Delphi is a language for rapid development of native Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android applications through use of Object Pascal. The name refers to the Delphi language as well as its libraries, compiler and IDE which is used to help edit and debug Delphi projects.
Delphi is a general-purpose language for rapid development of native Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android applications.
The name used to refer to the Delphi language, but the developers decided to return to the languages original name Object Pascal, restraining the name to the IDE, which is used to help edit and debug Delphi projects more efficiently. It is developed by Embarcadero, and is sold either as a standalone product or as part of RAD Studio, which includes other languages as well.
Delphi is an enhancement of Niklaus Wirth's language Pascal (and Object Pascal).
Delphi originated in 1995 at Borland, evolving from Turbo Pascal. It is currently owned by Embarcadero, and is the second-largest Windows development platform after Microsoft's .NET.
Among Delphi's strengths are:
- consistent language architecture
- a fast compiler
- modern language constructs
- its extensive Visual Component Library (VCL)
- the associated visual form designer
Variants:
Some other Embarcadero products are or were released using the "Delphi" brand. A .NET product called Delphi Prism (based on PascalScript codebase) for use in MS Visual Studio allows for development using Mono, producing apps that are "cross platform" in that they will run on multiple platforms that support Mono. Delphi Prism is mostly compatible with Delphi syntax, albeit with very different libraries. The Embarcadero PHP product, formerly labelled "Delphi for PHP", and Prism are integrated in the main Embarcadero studio project RAD Studio. There is an AS/400 version of Delphi as well.
Delphi console "Hello world":
program Hello;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
begin
Writeln('Hello, World');
end.
A minimalist GUI Delphi application
program GUIHello;
uses
Windows;
begin
MessageBox(0, 'Message', 'Hello, World', MB_OK);
end.
Resources:
Many SO profiles of Delphi developers point to good resources concerning Delphi. There is also an aggregation of main blogs in the field at DelphiFeeds and Begin End. Marco Cantù's books on Delphi programming provide another great resource.
Documentation
- Online Help for RAD Studio 11 Alexandria
- Online Help for RAD Studio 10.4 Sydney
- Online Help for RAD Studio 10.3 Rio
- Online Help for RAD Studio 10.2 Tokyo
- Online Help for RAD Studio 10.1 Berlin
- Online Help for RAD Studio 10 Seattle
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE8
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE7
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE6
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE5
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE4
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE3
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE2
- Online Help for RAD Studio XE
- Online Help for RAD Studio 2010
- Online Help for RAD Studio 2009
- Online Help for RAD Studio 2007
See all questions around delphi here.
References
Tagging recommendation:
There are several version-specific tags. It is recommended to use the delphi tag together with the version-specific tag, e.g. delphi-xe4.
