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Comment by Gehinnn | Hacker News Reader

I remember when I turned 16 and all I wanted as birthday present was a license for Delphi 2009. If I remember correctly, it costed more than €1k at that time. Obviously I got something else.

When I learned about the free Visual Studio Express, I switched to .Net development and never used Delphi again.

This experience shaped me and all tools I will ever create will be available for free to students and kids.

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Thats because Microsoft hired Anders Hjeilsberg, architect of Delphi, to create the .net platform and the C# language. And in the process signing the death warrant for Borland (who created Delphi).

The rumour was Microsoft's own staff preferred using Delphi to their own tools, which is why they hired Hjeilsberg.

The killing feature was not .Net for me, but the free and fully featured IDE. I hated to type out every public declaration twice in the Delphi 5 IDE I got from school.

I remember that I hated the startup time of Visual Studio though. In Delphi 5, I typed invalid syntax to create a temporary bookmark: When I pressed F5 to compile the project, I immediately jumped to it. This was entirely impossible for C# programs.

First of all, Anders was hired to create J++.

Secondly, he only joined after been asked multiple times by ex-Borland colleges when he felt it wasn't his place any longer at Borland.

https://youtu.be/0g-IjyFnrAM

Borland killed itself by switching to services.

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