Do I still use Delphi?

4/10/2007

Frequently people ask me if I still use Delphi.

I still do use Delphi, but unfortunately my use is very limited. Today I nearly exclusively develop in C#. I developed in Delphi nearly exclusively for 8 years, and it still occupies a special "emotional place", but today most of my needs are managed code (i.e. .NET). Unfortunately Delphi is just too far behind in this space. Some day it might catch up, but I have long since already entrenched myself in C#.

However I still use Delphi exclusively for two things: native code and web development.

Sometimes I have a need to write native code, often to export an interface to C#. Sometimes it is new code and I cannot require the user to install .NET, other times it is existing code. For native code, Delphi is still and will remain my first choice.

I also use Delphi for web development. Why? Simply put, IntraWeb. While ASP.NET has made great strides and I often use it (or for newer stuff WCF) for webservices and web pages, for applications I find IntraWeb still to be far ahead of ASP.NET and other solutions. I realize that most VB or C# users will not move to Delphi to use IntraWeb, but since I am quite comfortable in Delphi I use the tool that is most productive.

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