What is "delphi"

The name Delphi refers to both the Delphi language as well as its IDE, which is used to help edit and debug Delphi projects.

Delphi originated in 1995 by the company Borland as an IDE, evolving from Turbo Pascal. It was created by Anders Hejlsberg.

The Delphi language is an enhancement of the Pascal language, (created initially by Niklaus Wirth), and Object Pascal. It is a general purpose language for the rapid development of native applications for Windows, OS X, iOS and recently Android.

Today both the IDE and the Delphi language are owned by Embarcadero Technologies. Delphi is sold either as an independent product or as part of RAD Studio, which includes other languages and Ides as well.

Among the strengths of Delphi are:

  • Language with consistent architecture
  • A fast compiler
  • Language with modern constructions
  • Its extensive Library of Visual Components (VCL)
  • a visual window designer (or Forms/dialogs)

Variants:

Some other Embarcadero products are or have been released through the "Delphi" brand. A product. Net called Delphi Prism (based on Pascalscript) for use with Microsoft Visual Studio allows development using Mono, producing applications that are "cross-platform", running on various platforms that support Mono. Delphi Prism is more compatible with Delphi syntax, although with different libraries. The Embarcadero PHP product, formerly called "Delphi for PHP", and Prism are part of RAD Studio. There is also a version of Delphi AS/400. There is also the version Community Delphi, with most features like iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS app development, available in paid versions.

Delphi console "Hello world":

program Hello;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
begin
  Writeln('Hello, World');
end.

A minimalist Delphi GUI application

program GUIHello;
uses  
  Windows;
begin
  MessageBox(0, 'Message', 'Hello, World', MB_OK);
end.

Resources for learning:

There is a good roundup of major blogs in the area of Delphi on the site Delphifeeds. The books of Marco Cantu on programming in Delphi are also a good source of learning.

Documentation(all in English)

See all questions about Delphi here.

References

Recommendation to use tag:

There are several release-specific tags. It is recommended to use the along with the version-specific tag, for example, .

Free Delphi/Pascal Books