What is the best AI at Delphi

[Bill Meyer 339]

I have done some recent work using Grok (x.ai), and have been pleasantly surprised. It is the first AI engine which has generated an error free class for Delphi in the first response, and with a very simple request. Encouraging!

[GabrielMoraru 39]

On 7/16/2025 at 9:34 AM, Dalija Prasnikar said:

Ditching VCL would be the most stupid idea ever. It would be suicidal.

I 100% agree with that - if the change will happen in the near future. But I was thinking about a bit more distant future. Sorry I haven't been clear on that 🙂

 

>There are huge amounts of code out there that use VCL, and moving all those to FMX would be impossible.
I know this also (but I wouldn't quite call it impossible). Unfortunately, this is what will make the adoption of FMX close to impossible.

Embarcadero has to invest its resources in two places. Since the resources are so limited, one of the frameworks suffers.

 

I have seen so many companies that were ditching Delphi for something else (because they needed cross-platform support) without even considering FMX.

A company I worked with recently chose to keep its current Windows code in Delphi VCL, but for the cross-platform, they moved to C#. So, the code base is duplicated ANYWAY. Again, FMX was not deemed worthy (there was also a second reason that does not relate directly to this discussion: lack of trained Delphi programmers).

 

>There are huge amounts of code out there that use VCL

This means that Delphi will remain a successful developing platform for Windows. And the statement will remain valid for as long as Windows will be the king among the operating systems: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-200901-202506  (the "king" lineage is in blue color).

 

So, in general I agree with you... as long as we can look more than 5 years into the future. For the moment the "king" lineage does not seem to decelerate its falling. It lost another (almost) 15% in the last 5 year. Another 5 years and Windows popularity will be comparable with Linux (ha ha).

Looking at the "king" line is anybody here that, with open mind and hand on his heart, feels like VCL should remain the high priority framework? 

This forum will hopeful remain here for many years. I am sure it will come a day when we will look back and see that FMX had to become the main (if not the only) Delphi framework.

 

--------

 

Clarification 1: Again, I apologize that I gave the impression that the shift in focus (from VCL to FMX) should happen overnight. 

An the other hand, if there will be "no more Windows", all companies that are Windows-centric will have no choice but to move to FMX (or... Java/etc)... and this, maybe in less than 5 years! In the end it is not you, me, Delphi, or Microsoft that dictates this. It is the amount of customers you have left on the "king" platform. 

 

Clarification 2: I am not saying all these about the MS Windows as pejorative. I truly loved some of Windows versions. And I don't want to buy two computers and switch constantly between Windows and Mac, for my daily use. I would love to stay on Delphi/Window.

 

Clarification 3: I am not a proponent of FMX. I don't like it. But I need it. I already lost a battle were one of my products (VCL) was popular for many years on Windows but then the customers (academia) moved to Mac and Linux. Back at that time, compared to VCL, FMX was lumping behind (but I did some successful projects for Linux with FPC/Lazarus)

 

Edited Sunday at 12:43 PM by GabrielMoraru

[GabrielMoraru 39]

On 7/16/2025 at 9:34 AM, Dalija Prasnikar said:

If you need to generate larger chunks, then you don't have to do that directly within the IDE. Also you can easily use some other editor, like VSCode 

Am I asking for that much?

Why should we be second-hand class citizens?
Others have it in their editor. Why shouldn't we?
If I use VSCode instead of Delphi, why not switching to VSCode permanently? (joking)

 

I have seen how people look at me when I tell them I work in Delphi. 
They ask me: "Does Delphi still have that thing with the VAR that needs to be declared separately"?

Edited Sunday at 12:53 PM by GabrielMoraru

[dummzeuch 1660]

57 minutes ago, GabrielMoraru said:

If I use VSCode instead of Delphi, why not switching to VSCode permanently?

Excactly, why don't you?

1 hour ago, GabrielMoraru said:

I have seen how people look at me when I tell them I work in Delphi. 

"Does Delphi still have that thing with the VAR that needs to be declared separately"?

These people know about this detail? I would have expected that they had never seen any Pascal code and even if they did, that they wouldn't have noticed the way variable declarations work there.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1523]

4 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said:

I 100% agree with that - if the change will happen in the near future. But I was thinking about a bit more distant future. Sorry I haven't been clear on that 🙂

There is no distant future in which that code will be ported to FMX.

 

4 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said:

>There are huge amounts of code out there that use VCL, and moving all those to FMX would be impossible.
I know this also (but I wouldn't quite call it impossible). Unfortunately, this is what will make the adoption of FMX close to impossible.

Embarcadero has to invest its resources in two places. Since the resources are so limited, one of the frameworks suffers.

 

VCL is mature framework, and it requires very little work. Also you should keep in mind that IDE is also written with VCL. FMX does not suffer because VCL exists, it is the other way around. VCL received very little love, fixes and new features since Delphi became cross-platform.

 

4 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said:

I have seen so many companies that were ditching Delphi for something else (because they needed cross-platform support) without even considering FMX.

A company I worked with recently chose to keep its current Windows code in Delphi VCL, but for the cross-platform, they moved to C#. So, the code base is duplicated ANYWAY. Again, FMX was not deemed worthy (there was also a second reason that does not relate directly to this discussion: lack of trained Delphi programmers).

Don't blame VCL for that. The reasons for such choice are probably multifold. Today, I would certainly choose Delphi for cross-platform as the major problems for cross-platform have been resolved, even there are still issues which make such development harder than it should be.

4 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said:

So, in general I agree with you... as long as we can look more than 5 years into the future. For the moment the "king" lineage does not seem to decelerate its falling. It lost another (almost) 15% in the last 5 year. Another 5 years and Windows popularity will be comparable with Linux (ha ha).

Looking at the "king" line is anybody here that, with open mind and hand on his heart, feels like VCL should remain the high priority framework? 

This forum will hopeful remain here for many years. I am sure it will come a day when we will look back and see that FMX had to become the main (if not the only) Delphi framework.

 

Again, VCL, is not high priority framework. Most of new development and features go to FMX. VCL has been a second class-citizen ever since XE2. And again, killing VCL would kill Delphi. The only thing that can kill it, is if MS ditches Win32 API support and that is not likely happening either.

4 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said:

On 7/16/2025 at 9:34 AM, Dalija Prasnikar said:

If you need to generate larger chunks, then you don't have to do that directly within the IDE. Also you can easily use some other editor, like VSCode 

Am I asking for that much?

Why should we be second-hand class citizens?
Others have it in their editor. Why shouldn't we?
If I use VSCode instead of Delphi, why not switching to VSCode permanently? (joking)

Because not everyone uses AI and there are way more important features that would benefit all Delphi developers. I wish that Embarcadero would be able to work on everything needed, but the truth is that they cannot do everything and they need to prioritize. If you think that Embarcadero does not have resources to maintain VCL, then you will surely understand that. Anything AI related in IDE takes time away from other non-AI related features and lack of AI integration is not critical as it can be successfully used with the help of other tools. I am also using VSCode a lot (not AI related) when working on Delphi code and yes, I would like it better if I could avoid that and do everything directly in Delphi IDE.

[Anders Melander 2037]

8 hours ago, GabrielMoraru said:

And the statement will remain valid for as long as Windows will be the king among the operating systems: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-200901-202506  (the "king" lineage is in blue color).

 

So, in general I agree with you... as long as we can look more than 5 years into the future. For the moment the "king" lineage does not seem to decelerate its falling. It lost another (almost) 15% in the last 5 year. Another 5 years and Windows popularity will be comparable with Linux (ha ha).

That's a really stupid chart; It's displaying percentage of "marketshare". But what is the market here? It's the OS market - regardless of platform. So your server gets a vote, your fridge, your phone, your car, your nuclear submarine targeting control system, they all get a vote.

 

Windows and the VCL primarily targets the Server or Desktop segment so those are the only that are relevant. It's pretty irrelevant that the majority of smartphones are running Android and the majority of embedded systems are running Linux, because those platforms are not targeted by Windows or the VCL.
I believe Linux surpassed Windows in the server segment many years ago, but we can't see that from the chart.

[Attila Kovacs 675]

13 minutes ago, Anders Melander said:

but we can't see that from the chart

You can’t tell much from this chart, the total number of devices has exploded over time. Even though Windows’ share is dropping, the actual number of Windows devices could be much higher than ever, depending on how big the whole market has gotten.

[Anders Melander 2037]

Just now, Attila Kovacs said:

You can’t tell much from this chart, the total number of devices has exploded over time. Even though Windows’ share is dropping, the actual number of Windows devices could be much higher than ever, depending on how big the whole market has gotten.

Exactly.

[GabrielMoraru 39]

1 hour ago, Anders Melander said:

That's a really stupid chart; It's displaying percentage of "marketshare". But what is the market here? It's the OS market - regardless of platform. So your server gets a vote, your fridge, your phone, your car, your nuclear submarine targeting control system, they all get a vote.

 

Windows and the VCL primarily targets the Server or Desktop segment so those are the only that are relevant. It's pretty irrelevant that the majority of smartphones are running Android and the majority of embedded systems are running Linux, because those platforms are not targeted by Windows or the VCL.
I believe Linux surpassed Windows in the server segment many years ago, but we can't see that from the chart.

From what I know they collect these numbers as reported by the browser when your browser connects to some websites. (At least that was still true until some years ago... I don't know if they collect the data in the same way. But my second links seems to confirm that they still collect the data this way.) 

If this is true, then the fridges will never visit those websites.

But yeah, collecting reliable data is hard.
_______

 

According to Gartner, the number of Windows users (shipped devices) seems even lower. But on the other hands, they will not count devices built at home without Windows pre-installed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

But both sources confirms what we already can see with our own eyes: it is clear that Android (phones and tables) wins by far. 

 

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 10:01 PM by GabrielMoraru

[Lajos Juhász 323]

I can say the current trend for the company for which I am working. For us, the most important OSes are Desktop. We develop business applications. There are managers that like to get reports on their phones, most of the users use desktops or laptop computers. 

 

The applications we are creating are 90% Delphi VCL applications, 10% are mobile or handheld devices that are supported by other programming languages.
 

[Sherlock 685]

Just as a side remark: macOS is a desktop OS as well. And it has a quite comfortable market share in the US private and commercially, in Europe however mostly in doctors offices. Though the Apple silicon piqued the interest of many a business.