# Delphi 126 Hacker News commenters recommended Delphi and 44 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 23 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Recommended for building native Windows desktop apps very quickly with a visual drag-and-drop designer, though critics complain about aggressive licensing and a company that lost its way. ## Why people recommend it - Very fast desktop GUI building (9 comments): "there is just something special about older versions of Delphi and now Lazarus that makes it so much easier to write desktop software than most other frameworks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144429)) "Creating a simple application that had a database backend, data presentation gui and some simple CRUD logic took like 15-30 mins." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067389)) "WinForms was probably the closest thing since Visual Basic (and Delphi) in terms of rapid prototyping of a GUI." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49299676)) - Easier than Microsoft's frameworks (4 comments): "Delphi had a powerful and easy to use GUI editor in the early 2000s, much less of a hassle compared to building software with Windows' own C++ API." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271788)) "Even doing COM in Delphi/C++ Builder feels more ergonomic than any of Microsoft endless C++ frameworks for COM/WinRT." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49277491)) "the tooling available in C++ Builder, Delphi, VB 6, C++/CX (WinRT is basically COM with extras) also great." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46910483)) - Fast compile and feedback loop (3 comments): "I still miss Turbo Pascal (and later Delphi) ... not so much the language, but the speed of feedback was unparalleled." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49967390)) "a cross platform dev environment that addresses all these problems and compiles in less than a second" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46483057)) "Pascal/Lazarus/Delphi strike such a nice balance of responsiveness in the development lifecycle" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144205)) - Native, dependency-free executables (2 comments): "It is incredibly easy to use / develop with and single exe no dependencies deployment mode is superior." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47480951)) "The VCL (WinAPI wrapper plus very extensible for custom controls) behaves 'natively' because it is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48176491)) ## What people warn about - Aggressive licensing and legal threats (4 comments): "And they have spywares in their IDE and if they even think for a second that you're using the trial software in an unauthorized way, their lawyers will threaten you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49278778)) "Borland should have made the language 100% free with a totally 100% free command line compiler and libraries." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271691)) "It's 90's tech. Their business model is selling expensive subscriptions to keep legacy projects alive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49274183)) - Vendor lost direction over time (2 comments): "Delphi had a good thing going for a while, a ton of potential. But they pivoted themselves out of that real fast..." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042199)) "Delphi's rotten web implementations frustrate developers and developers are easily porting to free JS tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826433)) - Legacy tech, hard to hire for (2 comments): "It's 90's tech. Their business model is selling expensive subscriptions to keep legacy projects alive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49274183)) "hiring people who want to learn or know Delphi is hard, so off to C# we trundle forward" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47067159)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [JetBrains IDEs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-ides.md): 233 recommend - [IntelliJ IDEA](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intellij-idea.md): 206 recommend - [Microsoft Visual Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio.md): 165 recommend - [Xcode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xcode.md): 100 recommend - [JetBrains Rider](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-rider.md): 68 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Delphi", https://hackerapproved.com/p/delphi/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).