Questions tagged [delphi]

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

• Delphi History – from Pascal to Embarcadero Delphi XE 2
• Delphi at Embarcadero
• Delphi Basics

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.

Free Delphi/Pascal Programming Books

• Essential Pascal Version 1 and 2
• Object Pascal reference guide for Free Pascal

Delphi/Pascal Books

• Delphi Books Website

• The Tomes of Delphi

• Delphi XE2 Foundations

• Coding in Delphi

• Delphi Memory Management for Classic and ARC Compilers

• Expert Delphi

• Delphi Cookbook - Second Edition

• Delphi High Performance

Reporting bugs, issues, new features

• Quality Portal

Delphi Forums

• Delphi-PRAXiS English