Borland Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework, Architect – New User

Rating:
Summary: Major Upgrade to Delphi
Review: I started with Turbo/Borland Pascal. As soon as Borland released Delphi 1, I purchased it. I have used every version of Delphi: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and now Delphi 8. Delphi 8 is a huge change from Delphi 7. The IDE is very different. The help system appears to be relatively complete, but works differently than Delphi 5, 6, or 7.

As a long time Delphi uses, I was dismayed at some of the changes in Delphi 8. You now have the option of creating Windows Forms applications. For me, the biggest downside of this is the loss of frames. Frames are part of the VCL, not part of the Windows Forms. There does not appear to be anything equivalent. This is a shame. I used frames and frame inheritance a lot.

If you plan on just moving your code from Delphi 5, 6, or 7 to Delphi 8 you will be disappointed. There are many changes in the language. Developers should avoid appending to strings because that process is now slow. In my opinion, this broke one of the most powerful advantages Delphi had. Delphi used to be able to perform string operations quickly. That feature was lost in Delphi 8. There are new tools to help, like the string builder class, but they are cumbersome to use.

Delphi now integrates with other .Net languages; but there are some costs with that capability. This is not a small, incremental upgrade to the language.