
Delphi Community Edition – Free Download - mamcx
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-download
======
irq-1
FYI, open source: [http://www.lazarus-ide.org/](http://www.lazarus-ide.org/)

> Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal. It
> includes LCL which is more or less compatible with Delphi's VCL. Free Pascal
> is a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free
> Pascal is designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which
> is OOP.

~~~
squarefoot
+1. Lazarus is also true multiplatform: one can run the IDE itself and
compiled apps also on most small ARM boards that can run a Linux distribution.

Example:
[http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_on_Raspberry_Pi](http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_on_Raspberry_Pi)

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jenkstom
I was a huge Delphi fan, jumping from Paradox straight to Delphi. I had been
doing flat-file database apps in Turbo Pascal before I found Paradox and so
it's like Delphi was made for me.

I used it for a very long time, but it was destroyed by the companies that
owned it. A free version should have been always available, they could have
taken advantage of all the Pascal hobbyists out there and given them a way to
establish careers as business software developers.

I'm not sure whether it's too little, but it's definitely too late. Business
apps I'm familiar with that were written in Delphi are either gone or nearing
their end of life.

But I still haven't found anything as useful as Delphi for simple database
apps. I've been doing .net for nearly 7 years now and it's just nowhere near
Delphi for functionality. But desktop apps seem to be old-school, so maybe it
doesn't matter anyway.

~~~
pjmlp
Not so old school.

I would put mobile native on the same basket.

And outside HN bubble there is still a thriving native UIs for infotainment,
healthcare, factory automation, field machine control units,...

I have spent the last 4 years doing native UIs for life science labs.

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dragonwriter
1 year license, no updates, ≤US$5000 revenue and ≤5 devs in the org (not just
on the Delphi license, but total) only?

It's like they looked at VS Community license and said “lets do something like
that for Delphi, but narrow the licensing enough that there is no real use
case.”

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pjmlp
Kylix is what could have made Delphi be the "Java" of the industry, with a
good AOT compiler, value types, and all the RAD goodies.

Too many bad management decisions were taken since then.

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antaviana
In a way it seems Embarcadero have their blinders on. But it is better than
nothing. I think I would make the Delphi compiler free and charge everybody a
pure subscription for the IDE at pricing levels comparable to Jetbrains, but
without any kind of fallback to avoid competing with yourself. It would allow
them to focus on making an excellent IDE to secure recurring revenue, at their
own pace. But they seem to be wired to chase (existing) corporate accounts.
Obviously they will be people who will develop tooling around their free
compilers, but that helps build a funnel for a high quality IDE and greatly
increases chances to become a platform again.

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LordHog
I wish I didn't need to create an Embarcadero account just to download it. I
can download VS Community Edition without needing to register.

~~~
antaviana
It does not seem to work anyways. I created an account to download C++ Builder
CE but after clicking Download, it sends you again to the registration page.
If the goal of this initiative was to collect emails for mailing lists, it is
brilliant. If the goal was that people get on board, the current sign up
process is very, very ineffective.

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phendrenad2
Man I always liked Delpi, it felt like what the VB6 interface builder should
have been.

------
madmulita
"Got error 28 from storage engine"

Not a good sign!

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rajeemcariazo
Finally, this is long overdue

~~~
romwell
Too little, too late, I'm afraid.

The only reason I've started with Delphi back in the day (and loved it) was
because _everything_ was pirated in Ukraine circa year 2000, so nobody would
even care about licensing/price point.

~~~
xzxz
I used Delphi versions 2-7 many years ago when I was learning to code, some
were free versions some were pirated ones. Then I moved to other web languages
(PHP, JS, HTML, CSS) and then few years ago I discovered free Lazarus/FPC
combo. It's stable and has single huge advantage - it runs flawlessly on
Linux/OSX/Windows/FreeBSD and can compile binaries for other OSes and
architectures even on ARM(Raspberry Pi). Lately I've found UniDAC database
components by devart.com for Delphi/Lazarus and loved them instantly.

I also think Delphi Community version is too little, too late with such a good
and cheap alternative.

I'm not affiliated with devart.com.

~~~
romwell
Lazarus / FPC definitely looks good, I'll check it out! (I still have Delphi 7
installed on one of the machines, so I haven't looking around for alternatives
- for what it appears to be 12+ years now).

One thing I liked was how quickly one could bang out a simple GUI application.
Sometimes, that's all I need.

