alt Hacker NewsA 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!
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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.
Delphi is definitely something I'd put up there with LispWorks, a really excellent example of what polished developer experience should optimize for. Even though it's not real live coding like LispWorks, you could see your UI evolve with your classes, without sacrificing drag-and-drop editing, and without having to do it in another language. Everything is seamless, and the libraries are all extremely well thought-out. I think clisp is a nicer language than opascal, but Delphi is still really good software.
A relic from an era where commercial toolchains dominated. Tools for serious corpo Engineers born riding the coked-up excesses of... I think conglomerates were capital's darling at the time?
I keep a Windows VM for one app that is a commercial Delphi program for embroidery editing. It's been around for 30 years and is on the path to getting cross platform support soon with recent GUI revisions. Always been pretty solid for a product from a small team.
The GUI builder was more powerful than the one provided by VS, from what I remember (20+ years ago since I've dabbled in it). I really miss that era. In certain circles you could open an application and almost get a sense as to who built it due to the craftsmanship / UI / attention to detail in the placement of the elements in the application, etc.
Even before, Turbo Pascal was fairly appreciated in some circles (e.g. demomaking), quite productive and nice to use!
I noticed this as well in the 2000s. Stuff like WinHex which I was pretty sure then was written using Delphi. Was into RE during those days, so I used to poke around the internals of software just for fun
The RAD environment makes it insanely quick and easy to throw together a reasonably functional desktop app. Think WinForms on steroids. For all its age and the many cracks and seams, it's still very fast, easy for beginners and pros alike, and the final executable is a single tiny file (usually)