Are There Any Delphi Programmers Out There?
Delphi was and in some peoples’ minds still is a visual programming system. On Wednesday, I bumped into an old friend on Moorgate. We had a coffee and I said that I was still ewriting software in a small way using Visual Basic 6.
He indicated that someone he knows, is looking for someone, who can program in Delphi.
Is this an indication that like good literature, good software systems never die?
Remember, that software is not like hardware in that it rarely has a shelf life. In fact application software usually is retired because you can’t find any hardware to run it on. At least with Windows, Microsoft seem to be providing the hooks into all new versions to run software like Visual Basic 6 and Delphi.
A few years ago, when I said to a senior executive of Microsoft, that I still programmed in Visual Basic 6, he said that Microsoft had lots of experienced programmers who still used the language, often in difficult situations, where something reliable and tricky was needed yesterday.
So perhaps, some programming languages and systems, are a bit like Shakespeare and Dickens. Not of this age, but still very much to be enjoyed.
The Anonymous Widower 
Us old Cobol programmers had one last burst of life during the Millemium bug damp squib, but I don’t expect to be composing any more working-storage sections anytime soon. To help me make the mental jump however I did track down an ebook entitled Java for Cobol programmers.
Curiously, the Delphi programmer who abandoned my trading bot project halfway through is only in his mid-20s. He just happened to start programming in that language when he was about 12!
Comment by Mark | May 13, 2011 |
If you’re serious about the bot, remember that if you’ve got the algorithm then to clone Delphi in VB6 is not difficult. I just need to get my office and house sorted, which is probably a Sunday afternoon after a good lunch.
Comment by AnonW | May 13, 2011 |
I remember having hours of fun with an early IE program whose name eludes me right now. It was largely pre-Windows. We were holding conversations with it, which was fun for pedantic people like me, who worked out how it was arriving at the phrasing of the questions, was tried to trick it into saying stupid things. I did have a disk and tried to load on my first home computer, which ran Windows 95, but didnt succeed.
Comment by liz | May 13, 2011 |