Despite Delphi being regularly rated as one of the top ten development languages in the world, there’s still this weird, undeserved negativity (accidental or intentional) from some people who wrongly accuse it of being old or outdated. This is despite the fact that as you can see on our blog right now RAD Studio 12.3 has just been released. I’m not entirely sure what naysayers and doom-spreaders are worried about. They seem to claim, incorrectly, that Delphi is old fashioned – which is obviously incorrect, that it’s not updated – also untrue – didn’t I just mention version 12.3 of RAD Studio with Delphi and C++Builder is out now. Or they even ridiculously use the word ‘dinosaur’ in connection with Delphi when, in fact Delphi is the 4th newest language in the top ten index!
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Did you know that Delphi is actually the same age as Java and JavaScript? Delphi is also younger than Python, C++, and SQL
Even Java is only three months younger than Delphi. Moreover, JavaScript was released the same year as Delphi too.
Yet this weird kind of prejudice exists to try and “put Delphi in the corner” and claim it is a dinosaur when, in fact it’s newer than many other well-known programming languages and roughly the same age as most of the others in the top ten. What exactly are people scared of? Are they worried their friends might use Delphi and like it? Are they scared that the legendary tales of Delphi program’s rock-solid reliability, blinding performance, ability to create native apps which work on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux with little or no dependencies might woo away unwary travelers taking their first footsteps on the technological path to success? I don’t get it.
Who uses Delphi? Well, quite a lot of people actually
The most fun fact about Delphi is that you have almost certainly interacted with a program written in Delphi today. If not today, then almost certainly in the past month. The reason for this is because of the sheer massive number of systems around the world which are written in Delphi. If you have been to an airport, watched TV, or traveled by train, then you may well have had Delphi doing its thing behind the scenes. Even if you did none of those things, 250 miles (400km) above your head at some point in the past week an astronaut looked down on you with eyes tested by a Delphi app running on a laptop computer in space.
Just one Delphi app alone reaches 800 million people a year
Just one Delphi app, from AviaVox, broadcasts important safety announcements and travel information to no less than eight hundred million people worldwide a year in 35+ different languages (Source: Merijn Bosma, AviaVox). During the webinar I showed slides from Merijin as well as many other companies who either got in touch specifically to let me know they used Delphi or that I knew used Delphi in one way or another.
I had so many examples of people, products, and projects using Delphi I couldn’t include them all. Delphi is so good at being silently successful that it’s used everywhere you can think of and yet it doesn’t carry the unreliability of many competing technologies, or the instability and fragility of something like a script-based language or web-based technologies. It also has the raw computing power where, in the right hands, it can rival C++ and Rust yet remain far easier to understand and extremely straight-forward for new users to learn.
Amsterdams Schiphol airport’s New Pier project uses Delphi behind the scenes to control many aspects of the project including passenger control, door access security and lots of others; reliably, with the minimum of fuss. Not bad a for a dinosaur.
Where can I see the replay of the “Who uses Delphi” webinar?
Here is the YouTube replay of the “Who uses Delphi” webinar – it’s also available on the Learn tab of the Welcome Page in the RAD Studio IDE along with all the other webinars.
Where can I get the slides for the “Who uses Delphi” webinar?
Here are the slides for the “Who uses Delphi” webinar.
If you want to try Delphi for yourself and you don’t have a copy of the latest version of RAD Studio with Delphi, you can go to the products page and download a free fully working trial version.
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“Malware is harder to find when written in obscure languages like Delphi and Haskell”
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/29/malware_obscure_languages/
🥲
Yes it would be a slightly weird sales pitch for us to say, “Delphi is so robust and reliable that it’s often used by the world’s top malware writers”. 🤪
I mean, on one hand it does perfectly illustrate how Delphi apps require no installers (XOPY install is the normal) and have zero dependencies – but I think, overall, it’s probably like the movie quote “Volvo, they’re boxy, but they’re good”.
Not sure why people want to insist on referring to Delphi as “obscure” or “old” – why the negativity? 🤡
One of the most fun wasn’t even mentioned: “Miniatur Wunderland” in Hamburg is completely controlled by Delphi.
Ah yes, I did a whole blog post and showed them a few times on previous webinars -> https://blogs.embarcadero.com/how-does-reliable-delphi-keep-this-wonderland-running-365-days-a-year/
It’s a SUPERB project and one of the favorites of many of us here including Marco Cantu (a Legos fanatic and big fan of Miniatur Wonderland) and myself. I wanted to show a few projects that people had not heard of, like the new Schiphol Pier and also put the facts straight about how old various programming languages really are.
The difficult part was not in finding projects created with Delphi, more that I found so many. There are some very well-known household names who also use Delphi but prefer not to announce it citing reasons like business confidentiality. I wish I could change that way of thinking so we can bring more and more people into the spotlight and help emphasize that Delphi is actually doing pretty well.