Knowledge Base

Delphi 1, 2, 3 & 4

The history of Delphi begins with Turbo Pascal, the implementation of the Pascal programming language. Turbo Pascal was a relatively cheap compiler for IBM-PC’s and cost less than 100 guilders. In the early 1990s, Turbo Pascal switched from MS-DOS to Windows. However, software company Borland wanted more focus on object-oriented features and therefore started again in Delphi, implementing Object Pascal as a design standard.

Delphi 1
The first version of Delphi came out in 1995. This Pascal software development environment was the successor of Turbo Pascal. Delphi 1 appeared for Windows 3.1 and was one of the first Rapid Application Development tools. Did you know that Delphi 1 had a fast 16-bit MS-DOS compiler with its own Delphi IDE? And that there was already a textual user environment toolkit for DOS (Turbo Vision)? Delphi 1 was a success, partly due to the success of Windows 3.1. Many companies switched from MS DOS to Windows 3.1, so new applications had to be written.

Delphi 2
Delphi 2 was a 32-bit version for Windows 95. This software was released in 1996. Despite the switch to Windows 95 it was not a big change for developers, because the graphical toolset remained the same. Delphi 2 brought support for OLE Automation and OLE controls (OCXs). The design of components is in the style of Windows 95. With Delphi 2 came also Delphi 1, so that applications for Windows 95 and 3.1 (16 bit) could be programmed.

Delphi 3
Delphi 3 saw the light of day in 1997. Also Delphi 1 was delivered. Delphi 3 was much more stable then Delphi 2. Also version 3 introduced packages for components, an integration with COM for interfaces, WebBroker technology, DecisionCube and TeeChart components and DLL debugging.

Delphi 4
Borland Delphi 4 was released in 1998 by Inprise. It is a commercial Rapid Application Development tool for Windows.

IDE came with a new editor, which is easy to dock. An ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) link with databases alongside BDE (Borland Database Engine) was added. VCL added support for ActionLists anchors and constraints and for the new Oracle8d database server. Other enhancements included method overloading, dynamic arrays, Windows 98 support, Microsoft BackOffice support, COM support and CORBA development.

A year after Delphi 4 appeared Delphi 5. Delphi 5 was again much more stable than Delphi 4 and offered more new features, like the possibility to use frames and parallel development.

From Delphi 1, 2, 3 or 4 to Delphi 10?
Delphi 1/2/3/4 applications are over twenty years old and (often) in need of replacement. They are not easy to upgrade. As a Delphi developer you probably run into the limits of the development environment. Time to convert the Delphi application to the newest version. For that we use an own developed conversion tool. Want to know more? Get in touch with us!

Written by Marco Geuze
Directeur

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