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So What Is Delphi Anyway?
What’s In A Name? Not much, apparently…24 February 2007
by Huw Collingbourne
Since the announcement of CodeGear’s new ‘Delphi For PHP’, a number of longtime Delphi users have started wondering what the heck Delphi is supposed to be these days?
Delphi started life as the name of the visual IDE for Borland’s Object Pascal programming language. In the old days, Borland used to try to make a distinction between ‘Delphi the product’ and ‘Object Pascal the language’. However, most people used the name ‘Delphi’ indiscriminately to describe both the product and the language. On the whole, when people talked about ‘programming in Delphi’, they meant coding Object Pascal within the Delphi IDE.
It wasn’t too long before Borland itself began to use ‘Delphi’ to describe both the environment and the language. I quote from the Delphi 7 Help system:
“Delphi is a high-level, compiled, strongly typed language that supports structured and object-oriented design. Based on Object Pascal, its benefits include easy-to-read code, quick compilation, and the use of multiple unit files for modular programming.”
So clearly, Delphi is the name of a type of Object Pascal. Which explains why, when the Delphi environment and class library were subsequently adapted for use with C++, Borland decided to find a new name for that product. They called it C++Builder, not Delphi For C++ which would have been nonsensical – I mean, how can you have Object Pascal For C++?
The launch of Delphi For PHP represents a dramatic break with tradition. If Delphi is Object Pascal, how can it simultaneously be ‘for’ PHP?
The answer is that it isn’t. It would seem that Delphi is no longer a language or an IDE. It is now just a name. Delphi For PHP has no real connection with Delphi For… well, Delphi. Its IDE is different, its class library is different, its programming language is different.
In spite of the fact that I have been programming in Delphi (the real Delphi, I mean) for more than a decade – slightly before the first public release of the product, as a matter of fact, I hadn’t initially realised just how important its name was. But having read some of the comments on Delphi forums and newsgroups, I note a good deal of bitterness from Delphi programmers (or should I say ‘Object Pascal’ programmers) who feel that the name of their programming language has been hijacked, distorted and devalued.
I’m not sure that I feel that strongly myself. However, given the fact that Delphi (define that as you will) is CodeGear’s greatest asset, the company may need to think long and hard about the wisdom of reducing it to a mere brand name...