Probably not exactly what you'd expect as a comment to this link, but a few years ago i bought second hand copies of Delphi 2 and C++ Builder 1 (and Borland C++ 5 and JBuilder 2 and VB4Pro, and VB5 and a bunch of other stuff, i like collecting and using old dev tools - sadly most of them do not come in a full box with original manuals which i'd love to have). I normally use Lazarus[0], but sometimes i also like using Delphi 2 and C++ Builder, the former being what i used for years as a teenager (i used to have another second hand CD i got from a local programmer - again without manuals and i guess i got ripped off, but it was the first tool i ever bought by selling some game i wrote... and i promptly lost after my parents moved, but by that time i had lost interest in Delphi and was dabbling in C++ with Borland's free C/C++ Compiler - although i did use the "personal edition" of Delphi 7, which came in a magazine cover disk, to create an "IDE" - really a text editor that could keep a list of files and call BCC32.EXE - and used it for a couple of years and was where i wrote my first 3D rasterizer[1][2] and learned OpenGL[3], although at some point i also wrote a platform game in Delphi[4] which i later ported to Free Pascal and a few years later recreated with new graphics in C++/SDL, originally as shareware but later opensourced[5]) and the latter something that i was curious about.

I used C++ Builder the last few years to create some unofficial game patches (most can be found at [6]) because it creates small executables (i used OpenWatcom before that, but i found creating the dialogs annoying and of course i didn't want to use Lazarus that makes 1MB+ executables just for a single dialog). Also i really like how fast the compiler is - i do not care it doesn't even support C++98 as i wouldn't use C++ normally anyway :-P. Like with Lazarus, i have a few classes[7] in it for utility stuff.

Recently i also made a mesh editor[8][9] with it. If you check my channel, i have a few "Making a game in XYZ" videos and i wanted to make a video where i "retrocode" a simple game using Direct3D on a Voodoo 2 under Windows 95, but i couldn't find any free mesh editing program that runs on Windows 95 (i tried some old versions of Blender and Wings3D but either nothing worked or was too slow - Voodoo 2 only supports 3D acceleration in fullscreen so the windowed mode programs have to be usable with OpenGL 1.1 using Microsoft's GDI-based software rendering OpenGL implementation). So i decided to write my own :-P. It mostly works, as shown in the video, but i haven't added a way to edit texture coordinates yet. I also tried to write a Quake-like editor[10], but lost interest. I did port (rewrote) the 3D widget stuff for my Lazarus tools though[11].

Ironically even though i spent basically my childhood with Delphi 2, i am not really using it much these days. I use Lazarus for most of my stuff (and TBH i wouldn't really rely on either C++ Builder or Delphi 2 to keep working in the future, although it works just fine under Wine[12] which i feel will be more likely to stay backwards compatible in the future than Windows itself). I did write an OpenGL viewport[13] and OpenGL 4.6 bindings unit for Delphi 2 though (which may work with later versions of Delphi), although the former is really almost a line-by-line conversion of my OpenGL viewport for C++ Builder[14] and the latter is just a unit generated with my Lazarus OpenGL unit binding generator[15] hand-converted to work with Delphi 2's Pascal dialect. I recently thought about writing a Nendo-like[16] modeller by porting my winged edge classes from Lazarus[17], but the day job doesn't leave me with much free time sadly :-P (and i have some games to play too :-P).

Funny enough, just before visiting Hacker News today i went to Embarcadero's site and thought about downloading the latest Delphi - but meh'd out when i was asked to register (i have an account, but i don't remember the details and i'm too lazy to go through the password recovery dance). Although TBH this is largely because every time i tried it the last few years i was really underwhelmed. I don't know, i never liked the post-Delphi 7 interface and i remember even at Delphi 7's time i thought the IDE was too bloated (granted, i was trying to run it on a Pentium MMX with 32MB of RAM...).

I wish there would be a version that had an affordable price (like the original Delphi 2 and C++ Builder, the base versions of both costing only $99.95 which lasted until Delphi 5 and C++ Builder 5 respectively and after that prices started hiking fast), was available in a box with nice manuals and CD/DVDs (or whatever, for that money i want to have something to touch :-P) and was free of any sort of DRM (i installed C++ Builder once when i got the CD off ebay years ago and since then i simply carry the installation folder around - which is kinda necessary since i've modified a few headers and lib files - if they had any sort of DRM i wouldn't be able to do that).

Basically i'd like a new Delphi 2 :-P. Although TBH this is more of a sentimental thought and in practice Lazarus does the job just fine, even if a bit clunky at times. Still, i'd buy a (proper, non-crippled, especially license-wise) $99.95 DRM-free Delphi (hell, even a digital-only version, as long as i got a nice .exe installer i could safekeep in my external hard drive) without much thought.

[0] http://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[1] https://i.imgur.com/uYBX6nN.png

[2] https://i.imgur.com/opVUsvG.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/eS802L7.png

[4] https://i.imgur.com/CO4lnhz.png

[5] http://runtimeterror.com/games/nikwideluxe/

[6] https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/Bad_Sect...

[7] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/bcbcmn/index

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr1Sr9hTkzg

[9] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/olmeshy/index

[10] https://i.imgur.com/zRguUf8.png

[11] https://i.imgur.com/6uIFrMC.gif

[12] https://i.imgur.com/rInEdBY.png

[13] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/dglvp/index

[14] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/bcbgl/

[15] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/gl2unit/index

[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC7EDkZfw3M

[17] https://i.imgur.com/4Zk9Td7.png