Two very different solutions. Autohotkey is a scripting language for specific tasks, while Delphi is unbounded in this sense. And Visual Studio has no RAD concept.
The C# world also has quite a few paid libraries, especially for UI stuff.
Quite a few years ago I worked at a company using Delphi, and judging by their homepage they are still using it. A company making industrial machinery, with a tiny internal software department for the software for provisioning and maintaining the machines, as well as the control room software. Usability and development velocity is more important than looking hip, and easy access to hardware interfaces is paramount. And compared to developer salaries those license costs really aren't that bad
They have free community edition. Main restriction seems to be: "If you're an individual, you may use Delphi CE to create apps for your own use and apps that you can sell until your revenue reaches US$5,000 per year."
I have not tried the IDE, but I like FreePascal. The compiler is fast and it has great multiplatform and cross-compilation support. In particular for older platforms.
It feels more stable and mature than most other languages. I do not know if there are enough developers keeping it alive, but hopefully it will mostly get bug fixes and ports to new platforms. Better if they do not mess with the language or standard libraries. Those that want a programming language that keeps breaking backwards compatibility every few months have plenty to choose from already.
Delphi is still the absolute fastest way to create win32 gui applications, and anybody who disagrees has never used it.
Lazarus is a pretty sweet solution on Linux (or Codetyphoon, if you want more out of the box components).
What's the relationship between Delphi and Lazarus?
Delphi is commercial: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/product-editions
Lazarus is free with no artificial limitations, for FreePascal: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
It's a Delphi-compatible IDE: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
Pascal
Is it? What about Autohotkey, or Visual Studio?
Two very different solutions. Autohotkey is a scripting language for specific tasks, while Delphi is unbounded in this sense. And Visual Studio has no RAD concept.
Visual Studio has WinForms, which is pretty RAD.
From $960 + $399/year.
I think it's quite an accomplishment to survive in the modern world of free software development tools.
The C# world also has quite a few paid libraries, especially for UI stuff.
Quite a few years ago I worked at a company using Delphi, and judging by their homepage they are still using it. A company making industrial machinery, with a tiny internal software department for the software for provisioning and maintaining the machines, as well as the control room software. Usability and development velocity is more important than looking hip, and easy access to hardware interfaces is paramount. And compared to developer salaries those license costs really aren't that bad
It's cheaper to pay that than rewrite in a better language.
There is still a lot of legacy software out there. I worked on something for a little bit (probably around 10 years ago).
Yeah, I'm surprised they haven't just made a hobbyist tier. Especially when FreePascal allows you to make UIs with Lazarus for free.
They have free community edition. Main restriction seems to be: "If you're an individual, you may use Delphi CE to create apps for your own use and apps that you can sell until your revenue reaches US$5,000 per year."
So should be perfectly enough for hobbyist.
I tried it, it would not compile some of the templates it came with for me. Their QA process must be terrible.
There are companies using Delphi-based products for long years (for a good reason, this is still great technology) so they prefer to pay.
Delphi's great. You can rapidly create apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.
I tried Lazarus recently, but I found the IDE to be slow.
I have not tried the IDE, but I like FreePascal. The compiler is fast and it has great multiplatform and cross-compilation support. In particular for older platforms.
It feels more stable and mature than most other languages. I do not know if there are enough developers keeping it alive, but hopefully it will mostly get bug fixes and ports to new platforms. Better if they do not mess with the language or standard libraries. Those that want a programming language that keeps breaking backwards compatibility every few months have plenty to choose from already.