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Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

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11–20 of 352 posts

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#12
post #6

I have a soft spot for Delphi but this is odd. Delphi has seen its day. Any number of other languages can be taught for free... python is probably a more relevant choice.

Delphi is still very relevant when building desktop applications.

Is it? Can it compete with c# or swift for desktop applications?

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#14
This reminds me of a few (I then found out that they were being taught to use Borland Turbo C.

I suspect the case for this is similar: Some person who once upon a time learnt to program and then never practiced nor developed their skills somehow got a job teaching programming, and is now trying to apply the ancient tools they were taught somewhere around the time when some fish decided to walk on land because its all they know.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#16

I have a soft spot for Delphi but this is odd. Delphi has seen its day. Any number of other languages can be taught for free... python is probably a more relevant choice.

Especially as Lazarus exists: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Or maybe Lazarus isn't as good as its website makes out? I haven't used it, but used Delphi for a couple of years in the late 1990s.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#17
post #6

I have a soft spot for Delphi but this is odd. Delphi has seen its day. Any number of other languages can be taught for free... python is probably a more relevant choice.

Delphi is still very relevant when building desktop applications.

Not only that but Delphi has tremendous educational potential due to fast feedback loops. There was a blog post once on HN where one of Delphi authors discussed how they designed IDE and the language to be friendly for newcomers.

One could ask why not invest in https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ instead of commercial Delphi though?

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#18
Object Pascal is a great language, with many modern features and very optimized. Delphi add to this the best WYSIWYG ide ever created.

But they could have used free pascal and save millions, though. This looks like your usual government corruption. At least this time they bought something useful.

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#19
I was curious a little while ago whether Delphi or something similar was still available for modern computers (I think it followed from the same question about MS Access and VB6).

Turns out there's a free Delphi-compatible IDE called Lazarus: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Re: Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

#20
Is it a good teaching language? I admit ignorance, so this does make me want to find out more.

I think more obvious options would be something like python for it's practicality, and something like clojure for elegance and more advanced programming concepts.

And they're free. I hope this isn't a case of graft.

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