Everything You Should Know About the Future of Modern Delphi

Delphi definitely has come a long way. It was first introduced on February 14th of 1995 and has since become the ultimate IDE software for building applications. For 28 years, Delphi introduced a lot of great improvements and is being used by a great number of users in different fields, from mobile applications to Aerospace technology. Of course, this is made possible by the modern Object Pascal along with its powerful visual design tools and integrated toolchains. In line with the release of the new RAD Studio 11.3, some of the Embarcadero MVPs – Kyle Wheeler, Marco Cantu, David Millington, and Jim McKeeth joined forces to talk about the new version of RAD Studio as well as the future of the so-called Modern Delphi.

Delphi and its Evolution

For the past 28 years, rapid application development has been the core feature of Delphi. It lets you easily create applications in Object Pascal or Delphi Language. Delphi offers a low-code environment Here, you can rapidly drop some components (visual and non-visual) to a form, add some codes behind, compile, and run the application! To top it all off, you can make your application more visually appealing using Styles and more.

When Rad Studio 11.0 Alexandria was strategically released just a month before the release of Windows 11. It provides a great number of features including High DPI IDE support, VCL Styles in the Form Designer, and Android API 30 support to name a few. Delphi continuously made improvements with the release of 11.1 and 11.2 respectively.  The IDE has a strong focus on the Delphi 11 Alexandria. They replaced the system entirely using the so-called LSP. They also focused on usability and things that modernize the IDE. For instance, one of the principles of Designing in Delphi is using the form designer. Recent updates introduced multiple active styles in VCL Designer, allowing developers to achieve their desired interface and providing an impressive User experience.

Within the IDE itself, Delphi notably improved the UE several years ago but they continue tweaking the system with a bunch of new features. They recently introduced tab state visualization, they also added support for markdown (allowing you to edit and preview within the IDE), and many others. There are also a lot of many little things and improvements here and there, proving that the IDE is evolving and will continue to evolve to provide better service and experience.

The Future of Modern Delphi

Many things were done and added to Alexandria 11 in many other areas aside from the IDE. They have added new classes, improved some of the existing components, modernized some of the Windows components, enhanced web browsers, and many more. Delphi is not just focused on improving the quality but also extending and expanding some of its features to make sure that it better serves the developers.

The video also highlighted some notable changes in the Delphi Language. This includes the Manage Records which is considered a game changer for a lot of coding in the product. Another notable improvement is the ability to define variables inline, offering an additional scope/ lifetime model and type interference

What Delphi is working on with Rad Studio 11.3 Malawi?

The video also gave us hints and a glimpse of the RAD Studio 11.3 with the codename Malawi. The said version is primarily focusing more on quality improvements for the 11 series product as well as other small features. These areas include Delphi LSP, RAD studio IDE, compilers and toolchains, VCL Library, and styling to name a few.

They also gave us hints of the next major RAD studio release, including some significant new features to look forward to. They are also doing some work to update C++ Compilers as well as integration with Visual Assist Technology for C++. They are also doing another round of VCL modernization features and offering extensive Skia library support in Firemonkey and VCL. The video also includes a sneak peek of Malawi. Feel free to watch the webinar below.