Some interesting trivia, Netflix' cofounder Marc Randolf spent time at Borland.
RAD Studio is kind of the closet experience to VB6 where you simply drop controls on a form and can easily wire it up.. with a much better language.
The tools were/are too expensive and Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily, and it's been extractive rather than growth oriented since. There is the Lazarus/FreePascal project which offers an alternative.
Microsoft did a lot of bad things over the years, but Borland drove themselves over the cliff on their own. Instead of focusing on developer tools, they wanted to reinvent (and rename) Borland every few years in the 90s.
Bad management, bad decisions, bad products (Delphi 7 was peak). MS had nothing to do with that. And I'm sure Anders made a right move to abandon the sinking ship.
I'm still pissed at Borland for all those bad moves.
It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools. Microsoft could easily squeeze Borland by simply making MSDN tools free. Borland tried to diversify with databases, word processors, and spreadsheets, but Microsoft countered with Office, trying them altogether, and it became the default in every single business. Borland had great technology and was super innovative and I used Turbo C++ and TASM for years. But in the end, they just couldn’t find a cash cow market to keep them afloat.
> It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools.
Just to be clear: we are talking the 90s here. Everybody was charging for developer tools (). MSDN was not free, far from it. From today's viewpoint where every compiler imaginable is free and the tools are better than ever (except there is nothing like Delphi and VCL), the 90s were a heaven for tool makers.
Correct, but Borland didn’t die in the 1990s. That was its heyday. As I said, I used Turbo C++ during that period and I spent good money on it. But the tools commoditized and Microsoft eventually made MSDN basically free in the 2000s (there might have been some nominal charge, but it was low). And that was when Borland eventually got acquired, in 2009.
Borland decided that they should target management instead of the developers as their focal point of product development. They ignored the Web for Delphi and decided that web development front would be covered by JBuilder, a paid and slow evolving product that could not compete against the fast iterating and free Eclipse.
Delphi is still great, even though the usage declined and not many people, especially newcomers know about it (or C++ Builder).
It is still probably the best drag and drop experience for UI components, with Qt Creator being a runner up.
A bit shame, as most likely the popularity declined due to draconial licencing model at the time. Now they have Delphi Community edition, which is free.
If you have some free time, try it, you won't regret it. Especially good for hobby projects.
I don't think any of those are better than WinForms.
After all these years, I still use WinForms for prototyping, nothing faster comes to mind. If I need a mockup to show to my manager in 15 minutes, nothing beats WinForms.
If you build for a small number of professional users with a known target platform and you know how to solve distribution, then RAD tools (or any platforms supporting desktop targets) are the best choice and they offer superior UX compared to browser-based apps.
I myself now prefer to build admin tools on Java/Swing, because it’s much faster and easier than building a web app (Claude Code does that job quite well). Delphi probably offers even better dev.speed/quality/UX.
Yeah, getting a webapp up and running for small amount of users is tedious. Either complicated install or permanent hosting cost and permanent cost for keeping maintained. A desktop tool has a lot less security vectors as it's all local.
Of course there is electron, but that has its own set of complications.
Here's the summary snippet from the post because the server is dead:
"Embarcadero is very happy to announce RAD Studio 13 Florence along with Delphi 13
and C++Builder 13 is available to customers starting today. The RAD Studio 13
Florence release offers a 64-bit version of the RAD Studio IDE, an updated C++Builder
Clang compiler, Delphi language extensions, AI components, an AI companion, along with
a number of enhancements of existing features, and a significant focus on quality."
Delphi was the only compiler where the Help documentation was really helpful and used without needing internet. For each library they provided real-world examples on the documentation so we could learn how to use them.
I've never found bettern tool for building desktop GUI apps so easily. I've dropped Delphi back in 2010, moved to Java and tried the web/mobile world but nothing comes close to that top-notch quality.
Irony of destiny: Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.
My first programming job was writing Delphi code. Their documentation was excellent. All of the documentation I've used since then has been sad and disappointing.
And Sencha. They are just buying stuff so that they can milk their remaining customers. But outside of Delphi/C++ Builder and maybe Interbase back in the day, I haven't seen them doing anything worthwile.
Some interesting trivia, Netflix' cofounder Marc Randolf spent time at Borland.
RAD Studio is kind of the closet experience to VB6 where you simply drop controls on a form and can easily wire it up.. with a much better language.
The tools were/are too expensive and Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily, and it's been extractive rather than growth oriented since. There is the Lazarus/FreePascal project which offers an alternative.
> Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily
And hiring Anders Hejlsberg
Microsoft did a lot of bad things over the years, but Borland drove themselves over the cliff on their own. Instead of focusing on developer tools, they wanted to reinvent (and rename) Borland every few years in the 90s.
Bad management, bad decisions, bad products (Delphi 7 was peak). MS had nothing to do with that. And I'm sure Anders made a right move to abandon the sinking ship.
I'm still pissed at Borland for all those bad moves.
It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools. Microsoft could easily squeeze Borland by simply making MSDN tools free. Borland tried to diversify with databases, word processors, and spreadsheets, but Microsoft countered with Office, trying them altogether, and it became the default in every single business. Borland had great technology and was super innovative and I used Turbo C++ and TASM for years. But in the end, they just couldn’t find a cash cow market to keep them afloat.
> It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools.
Just to be clear: we are talking the 90s here. Everybody was charging for developer tools (). MSDN was not free, far from it. From today's viewpoint where every compiler imaginable is free and the tools are better than ever (except there is nothing like Delphi and VCL), the 90s were a heaven for tool makers.
I'm talking about the Windows ecosystem.
Correct, but Borland didn’t die in the 1990s. That was its heyday. As I said, I used Turbo C++ during that period and I spent good money on it. But the tools commoditized and Microsoft eventually made MSDN basically free in the 2000s (there might have been some nominal charge, but it was low). And that was when Borland eventually got acquired, in 2009.
The could have been the Jetbrains (before Jetbrains existed) and even bigger than Jetbrains.
I remember thinking back then that Jetbrains had their pricing right.
Not free but low enough so that invidual developers and companies wouldn't think twice about bying a license.
Borland/Inprise/Codegear/Embarcadero just priced themselves out of the market.
Just offload themselves to JetBrains, and have Delphi opened.
Open Sourcing Delphi along with Commercial licensing to Continue development is on my wish list if I ever become a billionaire.
And yes, naming themselves inprise was peak 90's wallstreet cringe.
Borland decided that they should target management instead of the developers as their focal point of product development. They ignored the Web for Delphi and decided that web development front would be covered by JBuilder, a paid and slow evolving product that could not compete against the fast iterating and free Eclipse.
Delphi is still great, even though the usage declined and not many people, especially newcomers know about it (or C++ Builder).
It is still probably the best drag and drop experience for UI components, with Qt Creator being a runner up.
A bit shame, as most likely the popularity declined due to draconial licencing model at the time. Now they have Delphi Community edition, which is free.
If you have some free time, try it, you won't regret it. Especially good for hobby projects.
I don't think any of those are better than WinForms.
After all these years, I still use WinForms for prototyping, nothing faster comes to mind. If I need a mockup to show to my manager in 15 minutes, nothing beats WinForms.
What do you mean by WinForms? I understand it is a framework/library? does it come with its own IDE? Delphi is great for this, how is WinForms better?
WinForms used to have a designer similar to Delphi. I've used them both, Delphi's was better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms
Visual Studio was/is the IDE.
I was surprised to see Delphi still getting pretty solid use in some circles. I had no idea.
Talked to a dev who was an advocate for it some years back.
If you build for a small number of professional users with a known target platform and you know how to solve distribution, then RAD tools (or any platforms supporting desktop targets) are the best choice and they offer superior UX compared to browser-based apps.
I myself now prefer to build admin tools on Java/Swing, because it’s much faster and easier than building a web app (Claude Code does that job quite well). Delphi probably offers even better dev.speed/quality/UX.
Yeah, getting a webapp up and running for small amount of users is tedious. Either complicated install or permanent hosting cost and permanent cost for keeping maintained. A desktop tool has a lot less security vectors as it's all local.
Of course there is electron, but that has its own set of complications.
For simple tools RAD is great.
Since Firemonkey draws on Skia anyway, they could also provide something similar to Flutter/WASM.
I love the Flutter/WASM idea, but cannot get warm with the widget in widget approach flutter uses. Having a designtool like Delphi's would be nice.
Have you tried Vaadin? It's like writing a Swing application that compiles to the web. Or at least it was when I used it last, about 7 years ago.
It’s the COBOL of the 1990s.
Here's the summary snippet from the post because the server is dead:
Never mind ... clearly i am the issue.
> literally memory segfault on not even complex code. Memory pointer issue or something
That sounds like your own misunderstanding of Object Pascal.
Not a good sign when the website (granted it's the blog website, not the main one) for a commercial development tool is unreachable.
Sad, because I still have a soft spot in my heart for Delphi.
Delphi was the only compiler where the Help documentation was really helpful and used without needing internet. For each library they provided real-world examples on the documentation so we could learn how to use them.
I've never found bettern tool for building desktop GUI apps so easily. I've dropped Delphi back in 2010, moved to Java and tried the web/mobile world but nothing comes close to that top-notch quality.
Irony of destiny: Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.
> Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.
Delphi can compile native apps for Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.
Thanks for that info. Was reading and seems to be available since edition 10 upwards with the enterprise license: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76356995/how-to-target-l...
Fantastic toolchain.
My first programming job was writing Delphi code. Their documentation was excellent. All of the documentation I've used since then has been sad and disappointing.
Ironic when you get a Cloudflare error page for something that should be CDN'd and static-able anyway.
Here's where I'll add: it's really weird to me that Embarcadero now owns Ultra-Edit.
And Sencha. They are just buying stuff so that they can milk their remaining customers. But outside of Delphi/C++ Builder and maybe Interbase back in the day, I haven't seen them doing anything worthwile.
Yea, well said. Me too.