0 and not with v2.0 (4 years between v1.0 and v4.0). Interestingly I can't remember what the difference was between v1.0 and v2.0 but looking at the release dates I think there wasn't much… Borland Pascal v7.0 27th October 1992 Turbo Pascal for Windows v1.5 8th June 1992 Turbo Pascal for Windows v1.0 13th February 1991 Turbo Pascal v6.0 23rd October 1990 Turbo Pascal v5.5 2nd May 1989 Turbo Pascal v5.0 24th August 1988 Turbo Pascal v4.0 20th November 1987 Turbo Pascal v3.0 17th September 1986 Turbo Pascal v2.0 17th April 1984 Turbo Pascal v1.0 20th November 1983
  - fm77 5y ago
    oh, and by the way… Young Anders Hejlsberg at age 28 in an interview... https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp01_868.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp01_868.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp02_871.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp02_871.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp03_874.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp03_874.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp04_877.jpg https://community.embarcadero.com/files/2008/11/tp04_877.jpg
  - argsv 5y ago
    Interesting. He started using hash tables internally within the compiler as of v2.0.
    - fm77 5y ago
      …he started…? no. He started using hash tables within the compiler as of v4.0. …he stated (in that interview) using hash tables within the compiler as of v2.0? yes! ;-) What I mean here is that Anders probably remembers that wrong which is absolutely ok, thats now what… 35 years ago…
  - fm77 5y ago
    From the Byte magazine • November 1987 • p97: "Borland says version 4.0 will outperform previous versions in compilation speed and efficiency. I compared 3.0 and my preliminary version of 4.0 in compiling the CALC.PAS program provided with Turbo Pascal. On a 4.77 MHz IBM PC with 512K bytes of RAM and an 8087 co processor, version 3.0 took 15 seconds to compile the 1272 line program. Turbo Pascal version 4.0 took just 10 seconds to compile a slightly different 1273 line version of CALC.PAS."
milkllz 5y ago
https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=1550 https://youtu.be/K3qf8gRFESU?t=1550 At the 25min point, Anders talked about ripping from C# 4. Anyone know the reasoning behind it?
- MarkSweep 5y ago
  NOTE: this is just my perspective from observing the language evolve. Anders Hejlsberg specifically mentions the "dynamic"[1] keyword. Normally C# is statically typed, that is at compile time you know the type of everything. With the "dynamic" keyword, function calls and field access are resolved at run time. For example if you have the following code: dynamic myObj = new object(); Console.WriteLine(myObj.MyProp); It will compile fine. At runtime it will crash, because System.Object has no property "MyProp". But if the object did have the "MyProp" property, it would have run fine. This example shows how dynamic can take C# from a statically typed language like Java and turn it into a dynamically type language like Python. From a language design perspective, this is a bit of an aberration from the statically typed path C# has taken most of the time. From a language implementation perspective, this feature has a high cost. It requires re-implementing features of the C# compiler as a library in the Microsoft.CSharp namespace. This is required by features like overload resolution for method calls have to happen at runtime instead of compile time. And because compiled programs take dependencies on this library, it is hard to change it without breaking deployed programs. The supporting libraries are so fragile that there is a policy to not change them [3]. As for why you would want this late-bound stuff in the first place, it is kinda nice when interfacing with dynamic language environments. When the feature was originally released, the Dynamic Language Runtime[4] was a big deal. It enabled implemented versions of Ruby and Python (called IronRuby and IronPython) that were based on .NET. And the "dynamic" keyword ease calling into these language implementations. Additionally calling into COM was made easier by the "dynamic" keyword. It was so useful that it was added back to .NET 5 [2]. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/types/using-type-dynamic https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/t... [2]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/33060 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/33060 [3]: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/27790 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/27790 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Language_Runtime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Language_Runtime

FullyFunctional 5y ago

Anecdotes: Anders is a bit of a childhood hero of mine. I got the BLS Pascal 1.2 and the shock of coming from line-based interpreted Microsoft BASIC to full-screen editor with lighting fast compiler in three keypresses (Ctrl-X, C, Return) is hard to describe. (Full-screen editing and compilation representing two quantum leaps). Studing the internals of the BLS Pascal (Z80, Nascom 2) literally boggled my mind with the genius of the code which was unlike any other Z80 code I had read. I was fortunate enough to meet the still young Anders at the "Herningmesse" where he was demonstrating Compas Pascal (running a Maze generator to attract eyeballs). He was very nice but I was too shy to ask the really good questions :) I'm still actually chasing this. I have never managed to get a working version of BLS Pascal 1.3 but I know it exist (help would be most welcome - the one Google find you is corrupted).

cubano 5y ago
I got the BLS Pascal 1.2 and the shock of coming from line-based interpreted Microsoft BASIC to full-screen editor with lighting fast compiler in three keypresses (Ctrl-X, C, Return) is hard to describe. (Full-screen editing and compilation representing two quantum leaps Ha. I, too, experienced this same shock when I moved, as a teenager, from MS-BASIC's editor to a Pascal-based (in my case it was Turbo) full-screen editor. Ton be honest, for the first couple of hours I can recall being very confused about how I was to approch coding with no line numbers? How was I to move to other sections of my program? What, no GOTO...help! Little did I know at the time almost all GOTO use is bad programming and that Pascal was such an elegant and dare-I-Say beautiful language to program in. It's fairly tame use of pointers (as compared with C smashing you over the head with them) really exposed me to one of CompSci's more powerful paradigms...indirect addressing. And, OMG, the incredible speed of both the compiler and the programs it generated simply blew my mind...esp. since its very possible I was using a 8Mhz IBM PC/AT at the time. My simulations literally ran 25x faster. Those were heady times to be a programmer IMHO...you literally had the count the number of bytes in your data structures to squeeze every bit of memory use out of your 64k stacks and 640k DOS limits, and all sorts of tricks were used to overcome these obstacles. ..
- FullyFunctional 5y ago

cxr 5y ago

See also: A Conversation with Anders Hejlsberg [about C#] <https://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html https://www.artima.com/intv/anders.html>

okareaman 5y ago
Another really great video is Anders and Lars Bak around the time Typescript and Dart came out (about the same time.) In this video Anders explains to Lars why TypeScript will win the race to fix JavaScript's drawbacks. Lars was really happy with their Dart VM (as he should be) and didn't really want to hear how TypeScript would prevail. The thing about Anders is that he's usually right and he was. Anders Hejlsberg and Lars Bak: TypeScript, JavaScript, and Dart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AqbCQuK0gM
- blondin 5y ago
  i immediately thought about that talk too! i already knew Anders Hejlsberg but that talk left a great impression on me. in fact, after that talk, i knew TypeScript would do something more interesting than Dart. and would definitely be more successful. in fact, anyone watching that talk could tell. Anders Hejlsberg explained so well what they were doing. but the dart team displayed a lot of uneasiness. Lars Bak especially. there was another member of the Dart team who seemed less stressed during that interview. iirc they went to work on the go programming language.

TimTheTinker 5y ago

> Q. Is the compiler engine itself written in Delphi? How much does it differ from the Borland Pascal 7 compiler? > A. The compiler is written in assembly language. That's amazing to me. My first real language was Java, then Ruby, C#, JavaScript, Python, etc. -- and only a smattering of C/C++ in college. I can't imagine building anything complex in x86 assembly, let alone a freakin' compiler!

nrdvana 5y ago
It was by far the fastest compiler I'd ever used. A full 10x faster than their Borland C++ compiler, which was faster than gcc. Delphi didn't do as many optimizations, but the compiled code had runtime performance within a few percent of C, and the lightning fast compiles were worth it for productivity. It doesn't surprise me to hear it was written in asm.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  FWIW i wrote a small raytracing benchmark in C and Pascal (99% the same code just "translated") some time ago[0], mainly for comparing compilers for retrocoding and in my results Delphi 2 produced code that took around the 149% the time the Visual C++ 6 program took. Interestingly Borland C++ 5 was slower, though it predates Delphi 2 (also i forgot to benchmark Borland C++ Builder). (note that this is from the second table where i check compilers that can generate code running on Pentium 1 Win9x - the first table was with whatever compiler i had installed on my PC at the time) Perhaps i'll try benchmarking it again some day, including running on actual older hardware. [0] http://runtimeterror.com/tools/raybench/ http://runtimeterror.com/tools/raybench/
  - nrdvana 5y ago
    Well, yeah, maybe if you are writing ray tracers. The focus of Delphi was object oriented data structures (especially for UIs) and there isn't a lot that the compiler can optimize when the function is packed full of method calls, which is why UI in Delphi was nearly identical performance to one in C++. If you want vector math to run fast, those C++ compiler optimizations are a lot more important. Just to clarify, my main point was the speed at which it would compile the code, which was an order of magnitude faster than anything else.

romwell 5y ago

A lot of paradigms in Visual Studio owe their heritage to Delphi because of Anders. If Delphi was open sourced, or heck — if it had a free license for personal use, I would bet it would still be the dominant IDE.

badsectoracula 5y ago
Delphi, C++ Builder, etc do have free licenses for personal use actually[0][1] and they had for a while. It is just that their license is only free until you have $5k annual revenue (the site's wording might sound as if this has to come from selling Delphi software but the actual license[2] isn't that specific). [0] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter [1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/starter [2] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-eula https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-e...
- romwell 5y ago
  Sure, but by the time the introduced these licenses, people stopped caring about Delphi. IIRC Borland never did that, and that's why it's no longer a household name.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Borland had the Delphi 7 Personal Edition, but it was only for non-commercial use only. It was distributed widely though - I personally still have a copy i got from a magazine coverdisk for example. But TBH Borland also had much lower prices - up to (IIRC) Delphi 5 you could get the most basic version of Delphi (which is good enough for a lot of tasks, especially for individuals) for $100 and that used Borland's "no-nonsense" license that was no strings attached, allowing reselling, etc. It was when they were taken over by Enterprise Envy that things went downhill for them.
    - romwell 5y ago

danzk 5y ago

It's interesting that he argued the case for only having heap allocated objects in Delphi considering C# has stack allocated stucts.

cliffbarnes 5y ago
Delphi also has stack allocated records, very similar to C# structs.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Delphi was great! First programming language I used at my first job. I have some hobby projects that are still used to this day written in Delphi. I haven't really updated them too much. Too much work to rewrite it. Some critical faults that have emerged overtime. Not really delphi faults. I used Paradox for the database. Which was terrible choice even back then. I recently had it complain about the length of the path to the table. In another app, for some odd reason I can't remember, I developed a custom a plugin system, using dll com plugins. As time went on, microsoft limited access to the windows registry. So now I have user running into problems with the install. The program installs, just can't find the plugins because it doesn't have registry access. At least that's my limited understanding of what is going on. And I think you can't write Delphi apps for the windows app store. But Delphi was very strait forward and simple to write apps. Fantastic! And comparing it to Python, much easier to find bugs.

clouddrover 5y ago
> And I think you can't write Delphi apps for the windows app store. Sure you can: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/deploying-windows-10-apps-through-the-microsoft-store-1863306656/ https://blogs.embarcadero.com/deploying-windows-10-apps-thro... And to the macOS app store: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Submitting_Your_App_to_the_Mac_App_Store https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Subm... And to the iOS app store: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Deploying_Your_iOS_Application_for_Submission_to_the_App_Store https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Depl... And to Google Play: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Submitting_Your_Android_App_to_Google_Play https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Subm...

anon2020dot00 5y ago

The company I work for is still using mission-critical applications written in Delphi. (I live in a developing country). So basically, we still find Delphi quite useful even the older versions.

pjmlp 5y ago

Here is another more recent one, which also touches on how he left Borland. "Anders Hejlsberg: A craftsman of computer language" https://behindthetech.libsynpro.com/001-anders-hejlsberg-a-craftsman-of-computer-language https://behindthetech.libsynpro.com/001-anders-hejlsberg-a-c...

usrnm 5y ago

> Exceptions are a quiet revolution--they truly simplify the way you write code. Fashion cycles in general programming and programming language design are just as real as in any other human activity. And just as fun to watch.

eternityforest 5y ago
I still can't believe exceptions ever went out of style.
Tomuus 5y ago
We'll be saying this in a few years about all other forms of algabreic effects too.