Delphi

What's it good for?

[georgeek]

What is the programming language Delphi good at and where might you use it in preference to another language?

[lorax]

I used to use Delphi to create stand alone executables and just as I was moving away from it Borland had added on some functionality that would allow it to work with webservers. As it was based largely on Pascal it was a pretty robust programming language.

If, however, you're question is related to how it could be used for websites I'd recommend getting started with a simpler and/or more popular language like PHP or PERL.

[georgeek]

Thanks lorax but I have been using PHP since PHP/FI.

I was really interested in what kind of applications Delphi was being used for and why the programmer chose it rather than another language.

[munchiez]

Something I've been wondering as well.

From what I've seen, it's used to create apps that work on Windows & Linux... the Linux counterparts called Kylix I think.

I'm not sure it's the greatest tool for developing websites though. I have a client with a Delphi site that he wants to promote in the search engines. Because all of the Delphi pages are bundled into a single .exe (with pages being requested through the query string), it's not very SE friendly. If it was ASP or .NET I could just use a URL rewriting filter.

Maybe I'm missing something though, I'm no Delphi expert :/

[jollymcfats]

Delphi has a great rapid application development environment, and from what I've seen programmers of almost any level can snap together & maintain sophisticated desktop applications pretty easily.

Delphi is very mature, and has lots of components and controls for integrating with databases, office apps, Windows services, UI widgets, what have you. It is also actively supported, and has an immense userbase.

Pascal (and thus Delphi) has something of a cult following among its practitioners, any of whom would be happy to talk your ear off about why it's superior for any conceivable task.

_{Disclaimer: I haven't touched any Pascal in 20 years. My comments are based on industry and coworker observation only. :)}

[lorax]

>> what kind of applications Delphi was being used for

Ah. It can do pretty much anything you'd like to do. The GUI was pretty good when I was using it (several years ago now) and I as was noted, I was able to slap together apps and compile them rather quickly.

The most robust app I built using Delphi was for a stone quarry that is very well known for selling grave stones and mausoleums. The app allowed anyone to build their own mausoleum. The app actually used DDE calls to drive AutoCAD in the background. I never got to finish the app the way I wanted to because the DDE was buggy and no one wanted to front the $20,000 licensing fee that would have given me the API version of AutoCAD.

But, I had fun working with Delphi. Could probably build that app in Flash today and do it it half the time and get more functionality out of it! LOL

[Easy_Coder]

I saw an indy car commercial the other day and the pit technicians were monitoring the engine metrics with a wireless delphi application.