Today is the 24th anniversary of Delphi 1... and the company is celebrating by releasing Delphi 10.3 Rio Release 1 (or 10.3.1). Happy birthday, and long live Delphi.

Delphi 1 was introduced by Borland on February 14th 1995, so today it marks the 24th anniversary of the product. If you want to see some of the history about the product and its launch, you can refer to my blog post "22 Years of Delphi and it Still Rocks". In that post, there is a collection of my pictures of the early days of the product, some even predating it.

For today's celebration, I'm going to focus on screenshots, instead, comparing Delphi 1 and its Windows 3 operating system with Delphi 10.3.1 and its Windows 10 operating system. A fairly striking difference... but with some surprises. Before I do that, however, let me spend a second on today's actual announcement.

Delphi 10.3.1 has been Released Today

As you can read on Sarina's official announcement https://community.idera.com/developer-tools/b/blog/posts/rad-studio-10-3-1-is-here-happy-birthday-delphi. Delphi 10.3.1 is mostly focused on quality, but with some nice addition (particularly the new IDE tools from David). You can also check:

The docwiki release notes at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Rio/en/10.3_Rio_-_Release_1

The list of bugs fixed at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Rio/en/New_features_and_customer_reported_issues_fixed_in_RAD_Studio_10.3.1

Delphi's 24 Years Challange

Rather than the recent 10 years challange, let's do a 24 years challange, but using software rather than our selfies. The following images are my contribution. How did your software look 24 years ago? Here is how Delphi compares...

Let me start by showing the operating system way to find and start applications, 24 years ago and today:

Where did you find the Delphi start icon and where do you find it today?

On Delphi 1, there was a direct link to the help file, you now have to enable from the product:

After starting Delphi 1 you got a new project and a new VCL form by default, as there were not many other options. Today you get a Welcome page and from that you can create a project, for Windows/VCL or multi-device/FMX (like below):

OK. Now let's use old and new Delphi to create the same application! Here are a button, an edit, and a listbox (rebuilding one of the most classic introductory demos of the product). The one below uses FireMonkey:

Great user interface (kidding!). Let's write an event handler for the OnClick of the button. Oh wait, that code looks INCREDIBLY SIMILAR! Talk about code portability over 24 years and different frameworks!

Perfect. Let's now run the application, on Windows 3 for Delphi 1 and on Windows 10 for Delphi 10.3... but the same exact source code compiles and runs on Android 9 now!

Of course you could and still can debug your application (now also on mobile):

By the way, let's look also to the project source code (even if the menu item moved at some point, causing a huge debate among users):

What about getting information about the compiled program? The old one was a bit smaller... but still Delphi produces native binary files on all supported platforms!

Any project options? Here are the Delphi compiler / language project options 24 years ago and today:

One of the early gems of Delphi 1 was its database support and its Database Form Expert. These days we can tout the RAD Server Wizard...

The editor has changed quite a bit, so the Find Text dialog box:

And to conclude here are the about boxes of these 2 versions of the product:

Last, but not list the product has always had Easter Eggs including the list of contributors (the hidden key combination to reveal it is till the same!). Notice in Delphi 1, third from the bottom, the author of the Delphi language, the C# language, and the TypeScript language!

That's all, I'm considering doing a full video... but maybe for next years birthday! Enjoy the celebration of a long time product still alive and kicking, with a great past but also a great present and future. And if you are an active update subscription customer, enjoy Delphi 10.3.1! If not, you can still buy it, use a trial, or download the new Community Edition.