Well, Delphi was very interesting phenomena. I fought (and lost) a great fight trying to convince coworkers that it is a dead end and that no one will support future development or adapt it to modern versions of Windows, because no one would pay to this huge effort which must be done right on time. In other words, it was a naive blind faith in so-called desktop apps (built on top of a wired third-party toolkit), while it was obvious that a browser is the proper way of visualizing an information. This is the Delphi mentality. Now they have a dead codebase and whole project is in ruins. The irony was that it was some in-house a-la ERP system.)
> while it was obvious that a browser is the proper way of visualizing an information.
It really wasn't obvious in the early 2000's that the browser was the "proper" (I'll use the same word that you use, though I disagree with it) to display information, run software etc. I liked Delphi but while the adaptation to modern versions of Windows and future development was always going to be an issue, the main problem was company maangment, sales and mishandling of what was a good product in its time (up to Delphi 7).
it was a naive blind faith in so-called desktop apps (built on top of a wired third-party toolkit), while it was obvious that a browser is the proper way of visualizing an information
Use the right tool for the job. Desktop apps may indeed be preferable to browser based apps in some cases. Actually, I would argue that it isn't obvious that browsers are better for anything other than what they were built for - rendering and browsing hypermedia content.
Now, whether or not Delphi per-se is a Good Idea as a means of building desktop apps is a different issue, and I'll grant you that I'm not necessarily a big Delphi fan. But that's not because I find desktop apps to be inherently bad.
The browser is for hypertext documents. It's not at all obvious that it's the right thing for, well, anything else. Why do you suppose apps are preferred on tablets and phones, rather than websites?
I'm genuinely curious, not having been exposed to that ecosystem at all.