Rapid Application Development With Delphi

Delphi is Rapid Application Development tool that uses Object Pascal programming language.

Pascal programming language was developed by Niklaus Wirth (a Swiss computer scientist) in the early 1970s and was named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (he lived from 1623-1662). A recent standard for the language was formulated in 1983 and approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). With the growing use of microcomputers, extensions and variations have been added to the language. The most popular of these variations are UCSD Pascal (developed by University of California at San Diego) and Turbo Pascal (developed by Borland International).

By now you know that Delphi is best-selling rapid application development (RAD) tool for writing Windows applications. With Delphi, you can write Windows programs more quickly and more easily than was ever possible before. You can create Win32 console applications or Win32 graphical user interface (GUI) programs. When creating Win32 GUI applications with Delphi, you have all the power of a true compiled programming language (Object Pascal) wrapped up in a RAD environment. What this means is that you can create the user interface to a program (the user interface means the menus, dialog boxes, main window, and so on) using drag-and-drop techniques for true rapid application development. You can also drop ActiveX components on forms to create specialized programs such as Web browsers in a matter of minutes. Delphi gives you all this, at no cost: You don't sacrifice program execution speed because Delphi generates optimized and fast code.

I can hear you saying, "This is going to be so cool!" And guess what? You're right! But before you get too excited, I need to point out that you still have to go to work and learn about Pascal programming. I don't want you to think that you can buy a program like Delphi and be a master Windows programmer overnight. It takes a great deal of work to be a good Windows programmer. Delphi does a good job of hiding some of the low-level details that make up the guts of a Windows program, but it cannot write programs for you. In the end, you must still be a programmer, and that means you have to learn programming. That can be a long, uphill journey some days. The good news is that Delphi can make your trek fairly painless and even fun. Yes, you can work and have fun doing it!

So roll up your sleeves and put on your hiking shoes. Delphi is a great product, so have fun.