10 ms·

Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.

by geiser 3y ago

f311a 3y ago
I'm also curious about what kind of companies are still using it.
- dejv 3y ago
  A lot of lab instrumentation companies across EU still use it. Also quite a few companies producing industry machinery, industrial displays etc.
  - rubidium 3y ago
    This. It’s a great little system for such use cases. It is mainly falling out of favor for new development because it’s hard to find devs. But in terms of quickly getting automation equipment designed and running it’s a workhorse.
    - dejv 3y ago
      + you can write both UI and low level code in one language
pjmlp 3y ago
Enough people in Germany are, to keep one conference going (EKON), having tracks on a Windows/.NET conference (BASTA!), and articles on developer magazines. Also most of the software at this Belgium company uses Delphi, https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home
_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
I did a little bit of Delphi 10ish or so years ago. This was a legacy application. It actually wasn't too bad. I assume it is mostly people working on legacy stuff at this point. Rewriting a huge code base which deals with thousands of edge cases is probably simply not worth it and sticking with Delphi is simply easier then.
wongarsu 3y ago
Delphi is one of the best options for rapid UI development, especially if you care more about functionality than looks. From what I gather that makes it somewhat poplar for industrial use cases.
nasso_dev 3y ago
i believe image line uses Delphi for fl studio
Loic 3y ago
Quite a lot of software in the industry. I maintain a large scientific application for a big oil & gas company. 15 years ago, Delphi was one of the only system to both allow very fast GUI application creation and had some very nice flowsheeting components. For process engineering, this was really really nice. Updated: Clarity.
peter_d_sherman 3y ago
>Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke. Is there any serious business who believes that only customers in America are still relevant? -- I have friends who are HN posters who believe that, but I love to tell them that joke! :-) <g> :-)
magicalhippo 3y ago
"Still using"... Our main product is in Delphi. We got 20+ year old code and brand new code in production. Several hundred forms/windows, ~1MLOC. We're serving a few hundred businesses in a niche (~75% market share). However we're working on migrating to .Net, though the full transition will take many years. Main limitation is that UI design and such is just nowhere near what we got in Delphi. We're quite used to being able to whip up a non-trivial UI in a day. So for now we're just moving the "backend" stuff to .Net, doing RPC to our .Net service and similar.
- aargh_aargh 3y ago
  Just wondering aloud - wouldn't it be easier to port the .dfm parsing to your desired language of choice and keep designing forms in Delphi? I can only imagine that it's not just the ease of design part (and legacy code) that keeps you in Delphi, it's the whole aspect of it being integrated with writing code, components, units and fast compilation.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    We rely quite heavily on DevExpress components, but yeah dfm parsing is something I've considered. But I have this gut feeling while it might get you 80% there you'll spend a ton of time fixing the last 20%, negating the win.
- nunobrito 3y ago
  Same here. More than ten years I've moved to Java as replacement since it was the best next thing. It has a practical WYSIWYG GUI editor but still nowhere the fantastic quality of Delphi and just dead nowadays too. A GUI written in Delphi would function natively in any Windows and then run any Mac or Linux through Wine without troubles.
blackbeans 3y ago
Yes, and it has never been a bad experience. However, I don't see a use case for new projects. There are many language options nowadays and most have a larger developer pool. I don't think the Community Edition will have the same impact as for instance Visual Studio CE.
jonnypotty 3y ago
A large proportion of the UKs independent bookshops run on a delphi developed system.

Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.

by geiser 3y ago

Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke.

f311a 3y ago

I'm also curious about what kind of companies are still using it.

dejv 3y ago
A lot of lab instrumentation companies across EU still use it. Also quite a few companies producing industry machinery, industrial displays etc.
- rubidium 3y ago
  This. It’s a great little system for such use cases. It is mainly falling out of favor for new development because it’s hard to find devs. But in terms of quickly getting automation equipment designed and running it’s a workhorse.
  - dejv 3y ago
    + you can write both UI and low level code in one language

pjmlp 3y ago

Enough people in Germany are, to keep one conference going (EKON), having tracks on a Windows/.NET conference (BASTA!), and articles on developer magazines. Also most of the software at this Belgium company uses Delphi, https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home https://www.lab-services.nl/en/home

_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago

I did a little bit of Delphi 10ish or so years ago. This was a legacy application. It actually wasn't too bad. I assume it is mostly people working on legacy stuff at this point. Rewriting a huge code base which deals with thousands of edge cases is probably simply not worth it and sticking with Delphi is simply easier then.

wongarsu 3y ago

Delphi is one of the best options for rapid UI development, especially if you care more about functionality than looks. From what I gather that makes it somewhat poplar for industrial use cases.

nasso_dev 3y ago

i believe image line uses Delphi for fl studio

Loic 3y ago

Quite a lot of software in the industry. I maintain a large scientific application for a big oil & gas company. 15 years ago, Delphi was one of the only system to both allow very fast GUI application creation and had some very nice flowsheeting components. For process engineering, this was really really nice. Updated: Clarity.

peter_d_sherman 3y ago

>Is there anybody still using Delphi? -- I have a friend which only develops in Delphi, but I love to tell her that joke. Is there any serious business who believes that only customers in America are still relevant? -- I have friends who are HN posters who believe that, but I love to tell them that joke! :-) <g> :-)

magicalhippo 3y ago

"Still using"... Our main product is in Delphi. We got 20+ year old code and brand new code in production. Several hundred forms/windows, ~1MLOC. We're serving a few hundred businesses in a niche (~75% market share). However we're working on migrating to .Net, though the full transition will take many years. Main limitation is that UI design and such is just nowhere near what we got in Delphi. We're quite used to being able to whip up a non-trivial UI in a day. So for now we're just moving the "backend" stuff to .Net, doing RPC to our .Net service and similar.

aargh_aargh 3y ago
Just wondering aloud - wouldn't it be easier to port the .dfm parsing to your desired language of choice and keep designing forms in Delphi? I can only imagine that it's not just the ease of design part (and legacy code) that keeps you in Delphi, it's the whole aspect of it being integrated with writing code, components, units and fast compilation.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  We rely quite heavily on DevExpress components, but yeah dfm parsing is something I've considered. But I have this gut feeling while it might get you 80% there you'll spend a ton of time fixing the last 20%, negating the win.
nunobrito 3y ago
Same here. More than ten years I've moved to Java as replacement since it was the best next thing. It has a practical WYSIWYG GUI editor but still nowhere the fantastic quality of Delphi and just dead nowadays too. A GUI written in Delphi would function natively in any Windows and then run any Mac or Linux through Wine without troubles.

blackbeans 3y ago

Yes, and it has never been a bad experience. However, I don't see a use case for new projects. There are many language options nowadays and most have a larger developer pool. I don't think the Community Edition will have the same impact as for instance Visual Studio CE.

jonnypotty 3y ago

A large proportion of the UKs independent bookshops run on a delphi developed system.