[blub]

The only reasonable alternative is Qt, but C++ is more complicated than Pascal.

Assuming they would want to try their hand at making money out of what they learn, they could target the kind of companies which were served by VB6 or FoxPro in the past :)

Anything web-based is ridiculously complicated and has worse performance.

[Wiretrip]

Actually a very good alternative would be Java and JavaFX, maybe using Eclipse as the IDE.

[FpUser]

I used either. Not really good alternative IMO

[thu2111]

Well why not? I've used Delphi for years and also Java/JavaFX/Swing. There's not much reason to use Delphi anymore when Java IDEs can do the same things, and much more, and with docs that are just as good or better, all for free.

[FpUser]

In Delphi I do desktop applications that perform real time low level device control, talk over USB and some specialized radio gizmos, DirectX graphics and multimedia processing, real time data presentation, bulk data processing, game like communications over UDP etc. etc. All at the same time from a different threads. Good luck doing it in Java. I did try doing low level stuff with it per client request and it felt like masochism. Java was created with the different things in mind.

[p2detar]

The only thing that you seem to be right about is the low level device control stuff. Everything else is pretty much already easy enough to do in Java. The language was designed with multithreading in mind.

[FpUser]

"...multithreading in mind..." - Easy and efficiency are 2 different things. Java synchronization primitives and it's ability to flip bits incur heavy performance penalty when compared to native ones. You might not care about it but I do.

You are also free to point me to a good DirectX framework in Java and/or the one that let's you write Directshow and Media Foundation filters and graphs as well.

Besides your logic reads like this: since language A does the same as language B and you happen to like language A then nobody needs B. Sorry but it works both ways.

When I was doing enterprise stuff Java provided more value to me in that particular situation. Windows desktop: sorry I'll choose Delphi any time.

[benibela]

Delphi can show the assembly code generated for every line.

That is important to actually learn how the computer works

[billfruit]

I would suggest IntelliJ than Eclipse presently.

[Wiretrip]

Agreed. I discounted that becuase of the cost but I guess there's the community edition!

[Aperocky]

Or html canvas and js.

[m4rtink]

There are Python bindings for Qt.