Delphi 13 Florence Released

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

andsoitis

89 points

35 comments

blogs.embarcadero.comTechstory

calmmixed

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DelphiRad StudioProgramming LanguagesSoftware Development

Key topics

Delphi

Rad Studio

Programming Languages

Software Development

The release of Delphi 13 Florence sparks a discussion about the current state and past popularity of Delphi, a programming language and development environment, with some users expressing nostalgia and others noting its decline.

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01Story posted
Sep 10, 2025 at 1:56 PM EDT
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Sep 10, 2025 at 2:43 PM EDT
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Sep 11, 2025 at 4:26 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Discussion (35 comments)

Showing 35 comments

brightball

4 months ago

2 replies

I was surprised to see Delphi still getting pretty solid use in some circles. I had no idea.

Talked to a dev who was an advocate for it some years back.

ivan_gammel

4 months ago

2 replies

If you build for a small number of professional users with a known target platform and you know how to solve distribution, then RAD tools (or any platforms supporting desktop targets) are the best choice and they offer superior UX compared to browser-based apps.

I myself now prefer to build admin tools on Java/Swing, because it’s much faster and easier than building a web app (Claude Code does that job quite well). Delphi probably offers even better dev.speed/quality/UX.

johannes1234321

4 months ago

1 reply

Yeah, getting a webapp up and running for small amount of users is tedious. Either complicated install or permanent hosting cost and permanent cost for keeping maintained. A desktop tool has a lot less security vectors as it's all local.

Of course there is electron, but that has its own set of complications.

For simple tools RAD is great.

zeroc8

4 months ago

Since Firemonkey draws on Skia anyway, they could also provide something similar to Flutter/WASM.

I love the Flutter/WASM idea, but cannot get warm with the widget in widget approach flutter uses. Having a designtool like Delphi's would be nice.

Tobias42

4 months ago

Have you tried Vaadin? It's like writing a Swing application that compiles to the web. Or at least it was when I used it last, about 7 years ago.

drob518

4 months ago

It’s the COBOL of the 1990s.

gramie

4 months ago

3 replies

Not a good sign when the website (granted it's the blog website, not the main one) for a commercial development tool is unreachable.

Sad, because I still have a soft spot in my heart for Delphi.

nunobrito

4 months ago

2 replies

Delphi was the only compiler where the Help documentation was really helpful and used without needing internet. For each library they provided real-world examples on the documentation so we could learn how to use them.

I've never found bettern tool for building desktop GUI apps so easily. I've dropped Delphi back in 2010, moved to Java and tried the web/mobile world but nothing comes close to that top-notch quality.

Irony of destiny: Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.

andsoitisAuthor

4 months ago

1 reply

> Any app compiled with Borland Delphi is instantly multiplatform because they run beautifuly on Linux and OSX when WINE is installed there.

Delphi can compile native apps for Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.

nunobrito

4 months ago

Thanks for that info. Was reading and seems to be available since edition 10 upwards with the enterprise license: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76356995/how-to-target-l...

Fantastic toolchain.

innocentoldguy

4 months ago

My first programming job was writing Delphi code. Their documentation was excellent. All of the documentation I've used since then has been sad and disappointing.

browningstreet

4 months ago

1 reply

Ironic when you get a Cloudflare error page for something that should be CDN'd and static-able anyway.

Here's where I'll add: it's really weird to me that Embarcadero now owns Ultra-Edit.

zeroc8

4 months ago

And Sencha. They are just buying stuff so that they can milk their remaining customers. But outside of Delphi/C++ Builder and maybe Interbase back in the day, I haven't seen them doing anything worthwile.

drob518

4 months ago

Yea, well said. Me too.

kev009

4 months ago

1 reply

Some interesting trivia, Netflix' cofounder Marc Randolf spent time at Borland.

RAD Studio is kind of the closet experience to VB6 where you simply drop controls on a form and can easily wire it up.. with a much better language.

The tools were/are too expensive and Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily, and it's been extractive rather than growth oriented since. There is the Lazarus/FreePascal project which offers an alternative.

tylerflick

4 months ago

1 reply

> Microsoft pile drove them from early dominance to niche by undercutting them handily

And hiring Anders Hejlsberg

selectnull

4 months ago

4 replies

Microsoft did a lot of bad things over the years, but Borland drove themselves over the cliff on their own. Instead of focusing on developer tools, they wanted to reinvent (and rename) Borland every few years in the 90s.

Bad management, bad decisions, bad products (Delphi 7 was peak). MS had nothing to do with that. And I'm sure Anders made a right move to abandon the sinking ship.

I'm still pissed at Borland for all those bad moves.

drob518

4 months ago

1 reply

It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools. Microsoft could easily squeeze Borland by simply making MSDN tools free. Borland tried to diversify with databases, word processors, and spreadsheets, but Microsoft countered with Office, trying them altogether, and it became the default in every single business. Borland had great technology and was super innovative and I used Turbo C++ and TASM for years. But in the end, they just couldn’t find a cash cow market to keep them afloat.

selectnull

4 months ago

1 reply

> It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools.

Just to be clear: we are talking the 90s here. Everybody was charging for developer tools (). MSDN was not free, far from it. From today's viewpoint where every compiler imaginable is free and the tools are better than ever (except there is nothing like Delphi and VCL), the 90s were a heaven for tool makers.

I'm talking about the Windows ecosystem.

drob518

4 months ago

Correct, but Borland didn’t die in the 1990s. That was its heyday. As I said, I used Turbo C++ during that period and I spent good money on it. But the tools commoditized and Microsoft eventually made MSDN basically free in the 2000s (there might have been some nominal charge, but it was low). And that was when Borland eventually got acquired, in 2009.

therealmarv

4 months ago

2 replies

The could have been the Jetbrains (before Jetbrains existed) and even bigger than Jetbrains.

stuaxo

4 months ago

1 reply

Just offload themselves to JetBrains, and have Delphi opened.

ksec

4 months ago

Open Sourcing Delphi along with Commercial licensing to Continue development is on my wish list if I ever become a billionaire.

zeroc8

4 months ago

I remember thinking back then that Jetbrains had their pricing right.

Not free but low enough so that invidual developers and companies wouldn't think twice about bying a license.

Borland/Inprise/Codegear/Embarcadero just priced themselves out of the market.

elzbardico

4 months ago

And yes, naming themselves inprise was peak 90's wallstreet cringe.

elzbardico

4 months ago

Borland decided that they should target management instead of the developers as their focal point of product development. They ignored the Web for Delphi and decided that web development front would be covered by JBuilder, a paid and slow evolving product that could not compete against the fast iterating and free Eclipse.

zenlot

4 months ago

1 reply

Delphi is still great, even though the usage declined and not many people, especially newcomers know about it (or C++ Builder).

It is still probably the best drag and drop experience for UI components, with Qt Creator being a runner up.

A bit shame, as most likely the popularity declined due to draconial licencing model at the time. Now they have Delphi Community edition, which is free.

If you have some free time, try it, you won't regret it. Especially good for hobby projects.

_zamorano_

4 months ago

1 reply

I don't think any of those are better than WinForms.

After all these years, I still use WinForms for prototyping, nothing faster comes to mind. If I need a mockup to show to my manager in 15 minutes, nothing beats WinForms.

kwanbix

4 months ago

3 replies

What do you mean by WinForms? I understand it is a framework/library? does it come with its own IDE? Delphi is great for this, how is WinForms better?

oniony

4 months ago

Visual Studio was/is the IDE.

zeroc8

4 months ago

WinForms used to have a designer similar to Delphi. I've used them both, Delphi's was better.

bruckie

4 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Forms

benjiro

4 months ago

1 reply

Never mind ... clearly i am the issue.

breve

4 months ago

> literally memory segfault on not even complex code. Memory pointer issue or something

That sounds like your own misunderstanding of Object Pascal.

runjake

4 months ago

Here's the summary snippet from the post because the server is dead:

  "Embarcadero is very happy to announce RAD Studio 13 Florence along with Delphi 13 
   and C++Builder 13 is available to customers starting today. The RAD Studio 13 
   Florence release offers a 64-bit version of the RAD Studio IDE, an updated C++Builder 
   Clang compiler, Delphi language extensions, AI components, an AI companion, along with 
   a number of enhancements of existing features, and a significant focus on quality."

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ID: 45201372Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 12:41:39 PM

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