Delphi is an integrated development environment (IDE) for desktop, mobile, web, and console applications. It was originally developed by Borland as a rapid application development tool for Windows, and as the successor of Borland Pascal. Delphi and its C++ counterpart, C++Builder, shared many core components, notably the IDE and the Visual Component Library (VCL), but remained separate until the release of RAD Studio 2007. RAD Studio is a shared host for Delphi and C++Builder, and can be purchased with either or both.
In 2006, Borland’s developer tools section were transferred from Borland to a wholly owned subsidiary known as CodeGear, which was sold to Embarcadero Technologies in 2008. In 2015, Embarcadero was purchased by Idera Software, but the Embarcadero mark was retained for the developer tools division.
Delphi supports rapid application development (RAD). Among the features supporting RAD are application framework and visual window layout designer. It supports native cross-compilation. Delphi was originally developed for Windows and runs on Windows natively. In 2001, Borland released Delphi for the Linux platform, but later abandoned it.
Delphi’s compilers use their own Object Pascal dialect of Pascal and generate native code for several platforms: Windows NT (IA-32 and x64), OS X (IA-32 only), iOS (ARM), Android (ARM), and Linux (x64). For Windows, the compiler generates native code for IA-32 and x64 processors but can also produce Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) code that can be run in the .NET Framework. For iOS and Android, the compiler generates ARM code for the ARMv6 and ARMv7 instruction sets, and for iOS, the LLVM compiler can also generate code for the ARM64 instruction set.
The Delphi programming language provides a number of features that support rapid application development. Among these are:
A visual component library (VCL) for Windows GUI application