Delphi was a revolutionary product when it was first introduced by Borland. It was a step up from what was back then, Microsoft’s Visual Basic environment. There have been many frameworks introduced over the years to encapsulate the Microsoft Windows API – but with Delphi, it was different. And it was better and easier to understand, follow and use. The term RAD (Rapid Application Development) had already been coined, but Delphi made it true – they made it happen.
We used Delphi from V1 through V4. And then, at about that time, Microsoft stepped up to the mark again with a re-write of their main application development environment – and release Microsoft Visual Studio – which we still use to this day. Along with Visual Studio, Microsoft released a new ‘framework’, called .NET. And Visual Studio is available in a number of ‘flavours’ and languages. But the main difference was that VS was yet another step up from products like Delphi – introducing a whole set of new cool features – that, at the end of the day, make RAD even more R.
But in its day, Delphi was a wonderful (RAD) programming tool. And cool products are still made in Delphi, such as Skype – the popular IM client.
Adrock Software produced a number of cool programmer tools – components – that helped make developers’ lives easier. “Re-inventing the wheel” is something programmers commonly find themselves doing. We produced a range of Delphi components – and did them the Delphi way – from a ground-up approach – building a component on a framework. An excellent starting point is the Message Dialog component (AdMessageDialog).