22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks To celebrate another year of success for Delphi. I dug a bit in my archive. Here are a few old images, mostly ads from Borland, before and after the product release. To celebrate another year of success for Delphi. I dug a bit in my archive. Here are a few old images, mostly ads from Borland, before and after the product release. You can find a higher resolution version of these images at https://goo.gl/photos/WeWa3wEL9xDYAp179. Here are smaller versions, with some comments. It is interesting to notice how the original business value (increased productivity for developers) is still true today with a totally changed landscape, mobile, and all. We could re-use some of the original ads, as they make sense today. The other things I noticed is that most of the other tools that were popular back than, have long been forgotten. Delphi, on the other hand, is still popular. The Original Product Box The Trio of the Thickest Delphi 1 Books Mine, Charlie's and Pacheco/Teixeira where the 3 classic books covering Delphi in all of its angles, and became classic books, all with many editions for following versions. I guess I have them all... Before Delphi, Was Turbo Pascal Before Delphi came along, the language, its earlier (and different) OOP model and Windows integration were already there. But Delphi had a new object model in the language, the concept of components, and a new library, including strong database access, and it was a breaking change from previous Turbo Pascal products. And Borland had a magazine, here you can see the editor: Here Comes Delphi Delphi RAD to ROI. We should use this more today!

Visual Basic done Right... The RADical performance... ready for Windows 95. Development got easier (with the family of Borland tools). Even if the product was a bit simpler (with the product matrix fitting a single page) it was powerful. And magazines focused to it, for which I occasionally wrote articles. Delphi Prizes And Delphi won many prices, celebrated when Delphi 2 shipped. See the Jolt Award announcement ("Borland is back") and description: Delphi 2 and Delphi 3 The easy of VB with the power of C++. On Time and on Budget. Power and performance. And some reviews. Delphi and a Duck: an anticipation of things to come... More "Recent" Versions Delphi 4 (pushing rocks?), Delphi 5 and the Net (meaning Internet... but kind of cryptic), Delphi 6, Kylix (Linux we are coming back real soon!), Delphi 7, Delphi 8 and .NET (ugh!). And a big push towards modeling! Delphi BirthDay Page I still and always have Delphi 1 launch information at a page of my regular web site, http://www.marcocantu.com/delphibirth/. But enough of history, I'll start blogging on the Delphi language coming back to Linux tomorrow!

32 Comments

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Thanks for the post, some serious bells rung there. I remember the buzz of getting a nice cheque from The Delphi Magazine for some tips and tricks published!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Delphi is my love. Thank you

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks This is a really great product!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Thanks for posting such many images! Amazing how David I showed vision of a "large marketplace of reusable objects". Idea has evolved to a central repositories like GetIt and Delphinus.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Delphi and native code in general rocks. And for quick and dirty you can use your favorite script language with native bindings. But please - do something about your pricing. I'm not saying anything needs to be free, but at least split the product into smaller units (e.g. Windows VCL only) and make those units cheaper.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Yay, Marco, you're still around! I started with Turbo Pascal as a next step after BASIC a long, long time ago, and I remember puzzling myself crazy after Turbo Pascal With Objects 5.5 came out - I must have re-read the book about the objects umpteen times, staring at the way the VMT worked in desperation as to try to get my head around it. Delphi was very good to me for a great many years. I ended up on the eventually-abandoned Delphi for .NET side of things and doing the 'Delphi Prism' thing - which I attempted a number of times - was just way too big a job. The Borland software conferences were some of the great highlights of my professional life. There was always something new to learn, and some of it carried me for years. I was still pulling things from Steve Teixeira's security in web services session over five years later. I'm positive I went to one of your sessions as well :) Thanks for the memories :)

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks First, Delphi, since v. 2, has been my favorite language. The first job I had was DB programming using Delphi on Oracle. Second, thanks for all your publications on Delphi, many of which I've used!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks It was the best time ever

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Thanks for posting the Delphi version history. It has taken me back to those days when I started to switch from dBase IV and Clipper to Delphi 3. I learned Delphi 3 from your book and started developing core banking system (CBS) in Delphi 3, 5 and 7. The CBS now has 70% market share in domestic market. I love DELPHI and It still Rocks.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks David surely hasn't changed much in 22 years.

CC -> Hypervision -> Turbo C 1.0 ->Turbo C 2.0 ->AppBuilder That was my approximate path to Delphi. Being a C shark from the outset, coding on Xenix and Unix computers back in the 80's, I was tasked to do some code for Windows 2.0... I didnt like MS compiler and all the window management needed, but I did find a scriptable spreadsheet called Hypervision or something of the kind. That was my first Windows program. I continued to be a C guy, but one day a co worker introduced me to a pirate copy of AppBuilder... which was the codename for Delphi 1.0 before it was released. From then on... Im always coming back to Delphi even though having taken many trips around Java, C++ and C# due to various projects. But my favorite is Delphi.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks 22 year ago I had been recruited to rewrite an application in Foxpro. There were buggy betas for the new Win 32 Foxpro availabe but a company called Borland were shipping shrinkwrapped Delphi 1.0. We went with Delphi and never looked back. I chose Delphi for my latest project. Good decision then, Good decision now. Happy Birthday Delphi!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Thanks for the reminder Marco! Your books really helped me in the early days. Like some others I got into Delphi via Turbo C, Turbo Pascal and then Delphi. I've been with it ever since and even resisted the .Net storm. My business started around the same time as Delphi and as for a small company it's a great help in terms of productivity. From my POV the IDE has always been the best. Add to this now, I think without doubt it's the best tool for multi platform development which looks like it will be given another boost with forthcoming Linux support. May it rock for another 22 years..

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Wow that takes me back. I started with TurboPascal on dual floppy disks. One pass compile everything but it was still so much faster to build than anything else out there. Later used Delphi 3.0 for some enterprise projects. Now I wish I had kept the packaging from those, I would post pictures but long long gone.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks I began my work with microcomputers with a basic course in BASIC and then moved on to Turbo Pascal 3.0. I loved working with Pascal and to this day it is probably still my favorite language of my entire very long career. Unfortunately, I was turned to the Dark Side with Visual Basic 1.0 since the corresponding Borland Pascal package for Windows was as difficult as C++. Today, I am a software engineer working with Visual Studio, VB.NET, and C#. I keep on thinking about returning to Pascal but I have too many projects going on to take the time for it. Nonetheless, the article was a great walk down "memory lane"; days I still wish were with us since the technical profession had a sense of excitement and far more honesty than it does today (in my opinion)...

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Been around since the first version. I actually stayed on Version 7 or over ten years! (That's a compliment to it's usefuleness.) Still on XE5.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Wow, is that a great walk. I remember so many of those! But what I miss the most was the low bar for entry. As a hobby developer, Delphi is shutting us out. I blogged about it at the above link.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks You're missing the previous 20 year's worth of history by not mentioning that all the Delphi developments were based on the original UCSD Pascal which created the concept of Units, which included Interface and Implementation in the same re-useable files. That was the first to separate the external component definition from the internal representation. It was also the first system to provide operating system independence. I bought v3.1 in 1979 for a 64Kb Z80, and still use exactly the same code today to run my business!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks I wrote my first programs in Borland Pascal in 1984 or 1985 (and on an IBM PC with two floppy disk drives). 30-plus years later, and Pascal/Delphi still rocks. Philippe Kahn was a wildman of sorts and tried to extend Borland from languages to applications, with a spreadsheet and a database. There was a brief period when it looked like there would be meaningful competition between Borland and Microsoft, but Borland over-extended itself. What a trip it's been.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks I was fortunate that the company I joined after college in 1981 used Delphi, as it led to my immersion in the system (otherwise I might not have been introduced to it). After years of FORTRAN, Assemblers, and other tools, I loved using Delphi: in return for having some discipline forced on me by the syntax rules, my programming became easier. I am now self-employed, which means that I don't ever have to use C++ or C# again!

Yes - It still rocks After all these years, none of the recent development paradigms/tools feel "just right" as Delphi. I'm talking about that feeling, when you build all your code and watch the compiler progress gradually without any errors and you know that you have a rock solid, stable executable in the end. Thanks for the memories.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks My Life changed when i decide to use Delphi and still does!!! Happy Birthday Delphi!!!!!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks We need a community version of Delphi to extend its use!!!

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks In Borland's time, several versions of Delphi were distributed distributed free of charge in computer magazines. They They came with full-length CDs, which could be used used for both study and professionally. I learned a lot from Delphi 2, 3, 4. At Embarcadero time nothing is FREE, everything is is paid for and expensive. Trial for 30 days? No thank thank you. It's worth remembering that for many years Microsoft has offered Visual Studio forever for free, including including for commercial use, in the Express versions versions and later the Community version. The Embarcadero needs to change its selfish politics politics immediately.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Really good! I did start on Delphi 2... but still with Delphi and more. Thanks for your blog. (From Venezuela)

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks I remember my first Pascal program in 1984 (using another compiler) and the first contact with Turbo Pascal in 1984, running on a CP/M expansion card in an Apple II. Pascal Language is a geat programming language. When Borland created Delphi, it becames even better. I'm still using Delphi. The best compiler/language I ever known in 33 years.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Double Thank you! For Borland and for you Marco, made it 20 years ago my language number # 1, and his books have become here in Brazil definitive refence on Delphi, success for you and the entire development team by the support. And long life to Delphi!

Long gone Sorry, but I tend to disagree. De Delphi days are sadly over. Most of the development is moving to the web and the development is taken over by the horrors of JavaScript and dependency hell of npm

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks I was started from Turbo Pascal 3, TP5, TP7, Delphi3, Delphi2009, xe4 y Xe7 by now, i wrote several several aplications working as part of big systems and apps and apps mainly to administrative tasks. I use TP3 to write prg programs to dbase before Sidekick Sidekick apears, then I wrote a dBase clone on TP5, my my own dBase work on apps compiled on TP7 until Delphi3 Delphi3 simplified my life. Quickly, Faster and Easy way to make Windows Applications Applications, That is Delphi. Hello from Mérida and Cancún, Mexico.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Wilson, you write "The Embarcadero needs to change its selfish politics politics immediately." I guess you missed the fact that Delphi Starter is available for free to anyone -- yes kind of like a Community edition. Only limitation is you cannot use it for business use (over 1,000 USD /year). It has the Delphi compiler, RTL, VCL for Windows. Same on the C++ side.

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Too bad Embarcadero didn't get the Borland name - I still tend to say "Borland Delphi" etc. Good to see there is now a free edition for training use. It is great see small focused cross platform apps like EarMaster. Keep on Truckin'

22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks Happy birthday my dear Delphi !! Delphi is one of the most important sources of happines and pleasure in my life. I'm also very familiar with Visual Studio for desktop and web apps. I never truly accepted ADO.NET (both Datasets or Entity framework). It just too complicated for my taste compared to the elegance and simplicity of TDataset paradigma and always connected datasets. I'm using Delphi since version 3 and now using Starter 10.1 (both VCL and FM) + Zeos Access components (for access to MS SQL, MySQL and Oracle databases) + Fortes Report + licensed version 14 of Intraweb. Please mr. Cantu if you can convince Embarcadero to allow dbGO components in Starter version. That would be perfect ! Thank you.





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