Delphi for Not Yet Techies

"Computer Careers: The Visual Development Language that is Targeting Microsoft’s Visual Basic for High Tech Jobs"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

Delphi is a product of Borland International. Delphi is a native code compiler that runs under Windows and provides visual computer career programming tools somewhat similar to those found in Microsoft Visual Basic.

The trick here is, Delphi is obviously Borland’s attempt to compete with Microsoft

Remember that Visual Basic was developed as a programming language and development environment to take full advantage of Windows, Microsoft’s premier product. In the opinion of at least some programmers familiar with both, Delphi is superior.

Delphi was obviously developed to correct Visual Basic’s shortcomings. It’s the next step. Some say, Delphi is "Visual Basic on steroids."

Well, it wouldn’t be worth Borland’s time to bring out an inferior product, now would it?

Delphi is a very recent language, just brought out in 1995

But Delphi is descended from an earlier language, called Pascal, also adopted by Borland International. Borland brought out different versions from Turbo Pascal to – most recently in the early 90s – Object Pascal.

Pascal was a well regarded language, but now is used mainly in colleges for teaching students programming before they set out on their computer careers. It is not used much for real world programs. Coincidentally, so Basic, the forerunner of Microsoft’s Visual Basic.

Visual Basic has some limitations. It cannot create Dynamic Link Library (DLL) files. It can.

Visual Basic does not have object oriented programming. It does support OOP.

Visual Basic can react to Windows events only as Microsoft says it can. It can react in any way you as programmer tell it to react.

With its Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Integrated Development Environment (IDE), it was designed to help programmers finish their programs in record time, thus enhancing their productivity.

Visual Basic compiles to a "halfway" language called p-code, not all the way to machine level language. It compiles to machine language. This makes it run faster than Visual Basic.

Delphi is the only visual development tool that was written by itself.

Don’t ask me how they managed did that, since it’s sort of pulling yourself by your bootstraps, except you have to make the bootstraps as you are pulling.

It is considered easy to learn. The biggest task is learning the many built-in components that are included with it.

Delphi is currently not the big commercial success that Visual Basic is, and this is reflected in the number of computer jobs open for its programmers as compared to the demand for Visual Basic programmers.

Borland does not swing the same weight as Microsoft and, to be fair, it has not been out as long as Visual Basic.

However, if it proves to the marketplace that it can indeed solve problems with greater programming strength than Visual Basic, many companies will want to apply this tool to their businesses. In time, this growing demand could make Delphi programming skills and experience a premium plus in your computer career.

Next: QBasic

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