Delphi: Five reasons

Nick Hodges gives five reasons for ISV's to use Delphi in his blogpost Delphi: The choice for ISVs.

I totally agree with them. Under the motto 'Spread the word'  I decided just to copy them here:

Delphi supports development of native code applications. For ISVs and MicroISVs, native development is really the only choice. Such developers can’t yet assume that the .Net framework is installed on a potential customers machine, and either including the .Net Framework with your install or directing potential customers to Microsoft’s website to download the framework can make trying or using such a product too difficult. Delphi builds fast, tight, native apps with no runtime dependencies. That’s the only choice for an ISV today.

Delphi provides rapid application development on the Win32 platform. Given that native development is the only choice, Delphi is the only RAD tool for Win32 developers that is still being advanced and developed. Other major tool vendors have dropped all support for native RAD development Delphi, however, continues to provide you with a powerful RAD IDE and the Visual Component Library. Delphi’s Win32 tools are also continuously being updated and improved. CodeGear realizes that Win32 is and will continue to be a viable and useful development platform for years to come.

The VCL provides you a path to Win64, .Net and Vista. The VCL has proven to be not only powerful, but adaptable as well. Originally developed for 16-bit Windows, the VCL was easily moved to the 32-bit world. More recently, VCL has been ported to the .Net 1.1 platform and will soon be moved to the .Net 2.0 Framework. Future plans also include migrating the VCL to support the new native Vista controls and APIs as well as a version for native Win64 development. With the VCL, you have a proven development framework that will go with you if and when you decide to support these new platforms. If and when managed code becomes the norm, your Delphi code will be ready to take you there.

The Delphi Community is large, varied, supportive, and knowledgeable. One of the strengths of the VCL is that it is a component-based architecture. Right from the very beginning, Delphi programmers were component programmers, and right from the beginning they shared their code, whether it was in the form of freeware, shareware, or commercial offerings. The Delphi community is strong and dedicated. Once the web came into the forefront, websites providing Delphi components, technical articles, and code libraries sprung from the woodwork. The Delphi newsgroups provide free, peer-to-peer support where experts of all levels and capabilities cheerfully answer your questions of any level. There are countless free and open source component and code libraries. Delphi developers are there for each other.

Delphi is a proven ISV development tool. Delphi is a fully powerful and capable development tool. There isn’t any doubt that it can handle anything an ISV could throw at it. FeedDemon, FinalBuilder, BeyondCompare, the Skype Windows client, and AutomatedQA tools are all popular and widely used tools built in Delphi. These companies have realized the power and advantages of a native, RAD development tool that has a strong, supportive community and been successful building their products in Delphi.

Go, Go, Go, Go, CodeGear!