[Cialug] Delphi, was Re: Question?

[cialug@cialug.org]

On Oct 26, 2004, at 10:29 PM, Leeland Heins wrote:

> to C).  So what it comes down to is that other than Kylix, Pascal
> is dead, dead, dead.  And I for one, mourn it not.

Mourn it not because it is far from dead.  The party is just about to 
begin.  See

   http://www.borland.com/delphi/

Delphi is a very capable, fully OO language with a large, 
well-established set of libraries and components.  People may not think 
of it as Pascal because Borland quietly started referring to the 
"Delphi language" a couple of years ago, but Delphi is the modern 
descendant of Turbo Pascal.

The new Delphi 2005 IDE includes every modern convenience of any IDE, 
including refactoring, integrated unit testing, revision control, etc., 
plus the strong database support that has been part of Delphi since 
1995.  (Of course you can also use vi/emacs/notepad and the 
command-line compilers if you prefer.)  Delphi 2005 includes compilers 
and libraries for Win32 and .NET development, and its integrated 
debugger can even debug Win32 and .NET processes simultaneously.  I 
personally prefer the syntax of Java/C++/C#, but there are situations 
where Delphi is our tool of choice.

Kylix (Delphi/C++ Builder for Linux) apparently never achieved great 
success in the market, at least in the US, but Delphi has always been 
fairly strong and appears poised for a resurgence.

While I'm thinking of it, I would like to extend an invitation to all 
readers of this list to attend meetings of the Central Iowa Delphi 
Users Group.  Despite its name, this group focuses on software 
development generally.  You do not need to be a Delphi developer to 
attend.  Information is available here:

   http://www.bigcreek.com/delphi/

--David W. Body / Big Creek Software, LLC