Delphi 2007 – Same Old Stuff Under a New Hat?
We all love Delphi. It’s smart, easy to understand, fast, and user-friendly. But what truly makes Delphi so appealing? Is it the IDE, or is it the language itself?
Every time Borland released a new version, we endured a painful cycle of learning and adaptation. Not because of the language—Delphi’s Pascal roots have always been solid—but because of its buggy IDE. You can’t argue with that: every release comes with a laundry list of unresolved issues.
Does Delphi 2007 break this cycle? Let’s find out.
First Impressions
I recently installed Delphi 2007, encouraged by the positive buzz surrounding it. Unfortunately, my first experience didn’t live up to the hype. The initial installation attempt failed. After some effort, I managed to get it running—barely.
Compared to Delphi 2005, Delphi 2007 is a relief. Compared to Delphi 2006, it’s marginally better. But compared to Delphi 7, it falls short.
Frustrations and Bugs
Here’s a summary of the issues I encountered:
- Dependency on .NET
- Despite claims that Delphi 2007 was free of .NET, it still refuses to install without .NET 2.0 and other unnecessary components.
- Blinking Icons
- Within minutes of launching the IDE, I noticed the same fast-blinking toolbar icons that plagued Delphi 2005 and 2006.
- Help System Nightmare
- The help system is effectively non-functional. It works only about 30% of the time. The other 70% is a mix of errors and irrelevant results from Microsoft’s .NET and API documentation.
- For example, pressing F1 while the cursor was on the reserved word
functionyielded an irrelevant result—after a 37-second wait.
- Cursor Visibility
- Occasionally, the cursor’s color matches the IDE’s background, making it invisible. The only solution is to restart the IDE and hope for better luck.
- Performance Issues
- On my AMD 64 X2 4.6GHz system with 1GB of DDR2 RAM, Delphi 2007 takes an eternity to load.
- Small projects consume 50-120MB of memory, but larger projects can spike usage to 600-1000MB. A system with at least 2GB of RAM is essential.
- Persistent Message Windows
- The ‘Messages’ window pops up during compilation errors but doesn’t close after the issue is resolved, requiring manual intervention every time.
- Undo System
- The undo functionality is unreliable. It occasionally works but often fails, forcing you to rewrite code instead of reverting changes.
Final Thoughts
Delphi 2007 feels like an unfinished product. It’s not as disastrous as Delphi 2005 but still far from usable. Compared to the stability of Delphi 7, it’s a step backward. While I’m optimistic that CodeGear (formerly Borland) will release patches to address these issues, for now, Delphi 2007 is not a viable replacement.
Until then, I’ll stick with Delphi 7—a version with known bugs and well-documented workarounds.
A Call for Help
If anyone knows how to fix the help system or remove irrelevant MS API results, please drop me a line. I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Stay tuned for updates—if and when I uncover more about Delphi 2007’s potential.