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Delphi is no easier than Java to learn. Delphi on mobile hasn't had the greatest track record. For instance at the moment there is no 64 bit Android compiler, thus locking delphi out of the app store. Yes there are temporary workarounds but it is not a great situation. Embarcadero are struggling to keep pace with developments on the platforms that they attempt to support. Quality has historically been a huge problem for Delphi. Both in their various compilers and related tooling, and their library code. They have a track record of releasing products and libraries that are full of bugs, and then spending many releases trying to fix them. The VCL remains a brilliant piece of work and for native Windows UI development it still excels. If I were you I'd widen the search. You say that you don't have time to learn a more difficult language. And that you want to start a business on the side. To be honest, those two statements don't sound very compatible. Making a business work takes a huge investment of time. Being a successful programmer demands mastery of tools and language. And that takes time. There are no shortcuts.

I built UltraExplorer with Delphi 2007, had to tweak the DPR, Mustangpeak used Delphi 7. Angus

I never felt comfortable with the C-family languages (curly brackets, declaration of type before the var name, etc.). I find Delphi very natural when it comes to coding. To me, the flow of the language makes sense. But this is personal view. I personally write code in FireMonkey (FMX) only; the cross-platform framework in Delphi and I have abandoned VCL (the Win-only framework) long time ago. It is not as mature and stable as VCL but my opinion is that it does the job. There is a wide range of FMX components available. Of course, there are glitches, flaws and bugs but this is the case in every library out there. You will find lots of controversy in discussions about the maturity of FMX. I would suggect you go through them and make your own decisions. In terms of jobs, Delphi is not a mainstream language. Depending on where you live you may really find no jobs available. But you say that you are hobbyist so perhaps it makes more sense to learn something that pleases you rather than pays the rent; but, this is your decision to make. In general, go through some discussions on this web site; you will find many knowledgeable and experienced people who share their views on the status and future of the language. This will allow you to draw your own conclusions. You can, also, download Delphi Community Edition which is free and try it out to see how it works for you. And if you decide to give Delphi a try, we all will welcome you to the community

The Delphi source code for UltraExplorer is now available in SVN at http://svn.magsys.co.uk:8443/svn/mustangpeak/ username = ics and password = ics for read access. The installable version may be downloaded from https://www.magsys.co.uk/delphi/ultraexplorer.asp Angus

There could be done a lot in the language: In Elements: case myControl of Button: writeln("Looks like a button!"); CheckBox: writeln("This one's a checkbox"); else writeLn("No ide what this is!?"); end; or something like: var i: Integer; var s := case i of 0: 'none'; 1: 'one'; 2: 'two'; 3..5 : 'a few'; else 'many'; end; I like it. If somebody is interested in what can be done look at https://docs.elementscompiler.com/Oxygene/Language/ Using Elements a lot these days, it is always a shock come back to Delphi.... Not speaking about Lambdas..... Delphi: for item in List.Where( function(part : TPart): boolean begin result := part.isVisible; end ) do; Elements: for each item in List.Where(part -> part.isVisible) do;

"This also appears to affect OmiThreadLibrary" is very likely to be false - nothing in System.Threading is affecting the OTL at all - if the OTL reveals a similar behavior then it's most likely due to the solution and combination of parallel tasks itself. The PPL is a story of broken stuff since the first version. The issue in this particular report seems to occur because the threadpool spins up to 100 (by default, you can change that) threads as it sees that CPU usage is still low (not sure about the situation in the real code as that very likely does not use Sleep) and then is probably way more busy managing those than actually doing work.

Good news, build UltraExplorer 2.5 OK and it runs. Immediately found the bug that has stopped me running 2.0.3.1 on my main development PC for a year, if UltraOptions.cfg is blank you get a silly start-up error without that filename being mentioned. Now just need to go back and try and put back code I commented out, party it seems because defines in project options and include files are sometimes ignored so certain code never gets built. Then I'll make it all more widely available, somehow. Angus