XE3? I have not even heard of it. I have not even seen Delphi in this millenium. Delphi is like a ball: over the years it has kicked from Borland to Inprise to whatever and now landed in a company known as "Embarcadero". See its history here
Back then, in version 1... it was the best tool around to build Windows apps. Even Windows was kinda new back then. The hardcore C API was hard. This is what I mean. If every program must be written like this there will not be that many programmers out there. Visual Basic was the ground breaking alternative... alas, the language was the toy language Basic? Definitely a wrong choice if you ask me. Delphi was Pascal based, much better choice, and blazing fast. At that time, Java was a new untested baby useful for doing blinking applets. "Enterprise" apps meant CGI little programs. You probably have not seen a sad C compiler including thousands of lines of <windows.h>, among tons of other lines, I have. MFC is hard too. I am glad I don't have to do this for a living.
Microsoft hired the guy who created Delphi (and Turbo Pascal)... The .NET framework has shadows of Delphi all over the place.
Forward a couple years, most people don't need to make .EXE for Windows now. And, if you have to develop for Microsoft you use Microsoft Visual Studio... and put up with its new versions every couple years. Other products if there is such a thing would be hard to keep up. It is quite amazing Delphi is still alive after all these years.
The gentleman is as excited as I am about Delphi: See here
This latest XE3 thing even suppose make Windows 8 and iOS apps! (what abou Android)
Ok, Windows 8 is not Windows 3.1. It is not, gosh-I-need-to-get-out-of-DOS-to-go-to-this evolution taking place.
Objective C is so difficult so I welcome a new way to write apps for it... but is HTML5+PhoneGap a better choice?
Just like in late 1990s, I do not see need to write Windows .EXEs, especially I don't need Windows 8 wacky apps.. I think the world would continue to prefer web apps. Look, even Microsoft is doing web apps. Look at that Sky Drive thing. Microsoft Office is there! Who needs to make native Windows apps now?
Visual Studio Express can be downloaded for free. Java/Eclipse download is free. Even XCode is free... I am not sure who will pay for development tools now. Turbo Pascal was a winner because it was powerful (in its days) and cheap. I am afraid not many people will pay for Pascal these days.
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