7 ms·

Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available

183 points by layer8 2mo ago

uticus 2mo ago
I'm an outsider, although I've heard cool things about Delphi. So, trying to find examples of what this looks like, I was naturally interested in the "Cool Apps" section. But my biggest surprise was that Beyond Compare was listed in there. I see that thing in a lot of Windows .NET shops, I always figured it was .NET-based (I guess I confused association with dependency?) https://blogs.embarcadero.com/beyond-compare/ https://blogs.embarcadero.com/beyond-compare/
- throw-the-towel 2mo ago
  I'm not sure if it still does, but Delphi definitely used to support .NET.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Delphi.NET was a side project so to speak, and was mostly done under contract by RemObjects, which kept selling their compiler when Embarcadero decided to focus on native only. https://www.remobjects.com https://www.remobjects.com
    - OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
      Delphi.NET was so much central project that 8 only supported .NET. Nothing else was ever needed as it seemed. Delphi.NET was 8, 2005, 2006 and 2007, then dropped. It was hosted in common RAD IDE and language was close match. Delphi Prism was bundled somewhere between 2009 and XE2, a 3rd party product, hosted in Visual Studio IDE and language was resembling, but not quite. Enough divergence to not make it possible sharing source text with native Delphi.
      - vintagedave 2mo ago
        (I work at RemObjects) - we've been working hard on reducing convergence recently, that is, still supporting our own Oxygene Pascal syntax but also accepting other variants of Pascal. We want it to be possible for someone to have a common source file as you suggest, much the same as you can with Delphi and FPC. It is possible today; we are working on the really esoteric syntax. Our 'Delphi Island' support also allows linking to BPLs. And we have our own IDE (for multiple platforms), as well as living inside VS.
      - throw-the-towel 2mo ago
        OTOH Delphi 8 flopped so hard that the next version brought back Win32 support.
        OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
        It became a good tradition to release version of software with my favorite number in such a way everybody will hate it. Delphi 8, Windows 8
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  In Germany, Delphi columns are still rather common on the .NET developers magazine.
  - afarah1 2mo ago
    >the .NET developers magazine. Surely it's online? Such magazine still being in issue would be equally surprising to me.
    - pjmlp 2mo ago
      Nope, here you can still buy developers magazines. Entwickler, .NET, Java aktuelle, Maker, Retrogammer can still be found on newstands, what happens is that not all of them have all magazines available. You can get them delivered to your address anyway. Here, https://www.presseplus.de/Dotnetpro-Abo https://www.presseplus.de/Dotnetpro-Abo
- kogus 2mo ago
  I have used Beyond Compare for 20 years, and as far as I know, it has always been and still is written in Delphi. Quest Software, maker of TOAD for Oracle was also a big Delphi shop for many years. Not sure if they still are.
- vrighter 2mo ago
  afaik FL studio is also written in delphi
pjmlp 2mo ago
Also Ekon 2026 is already announced with the respective program, https://entwickler-konferenz.de/en/ https://entwickler-konferenz.de/en/
p0w3n3d 2mo ago
I remember Pascal as a so tidy and clean language... And verbose. Very verbose... And calling win API was a horror
- andrewshadura 2mo ago
  On the contrary, calling Windows APIs was easier than in C, no import libraries required, just declare what you need and there you go.
  - asalahli 2mo ago
    Can't you do the same in C? You don't really need any headers, you can just declare function prototypes yourself
    - andrewshadura 2mo ago
      Of course you can, but it's more cumbersome in C as you also need to link to the DLL, hence the import library. In Delphi, it's all controlled from the function definition. But of course most of the Windows APIs were already provided in the Windows unit. Oftentimes with Pascalish wrappers.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  The irony is that now in 2026 we have COBOL's revenge with Markdown driven programming. Doesn't get more verbose than that.
  - cestith 2mo ago
    For your viewing pleasure (or horror): https://yamlscript.org/ https://yamlscript.org/
    - pjmlp 2mo ago
      Ouch!
    - 2mo ago
datakan 2mo ago
So much has changed. I remember driving past the Borland HQ in Scotts Valley every day on my way to work. Delphi was so cool back then with the object oriented pascal. I kinda miss Borland
- esafak 2mo ago
  Me too! So I was curious and watched What Happened to Borland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkoaPl31Dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkoaPl31Dw
  - andrewshadura 2mo ago
    I was curious but stopped watching after a Borland Groover photo flicked a couple of times.
albertzeyer 2mo ago
Why would anyone use that over Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/)?
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  The IDE experience, they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows, and the industry that cares about Object Pascal, usually only cares because of Delphi. Don't get me wrong, FreePascal is great, but it hardly has a presence at big corporations. If they no longer use Delphi, means they have long moved into either Java or .NET.
  - badsectoracula 2mo ago
    > they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows That is not the case, Free Pascal has improved the language before Delphi and Delphi followed, e.g. FPC added generics before Delphi and more recently it implemented management operators before Delphi. One big annoyance though is that when Delphi does decide to implement some language feature introduced by Free Pascal they implement it using an incompatible syntax which is petty (at best). FPC then has to support both their own syntax (usually in OBJFPC mode) and Delphi's syntax (usually in DELPHI mode) to let people share code between FPC and Delphi.
- FooBarWidget 2mo ago
  How good is Lazarus nowadays? Haven't taken a look for 20 years so this is a genuine question.
  - DanielHB 2mo ago
    I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.
  - kmaitreys 2mo ago
alexaholic 2mo ago
I haven't heard of Delphi in ages. Where I grew up, I was the first generation to start high school with C++ as opposed to the previous ones who were stuck with Pascal. I believe I did some in university, but not much. Anyway, I am amused to find this news on HN. I spent some of the past 24 hours reading through — and trying to draw some conclusions out of — the Go vs Rust sword fights in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49261133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49261133 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222270 Mad respect for these guys not giving a funk.
wewewedxfgdf 2mo ago
Borland should have made the language 100% free with a totally 100% free command line compiler and libraries. Charge people for the IDE - everyone seems to hate paying for languages but be quite happy to pay for IDEs.
- OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
  Will you happily pay for Ada IDE? Another part of your proposal is already true. Ada has free compiler and libraries. Paid IDE is all that remains, that's how things work, right?
kqr 2mo ago
A lot of the software I really admired in the early 2000s was developed by single persons using Delphi. It seems to me like there is (was?) something promoted by a Delphi environment that is rare to find elsewhere, that lets people (a) quickly prototype cool stuff, and then (b) sustainably grow it into a mature product as it gains users. I wish I cared enough to learn it, but there's so much else I need to learn first!
- marginalia_nu 2mo ago
  Delphi had a powerful and easy to use GUI editor in the early 2000s, much less of a hassle compared to building software with Windows' own C++ API.
  - blackhaz 2mo ago
    As a kid I remember I was lost in all that OOP, window handles and stuff, and could never do anything. Delphi was like assembling Lego. Very similar to QtCreator.
    - morkalork 2mo ago
      It was like Visual Basic and Pascal had a baby
      - bdamm 2mo ago
        It was never clear to me who showed up first, but I used Delphi first and then tried Visual Basic and was like "Oh! It's here too!"
        nottorp 2mo ago
        Well if you were familiar with Delphi the VB magic broke when you tried to make your own components for the designer. I went the same path and it was a bit of a shock when I found out i have to fire up Visual C++ to do a custom VB button.
  - 2mo ago
giancarlostoro 2mo ago
Last time I tried Delphi Community Edition, I had to give them my email just to download it, then when I tried any of the templates the IDE showed, it wouldn't build at all, don't show me a template if it doesn't work. I received an email from someone asking how I was liking Delphi, I naively responded with my issue, but quickly realized he was just trying to sell Delphi. I would have bought Delphi over the years if they had a personal license for $99 or something, I am not investing thousands of dollars on a software where the free trial blows up out of the box (not intentionally it seemed).
- pasc1878 2mo ago
  This is the really annoying part. Delphi's predecessor if not Delphi itself was $99 (Turbo Pascal).
  - giancarlostoro 2mo ago
    I would have bought something like Turbo Pascal today. The minute they did away with Turbo Pascal I feel like they basically marked themselves as a legacy only company, I don't know anyone who is using them for net new projects that wasn't already all in on Delphi, you don't see new startups using them anyway. Had they kept Turbo Pascal, I do wonder how much more prevalent they could have been compared to now. It's still a solid way to make a native GUI.
    - lelanthran 2mo ago
      > I would have bought something like Turbo Pascal today. What's stopping you? You can open your wallet to lazarus today, if you wanted.
      - giancarlostoro 2mo ago
        I've used Lazarus, very dated and doesn't look and feel quite as polished, there's been a lot of modern IDE advancements and none of them have made their way to Lazarus.
  - 2mo ago
zerr 2mo ago
C++Builder as well? Any updates regarding cross-platform support?
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Cross platform support exists but works by having Windows as the main development environment than then cross compiling into the varios platforms. Yes there is a community version for C++ Builder as well.
  - zerr 2mo ago
    No. While it did had cross-platform support years ago, nowadays it is Windows-only, including targets.
    - pjmlp 2mo ago
      Unless you're talking about Kylix, "Delphi 13 Community Edition brings the IDE forward from version 12.1 to the Florence release. Users gain access to new Delphi language features, and refreshed Android 15 and iOS 18 support."
      - zerr 2mo ago
        No, I'm talking about C++Builder specifically. They made it sub-par to Delphi.
        pjmlp 2mo ago
        It has always been sub-par to Delphi, e.g. VCL, FireMonkey and COM interop are all done in Delphi, probably they got tired to do OWL and TV twice in both languages previously. Yet it still manages to be better than Visual C++, in the Visual part, if we exclude the short lived C++/CX. I was only thinking about Delphi in regards to the cross-platform, maybe after they end up rebooting the whole compiler on top of clang it gets better. Or who knows, as Embarcadero is today, maybe they won't bother to improve that, not many corps care about C++ Builder.
felixgallo 2mo ago
Unfortunately, if you intend on using Delphi, that will be $1200 plus $399 a year for the basic commercial license, and if you also intend on using databases, that will be $4600 plus $1399 a year. Or, you could use .NET, which is $0, and overwhelmingly better supported at this point. Embarcadero is milking a shrinking captive market, VMWare style. It makes perfect financial sense given the asset, but it's unfortunate for those of us with happy memories of Delphi 6 and 7.
- OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
  One can legally use Community Edition until income hits some limit. Paid edition can be bought and just used without updates. > use .NET, which is $0 But tracing garbage collection needs 5x more available RAM than used RAM. Native conservative applications introduce memory fragmentation, estimated as 2:1 available:used. That gives 2.5x smaller memory footprint of native apps, and RAM prices matter lately.
  - leni536 2mo ago
    That limit is $5000 revenue per year. And this is not scoped down to "$5000 revenue from Delphi projects." It's basically student-only.
- adornKey 2mo ago
  You don't have to use their premium database components. Just use something else as client-library. I'm also not a fan of yearly payments. But with a $1200 license you usually get access to all old versions - including Delphi 7. After Delphi 6/7 at least Version 11/12 were usable for 64-bit. So I think at least once every other decade it is ok to get a usable 64-bit version of Delphi.
Yuioup 2mo ago
Delphi is dead. Nothing to see here. Move along.
- kogus 2mo ago
  Nuh-uh. http://www.isdelphidead.com/ http://www.isdelphidead.com/
  - KETHERCORTEX 2mo ago
    Communists repeated "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live" for decades, but he actually remained dead all that time.
  - nottorp 2mo ago
    Delphi and Qt are dead for companies that do not have at least one lawyer on retainer, so it's partially true.
aktau 2mo ago
My favourite Delphi program, and the one I learned to program with, was Dev-C++ (https://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp https://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp). AFAIK there is a more recent fork, but I also clearly recall the 4.9.9.? versoin number from back then. It was very fast (including startup). I enjoyed it a lot back when I was still on Windows. Funny that Delphi was used to create a C/C++ IDE.
- fithisux 2mo ago
  As C++ got more and more complex, it was not able to for Dev-C++ to catchup. Dev Pascal was also a dead end.
- kokada 2mo ago
  It is funny that while I learned about Dev-C++ during my university course but it was mostly considered a joke by anyone that used Linux (including myself). I think the issue was because it shipped with a really old version of GCC even at the time, so something that compiled on it had lots of issues running in the more recent GCCs that Linux/Ubuntu used (including the teacher for this particular course).
- jamesfinlayson 2mo ago
  Ah I remember Dev-C++ - not bad for simple stuff, but I tried using it to import a Visual Studio project (which worked) but it wouldn't compile due to it not having any compiler intrinsics headers.
kvemkon 2mo ago
Delphi - almost effortless programming memories. > ... native Delphi apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. In early 2000s there was Borland Kylix for Linux. Thus today (25 years later), if I'd use Object Pascal, then with Lazarus.
karteum 2mo ago
Still no Linux support...
- weli 2mo ago
  You can compile to Linux targets though
  - ValdikSS 2mo ago
    … as well as for iOS, and Android, and web! https://www.embarcadero.com/starthere/seattle/mobdevsetup/ios/en/running_on_your_connected_device.html https://www.embarcadero.com/starthere/seattle/mobdevsetup/io... https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/features/mobile https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/features/mobile https://blogs.embarcadero.com/easily-create-web-apps-for-desktop-and-mobile/ https://blogs.embarcadero.com/easily-create-web-apps-for-des...
cautiouscat 2mo ago
I gave Delphi a shot, but after setting up my account I got a few phone calls a few days later about it to sell me on it. I was genuinely surprised companies still did that in 2024/2025.
- egorfine 2mo ago
  If you tried a 2005 technology, don't be surprised with 2005 customer service.
  - morkalork 2mo ago
    That almost sounds nice nowadays
  - lelanthran 2mo ago
    I wish we had 2005 levels of customer service.
  - rsynnott 2mo ago
    2005?! Delphi is from the 90s!
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Delphi is from 1995.
- shimonabi 2mo ago
  It's 90's tech. Their business model is selling expensive subscriptions to keep legacy projects alive. I was at one of the conferences in my country and the average age of a developer was about 60.
  - tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
    Although it was dirt cheap in the nineties.
- cestith 2mo ago
  There’s always FPC and Lazarus if you don’t want to mess with proprietary Embacadero stuff. It’s not 100% the same, but it’s a pretty good equivalent that uses the same programming language (Object Pascal), has a UI builder, and all that. It also supports more platforms and even embedded development.
t1234s 2mo ago
Self-learning programming in the 90's went from DOS batch files => MS Basic => Turbo Pascal then Delphi 1. Out of all of those I had the best success understanding what I was doing in Delphi. Also Delphi 1 had the coolest installer graphics.
kopirgan 2mo ago
Borland C++ builder came with a nice manual book that explained object oriented programming from basic concepts. Lol those were the days..
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Turbo Pascal 5.5 manuals were my introduction to OOP, and Turbo Pascal 6, Turbo Vision, my first understanding of a good OOP framework.
fithisux 2mo ago
SynWrite and CubicExplorer are two very useful Delphi Open Source Projects.
roughly 2mo ago
Delphi might still be decent, but Embarcadero is a fucking train wreck. That company's been Private-Equitied to hell and back. I was involved with them in a business capacity a bit back and it was an astonishingly poorly run company with some of the least competent upper leadership I've ever had the misfortune to come in contact with. It's a testament to how good Delphi was that it's still even marginally useable, because there damn sure hasn't been anyone competent at the helm for at least 20 years now.
- antx 2mo ago
  And they have spywares in their IDE and if they even think for a second that you're using the trial software in an unauthorized way, their lawyers will threaten you. Like, they won't even try to discuss with their sales team, or try to clarify the situation. Despicable company if you ask me.
overgard 2mo ago
Man, some own-goals on this website. I went to download it to try it out and they want me to fill out a registration form. Fuck off! Also, while trying to figure out the licensing restrictions on community edition: > Can I install and use both Delphi CE or C++Builder CE together on the same machine? > No. Only one or the other can be installed. What?! It appears to be a technical limitation rather than a license one since the paid version has the same issue, but like, come on!
fithisux 2mo ago
I think Delphi these days need a VS installation. Is that correct? It is not self contained like FPC.
carlos256 2mo ago
No Linux version.
- okanat 2mo ago
  Win32 is the only stable Linux ABI. You can run Delphi apps under Wine.
SalaevAl 2mo ago
Can't believe Delphi is still actively maintained — and with features like this. Lost track of it years ago. Back in 2003 I wrote a university coursework in it; Pascal was my second language after BASIC. Might be time to take another look, especially with the multi-platform support.
kitd 2mo ago
No Linux support is a shame. Fortunately there's Lazarus and FreePascal as an alternative.
ketzu 2mo ago
Delphi was the first language I learned, and I really enjoyed it. It was so sad it got less and less accessible to me, so I moved to C++ (Which became my favorite language for a long time). Whenever I looked into it, I ran into the insane conditions Embarcadero has for a license, so I never went back. And realistically, I don't know enough Delphi/Pascal anymore to use it (or Lazarus).
nurettin 2mo ago
Oooh real 64bit ide instead of the crippled 32bit junk they gave as a demo for the past 10 years. Good improvement.
NorthSouthNorth 2mo ago
Ha what a memory. In HS we started with Java, then the education department (I assume) tried to force us to switch to Delphi, and we had to learn about RAD development methodology, etc, and then, very randomly, we swapped back to Java. I think the schools couldn't afford it. I remember liking the language but could never get it installed at home.
misswaterfairy 2mo ago
I taught myself to write programs on a copy of Delphi 7 I got from a computing magazine CD (or maybe DVD... a long time ago, when Borland owned Delphi...) back in the day. It was great even for an absolute newbie with limited access to developer documentation or someone to properly teach me how to code in Object Pascal properly. I remember extensively searching for VCL packages too. I'd definitely use Delphi again, and encourage it to be used, if Embarcadero were actually flexible on their licensing. It's a damn shame that Embarcadero places so many restrictions[1] on Delphi Community Edition (CE) for even open-source contributions by anyone bigger than a small niche development shop. If Embarcadero wanted to muscle back into the collective consciousness of software developers, allowing enterprise entities to use Delphi CE on open-source projects is a no-brainer, considering even Microsoft allows this with Visual Studio Community Edition[2], albeit with some other restrictions. Microsoft's enterprise limits on Visual Studio Community (250 PCs or not more than U.S. $1,000,000 or equivalent revenue) are so much more reasonable than Embarcadero's laughable $5,000 (thousand; not a typo) revenue limit. An explosion of open-source Delphi projects might just revive it, if the CE licensing agreement wasn't so absurdly restrictive. [1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq#tab-ce-faqs-licnver https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq#tab-... [2] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-c...
- zeroc8 2mo ago
  There is no long-term vision. The people managing Delphi are all nearing retirement. They are simply trying to keep it going long enough so they can retire without having to learn Java or TypeScript.
smallmouth 2mo ago
I have no idea why there's all these c and c++ alternatives and wannabes when there's Delphi/object pascal. That's my $0.02!
zeroc8 2mo ago
Sometimes I fantasize about switching back to native Delphi Win64 desktop development. As a user, I still prefer those applications over anything else, especially when it comes to software I have to work with daily. Both Java and .NET have always had this annoying lag, when it comes to desktop software. And don't get me started on SPAs. In my current job, I'm working on a SPA application for a customer where individual users would be served much better by a native app. But deploying the thing in a cooperate environment would be a nightmare. But the dream is still alive...

183 points by layer8 2mo ago

I'm an outsider, although I've heard cool things about Delphi. So, trying to find examples of what this looks like, I was naturally interested in the "Cool Apps" section. But my biggest surprise was that Beyond Compare was listed in there. I see that thing in a lot of Windows .NET shops, I always figured it was .NET-based (I guess I confused association with dependency?) https://blogs.embarcadero.com/beyond-compare/ https://blogs.embarcadero.com/beyond-compare/

throw-the-towel 2mo ago
I'm not sure if it still does, but Delphi definitely used to support .NET.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Delphi.NET was a side project so to speak, and was mostly done under contract by RemObjects, which kept selling their compiler when Embarcadero decided to focus on native only. https://www.remobjects.com https://www.remobjects.com
  - OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
    Delphi.NET was so much central project that 8 only supported .NET. Nothing else was ever needed as it seemed. Delphi.NET was 8, 2005, 2006 and 2007, then dropped. It was hosted in common RAD IDE and language was close match. Delphi Prism was bundled somewhere between 2009 and XE2, a 3rd party product, hosted in Visual Studio IDE and language was resembling, but not quite. Enough divergence to not make it possible sharing source text with native Delphi.
    - vintagedave 2mo ago
      (I work at RemObjects) - we've been working hard on reducing convergence recently, that is, still supporting our own Oxygene Pascal syntax but also accepting other variants of Pascal. We want it to be possible for someone to have a common source file as you suggest, much the same as you can with Delphi and FPC. It is possible today; we are working on the really esoteric syntax. Our 'Delphi Island' support also allows linking to BPLs. And we have our own IDE (for multiple platforms), as well as living inside VS.
    - throw-the-towel 2mo ago
      OTOH Delphi 8 flopped so hard that the next version brought back Win32 support.
      - OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
        It became a good tradition to release version of software with my favorite number in such a way everybody will hate it. Delphi 8, Windows 8
pjmlp 2mo ago
In Germany, Delphi columns are still rather common on the .NET developers magazine.
- afarah1 2mo ago
  >the .NET developers magazine. Surely it's online? Such magazine still being in issue would be equally surprising to me.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Nope, here you can still buy developers magazines. Entwickler, .NET, Java aktuelle, Maker, Retrogammer can still be found on newstands, what happens is that not all of them have all magazines available. You can get them delivered to your address anyway. Here, https://www.presseplus.de/Dotnetpro-Abo https://www.presseplus.de/Dotnetpro-Abo
kogus 2mo ago
I have used Beyond Compare for 20 years, and as far as I know, it has always been and still is written in Delphi. Quest Software, maker of TOAD for Oracle was also a big Delphi shop for many years. Not sure if they still are.
vrighter 2mo ago
afaik FL studio is also written in delphi

pjmlp 2mo ago

Also Ekon 2026 is already announced with the respective program, https://entwickler-konferenz.de/en/ https://entwickler-konferenz.de/en/

p0w3n3d 2mo ago

I remember Pascal as a so tidy and clean language... And verbose. Very verbose... And calling win API was a horror

andrewshadura 2mo ago
On the contrary, calling Windows APIs was easier than in C, no import libraries required, just declare what you need and there you go.
- asalahli 2mo ago
  Can't you do the same in C? You don't really need any headers, you can just declare function prototypes yourself
  - andrewshadura 2mo ago
    Of course you can, but it's more cumbersome in C as you also need to link to the DLL, hence the import library. In Delphi, it's all controlled from the function definition. But of course most of the Windows APIs were already provided in the Windows unit. Oftentimes with Pascalish wrappers.
pjmlp 2mo ago
The irony is that now in 2026 we have COBOL's revenge with Markdown driven programming. Doesn't get more verbose than that.
- cestith 2mo ago
  For your viewing pleasure (or horror): https://yamlscript.org/ https://yamlscript.org/
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Ouch!
  - 2mo ago

datakan 2mo ago

So much has changed. I remember driving past the Borland HQ in Scotts Valley every day on my way to work. Delphi was so cool back then with the object oriented pascal. I kinda miss Borland

esafak 2mo ago
Me too! So I was curious and watched What Happened to Borland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkoaPl31Dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkoaPl31Dw
- andrewshadura 2mo ago
  I was curious but stopped watching after a Borland Groover photo flicked a couple of times.

albertzeyer 2mo ago

Why would anyone use that over Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/)?

pjmlp 2mo ago
The IDE experience, they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows, and the industry that cares about Object Pascal, usually only cares because of Delphi. Don't get me wrong, FreePascal is great, but it hardly has a presence at big corporations. If they no longer use Delphi, means they have long moved into either Java or .NET.
- badsectoracula 2mo ago
  > they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows That is not the case, Free Pascal has improved the language before Delphi and Delphi followed, e.g. FPC added generics before Delphi and more recently it implemented management operators before Delphi. One big annoyance though is that when Delphi does decide to implement some language feature introduced by Free Pascal they implement it using an incompatible syntax which is petty (at best). FPC then has to support both their own syntax (usually in OBJFPC mode) and Delphi's syntax (usually in DELPHI mode) to let people share code between FPC and Delphi.
FooBarWidget 2mo ago
How good is Lazarus nowadays? Haven't taken a look for 20 years so this is a genuine question.
- DanielHB 2mo ago
  I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.
- kmaitreys 2mo ago

alexaholic 2mo ago

I haven't heard of Delphi in ages. Where I grew up, I was the first generation to start high school with C++ as opposed to the previous ones who were stuck with Pascal. I believe I did some in university, but not much. Anyway, I am amused to find this news on HN. I spent some of the past 24 hours reading through — and trying to draw some conclusions out of — the Go vs Rust sword fights in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49261133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49261133 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222270 Mad respect for these guys not giving a funk.

wewewedxfgdf 2mo ago

Borland should have made the language 100% free with a totally 100% free command line compiler and libraries. Charge people for the IDE - everyone seems to hate paying for languages but be quite happy to pay for IDEs.

OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
Will you happily pay for Ada IDE? Another part of your proposal is already true. Ada has free compiler and libraries. Paid IDE is all that remains, that's how things work, right?

kqr 2mo ago

A lot of the software I really admired in the early 2000s was developed by single persons using Delphi. It seems to me like there is (was?) something promoted by a Delphi environment that is rare to find elsewhere, that lets people (a) quickly prototype cool stuff, and then (b) sustainably grow it into a mature product as it gains users. I wish I cared enough to learn it, but there's so much else I need to learn first!

marginalia_nu 2mo ago
Delphi had a powerful and easy to use GUI editor in the early 2000s, much less of a hassle compared to building software with Windows' own C++ API.
- blackhaz 2mo ago
  As a kid I remember I was lost in all that OOP, window handles and stuff, and could never do anything. Delphi was like assembling Lego. Very similar to QtCreator.
  - morkalork 2mo ago
    It was like Visual Basic and Pascal had a baby
    - bdamm 2mo ago
      It was never clear to me who showed up first, but I used Delphi first and then tried Visual Basic and was like "Oh! It's here too!"
      - nottorp 2mo ago
        Well if you were familiar with Delphi the VB magic broke when you tried to make your own components for the designer. I went the same path and it was a bit of a shock when I found out i have to fire up Visual C++ to do a custom VB button.
- 2mo ago

giancarlostoro 2mo ago

Last time I tried Delphi Community Edition, I had to give them my email just to download it, then when I tried any of the templates the IDE showed, it wouldn't build at all, don't show me a template if it doesn't work. I received an email from someone asking how I was liking Delphi, I naively responded with my issue, but quickly realized he was just trying to sell Delphi. I would have bought Delphi over the years if they had a personal license for $99 or something, I am not investing thousands of dollars on a software where the free trial blows up out of the box (not intentionally it seemed).

pasc1878 2mo ago
This is the really annoying part. Delphi's predecessor if not Delphi itself was $99 (Turbo Pascal).
- giancarlostoro 2mo ago
  I would have bought something like Turbo Pascal today. The minute they did away with Turbo Pascal I feel like they basically marked themselves as a legacy only company, I don't know anyone who is using them for net new projects that wasn't already all in on Delphi, you don't see new startups using them anyway. Had they kept Turbo Pascal, I do wonder how much more prevalent they could have been compared to now. It's still a solid way to make a native GUI.
  - lelanthran 2mo ago
    > I would have bought something like Turbo Pascal today. What's stopping you? You can open your wallet to lazarus today, if you wanted.
    - giancarlostoro 2mo ago
      I've used Lazarus, very dated and doesn't look and feel quite as polished, there's been a lot of modern IDE advancements and none of them have made their way to Lazarus.
- 2mo ago

zerr 2mo ago

C++Builder as well? Any updates regarding cross-platform support?

pjmlp 2mo ago
Cross platform support exists but works by having Windows as the main development environment than then cross compiling into the varios platforms. Yes there is a community version for C++ Builder as well.
- zerr 2mo ago
  No. While it did had cross-platform support years ago, nowadays it is Windows-only, including targets.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Unless you're talking about Kylix, "Delphi 13 Community Edition brings the IDE forward from version 12.1 to the Florence release. Users gain access to new Delphi language features, and refreshed Android 15 and iOS 18 support."
    - zerr 2mo ago
      No, I'm talking about C++Builder specifically. They made it sub-par to Delphi.
      - pjmlp 2mo ago
        It has always been sub-par to Delphi, e.g. VCL, FireMonkey and COM interop are all done in Delphi, probably they got tired to do OWL and TV twice in both languages previously. Yet it still manages to be better than Visual C++, in the Visual part, if we exclude the short lived C++/CX. I was only thinking about Delphi in regards to the cross-platform, maybe after they end up rebooting the whole compiler on top of clang it gets better. Or who knows, as Embarcadero is today, maybe they won't bother to improve that, not many corps care about C++ Builder.

felixgallo 2mo ago

Unfortunately, if you intend on using Delphi, that will be $1200 plus $399 a year for the basic commercial license, and if you also intend on using databases, that will be $4600 plus $1399 a year. Or, you could use .NET, which is $0, and overwhelmingly better supported at this point. Embarcadero is milking a shrinking captive market, VMWare style. It makes perfect financial sense given the asset, but it's unfortunate for those of us with happy memories of Delphi 6 and 7.

OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
One can legally use Community Edition until income hits some limit. Paid edition can be bought and just used without updates. > use .NET, which is $0 But tracing garbage collection needs 5x more available RAM than used RAM. Native conservative applications introduce memory fragmentation, estimated as 2:1 available:used. That gives 2.5x smaller memory footprint of native apps, and RAM prices matter lately.
- leni536 2mo ago
  That limit is $5000 revenue per year. And this is not scoped down to "$5000 revenue from Delphi projects." It's basically student-only.
adornKey 2mo ago
You don't have to use their premium database components. Just use something else as client-library. I'm also not a fan of yearly payments. But with a $1200 license you usually get access to all old versions - including Delphi 7. After Delphi 6/7 at least Version 11/12 were usable for 64-bit. So I think at least once every other decade it is ok to get a usable 64-bit version of Delphi.

Yuioup 2mo ago

Delphi is dead. Nothing to see here. Move along.

kogus 2mo ago
Nuh-uh. http://www.isdelphidead.com/ http://www.isdelphidead.com/
- KETHERCORTEX 2mo ago
  Communists repeated "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live" for decades, but he actually remained dead all that time.
- nottorp 2mo ago
  Delphi and Qt are dead for companies that do not have at least one lawyer on retainer, so it's partially true.

aktau 2mo ago

My favourite Delphi program, and the one I learned to program with, was Dev-C++ (https://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp https://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp). AFAIK there is a more recent fork, but I also clearly recall the 4.9.9.? versoin number from back then. It was very fast (including startup). I enjoyed it a lot back when I was still on Windows. Funny that Delphi was used to create a C/C++ IDE.

fithisux 2mo ago
As C++ got more and more complex, it was not able to for Dev-C++ to catchup. Dev Pascal was also a dead end.
kokada 2mo ago
It is funny that while I learned about Dev-C++ during my university course but it was mostly considered a joke by anyone that used Linux (including myself). I think the issue was because it shipped with a really old version of GCC even at the time, so something that compiled on it had lots of issues running in the more recent GCCs that Linux/Ubuntu used (including the teacher for this particular course).
jamesfinlayson 2mo ago
Ah I remember Dev-C++ - not bad for simple stuff, but I tried using it to import a Visual Studio project (which worked) but it wouldn't compile due to it not having any compiler intrinsics headers.

kvemkon 2mo ago

Delphi - almost effortless programming memories. > ... native Delphi apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. In early 2000s there was Borland Kylix for Linux. Thus today (25 years later), if I'd use Object Pascal, then with Lazarus.

karteum 2mo ago

Still no Linux support...

weli 2mo ago
You can compile to Linux targets though
- ValdikSS 2mo ago
  … as well as for iOS, and Android, and web! https://www.embarcadero.com/starthere/seattle/mobdevsetup/ios/en/running_on_your_connected_device.html https://www.embarcadero.com/starthere/seattle/mobdevsetup/io... https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/features/mobile https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/features/mobile https://blogs.embarcadero.com/easily-create-web-apps-for-desktop-and-mobile/ https://blogs.embarcadero.com/easily-create-web-apps-for-des...

cautiouscat 2mo ago

I gave Delphi a shot, but after setting up my account I got a few phone calls a few days later about it to sell me on it. I was genuinely surprised companies still did that in 2024/2025.

egorfine 2mo ago
If you tried a 2005 technology, don't be surprised with 2005 customer service.
- morkalork 2mo ago
  That almost sounds nice nowadays
- lelanthran 2mo ago
  I wish we had 2005 levels of customer service.
- rsynnott 2mo ago
  2005?! Delphi is from the 90s!
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Delphi is from 1995.
shimonabi 2mo ago
It's 90's tech. Their business model is selling expensive subscriptions to keep legacy projects alive. I was at one of the conferences in my country and the average age of a developer was about 60.
- tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
  Although it was dirt cheap in the nineties.
cestith 2mo ago
There’s always FPC and Lazarus if you don’t want to mess with proprietary Embacadero stuff. It’s not 100% the same, but it’s a pretty good equivalent that uses the same programming language (Object Pascal), has a UI builder, and all that. It also supports more platforms and even embedded development.

t1234s 2mo ago

Self-learning programming in the 90's went from DOS batch files => MS Basic => Turbo Pascal then Delphi 1. Out of all of those I had the best success understanding what I was doing in Delphi. Also Delphi 1 had the coolest installer graphics.

kopirgan 2mo ago

Borland C++ builder came with a nice manual book that explained object oriented programming from basic concepts. Lol those were the days..

pjmlp 2mo ago
Turbo Pascal 5.5 manuals were my introduction to OOP, and Turbo Pascal 6, Turbo Vision, my first understanding of a good OOP framework.

fithisux 2mo ago

SynWrite and CubicExplorer are two very useful Delphi Open Source Projects.

roughly 2mo ago

Delphi might still be decent, but Embarcadero is a fucking train wreck. That company's been Private-Equitied to hell and back. I was involved with them in a business capacity a bit back and it was an astonishingly poorly run company with some of the least competent upper leadership I've ever had the misfortune to come in contact with. It's a testament to how good Delphi was that it's still even marginally useable, because there damn sure hasn't been anyone competent at the helm for at least 20 years now.

antx 2mo ago
And they have spywares in their IDE and if they even think for a second that you're using the trial software in an unauthorized way, their lawyers will threaten you. Like, they won't even try to discuss with their sales team, or try to clarify the situation. Despicable company if you ask me.

overgard 2mo ago

Man, some own-goals on this website. I went to download it to try it out and they want me to fill out a registration form. Fuck off! Also, while trying to figure out the licensing restrictions on community edition: > Can I install and use both Delphi CE or C++Builder CE together on the same machine? > No. Only one or the other can be installed. What?! It appears to be a technical limitation rather than a license one since the paid version has the same issue, but like, come on!

fithisux 2mo ago

I think Delphi these days need a VS installation. Is that correct? It is not self contained like FPC.

carlos256 2mo ago

No Linux version.

okanat 2mo ago
Win32 is the only stable Linux ABI. You can run Delphi apps under Wine.

SalaevAl 2mo ago

Can't believe Delphi is still actively maintained — and with features like this. Lost track of it years ago. Back in 2003 I wrote a university coursework in it; Pascal was my second language after BASIC. Might be time to take another look, especially with the multi-platform support.

kitd 2mo ago

No Linux support is a shame. Fortunately there's Lazarus and FreePascal as an alternative.

ketzu 2mo ago

Delphi was the first language I learned, and I really enjoyed it. It was so sad it got less and less accessible to me, so I moved to C++ (Which became my favorite language for a long time). Whenever I looked into it, I ran into the insane conditions Embarcadero has for a license, so I never went back. And realistically, I don't know enough Delphi/Pascal anymore to use it (or Lazarus).

nurettin 2mo ago

Oooh real 64bit ide instead of the crippled 32bit junk they gave as a demo for the past 10 years. Good improvement.

NorthSouthNorth 2mo ago

Ha what a memory. In HS we started with Java, then the education department (I assume) tried to force us to switch to Delphi, and we had to learn about RAD development methodology, etc, and then, very randomly, we swapped back to Java. I think the schools couldn't afford it. I remember liking the language but could never get it installed at home.

misswaterfairy 2mo ago

I taught myself to write programs on a copy of Delphi 7 I got from a computing magazine CD (or maybe DVD... a long time ago, when Borland owned Delphi...) back in the day. It was great even for an absolute newbie with limited access to developer documentation or someone to properly teach me how to code in Object Pascal properly. I remember extensively searching for VCL packages too. I'd definitely use Delphi again, and encourage it to be used, if Embarcadero were actually flexible on their licensing. It's a damn shame that Embarcadero places so many restrictions[1] on Delphi Community Edition (CE) for even open-source contributions by anyone bigger than a small niche development shop. If Embarcadero wanted to muscle back into the collective consciousness of software developers, allowing enterprise entities to use Delphi CE on open-source projects is a no-brainer, considering even Microsoft allows this with Visual Studio Community Edition[2], albeit with some other restrictions. Microsoft's enterprise limits on Visual Studio Community (250 PCs or not more than U.S. $1,000,000 or equivalent revenue) are so much more reasonable than Embarcadero's laughable $5,000 (thousand; not a typo) revenue limit. An explosion of open-source Delphi projects might just revive it, if the CE licensing agreement wasn't so absurdly restrictive. [1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq#tab-ce-faqs-licnver https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/faq#tab-... [2] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/vs2022-ga-c...

zeroc8 2mo ago
There is no long-term vision. The people managing Delphi are all nearing retirement. They are simply trying to keep it going long enough so they can retire without having to learn Java or TypeScript.

smallmouth 2mo ago

I have no idea why there's all these c and c++ alternatives and wannabes when there's Delphi/object pascal. That's my $0.02!

zeroc8 2mo ago

Sometimes I fantasize about switching back to native Delphi Win64 desktop development. As a user, I still prefer those applications over anything else, especially when it comes to software I have to work with daily. Both Java and .NET have always had this annoying lag, when it comes to desktop software. And don't get me started on SPAs. In my current job, I'm working on a SPA application for a customer where individual users would be served much better by a native app. But deploying the thing in a cooperate environment would be a nightmare. But the dream is still alive...