[stevecat]

Delphi was my first introduction to programming with Borland Delphi 3 on a magazine coverdisc before we had the internet. At 12 years old and just getting into computers, I considered .exe applications with their lovely grey components to be so professional and unattainable that the ability to build my own was mind-blowing. A few years later, I had some of my freeware that I'd built in Delphi featured on that same magazine's coverdisc!

I eventually went down the web development route but I've recently, via Arduino, learnt C/C++, and am enjoying desktop development again. Compiling is exciting!

[salmo]

Same experience here! It was such a great first intro for me. Learned basic programming concepts but could quickly put together something "real" feeling. It was a nice middle ground. The Pascal aspect was pretty ergonomic for a neophyte, and the GUI design really was unparalleled.

Dabbled in UIs after: GTK, .NET, etc. All disappointing and awkward. Do web dev for internal tooling when I have to, but I don't enjoy it. I do backends but mostly stick to lower-level systems stuff after falling in love with K&R and Unix early in college. Well, and firefighting prod performance problems.