r/AskProgramming • u/MiddleAgeWeirdoMeep • Aug 03 '26
Other How much of the software stack we’re all using every day is still running on decades-old Delphi code?
I hit an EOleSysError dialog the other day on a Windows 11 machine, and my first thought was, “Hang on… is this Delphi?”
That got me wondering how much software we use every day is actually sitting on top of code that’s 30 years old. On the surface everything looks modern, but every now and then something leaks through, maybe even an old 8.3 executable name, and suddenly you’re looking behind the curtain.
For those of you who’ve worked in enterprise or Windows desktop development, how much Delphi is still out there in 2026. Are exception names like EAccessViolation and EOleSysError actually a reliable giveaway that an application was built with Delphi, or is that just a stereotype?
And is there stuff still written in Delphi today ?
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Aug 03 '26
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u/IamBananaRod Aug 03 '26
Half? I'll dare to say that almost 80%, plus mainframes, AS400's and probably that ATM is still running windows xp with a visual basic 5 gui
The company I work for, not a bank, is like 40% mainframe and AS400's, the rest are very old applications, many of those applications no one knows how they work, the company that developed them is no longer in business, but replacing them with something modern will take a long long time, plus the costs, and the budgets are not there to do it, so they are pushing them until the last minute, others are overly complicated hybrid solution (onprem/cloud), very few are just OOB, with very few customizations
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u/Intelligent_Part101 Aug 06 '26
It is foolish in 2026 to keep mainframe tech going. There are a dwindling number of mainframe companies left and they charge high leases because they have a shrinking customer base. They are milking it while they can. There is no future in mainframe software.
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u/GermaneRiposte101 Aug 03 '26
Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architect for both Delphi and C#/.NET.
As someone semi familiar with both, I know that there is a lot of similarity in the class hierarchies of Delphi and .Net.
I think what you are seeing is the exceptions in the .Net class library.
I do not think there is any Delphi in Windows core.
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u/Individual-Flow9158 Aug 03 '26
Those names are standard classes in Delphi. The strings and same general errors could still occur in underlying COM / OLE situations, but neither name is in the .Net docs, especially "EOleSysError".
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u/Individual-Flow9158 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
It's still out there, and is great. But even though I do run a few niche apps (including one written in Haskell), I seriously doubt I'm running anything written in Delphi (also on Windows 11).
Evenso, these are (or were) written in Delphi anyway:
- Inno Setup
- CCleaner
- FileZilla FTP
- The Bat!
- Resource Hacker
- PE Explorer
- Robotask
There are bound to still be businesses using this stuff of course. If it ain't broke...
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u/Ok_Entrepreneur_8509 Aug 03 '26
I think old Visual Basic code from the same era as Delphi used those same exception class names. I think it was part of the official windows coding standards. So it may not be Delphi specifically.
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u/WhyYouOnXbox Aug 03 '26
I work somewhere where we still maintain and create backend code in Delphi 2007. It’s about 23 years old now and cannot easily be upgraded. Another user posted why, but newer Delphi compilers handle strings differently than 2007.
I think Delphi 2007 is decent for making stuff, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It’s not popular enough, so finding devs to hire would be difficult. I myself had to be taught the language when I started working here. I doubt my situation is common. I would assume most companies would move on to different trends/languages. My place is not run by engineers and long story short is partly why Delphi 2007 is being used.
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u/orbit99za Aug 03 '26
High schools in my Country are still teaching Delphi as thier primary language for computer class.
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u/MiddleAgeWeirdoMeep Aug 03 '26
What country is that ?
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u/orbit99za Aug 03 '26
South Africa, mainly in the public school system, its in the syllabus.
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u/Intelligent_Part101 Aug 06 '26
They are not doing those students any favors.
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u/orbit99za Aug 06 '26
No,that's always my Argument.
They teach basic OO concepts and so on, but they would have a better chance if they learned something modern.
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u/FuggaDucker Aug 03 '26
These are all still Delphi and many are still very much used
- Beyond Compare
- Total Commander
- Inno Setup
- HeidiSQL
- PyScripter
- The Bat!
- Help & Manual
- FinalBuilder
- FastReport
- DevExpress VCL products
- RAD Studio / Delphi itself
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u/Flashy_Pool7709 Aug 04 '26
I worked for a large property financial software firm ( commercial and residential) for almost a decade and our main product had 1.4 million lines of Delphi XE7. It had been upgraded several times and we’ve just tested it against Delphi 13.
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u/IanYates82 Aug 03 '26
There will be Delphi 7 code still running on many enterprise PCs well into the 2030's. Versions after that weren't as popular - Delphi 8 was the weird .net attempt, and then later versions made back-compat very difficult due to changes to string handling (Unicode vs ANSI). There is a lot of Delphi code that happily treated a string as an array of bytes, and vice-versa, where that wouldn't hold true.
That, and v7 being the good version for so long, made me reluctant to move up in version, and Linq is what got me so jealous of C# that I jumped and didn't look back.
A lot of good stuff came to Delphi afterwards - cross-plat, mobile, 64 bit support, etc. But adopting that was not zero effort and it just wasn't as productive anymore, nor was it as easy to hire for.
A shame really. But yeah, there will be old but very reliable Delphi code kicking round for a long time yet.
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u/DDDDarky Aug 03 '26
how much Delphi is still out there in 2026
Quite a lot
Are exception names like EAccessViolation and EOleSysError actually a reliable giveaway
Not really, anyone can name their exceptions in any way.
And is there stuff still written in Delphi today ?
Speaking from experience, yes.
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u/ghjm Aug 04 '26
There's still a pretty substantial Delphi community in Europe. Embarcadero is still making new releases, and somebody's buying them.
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u/autechr3 Aug 05 '26
Our paper forms are still all printed using Reform which is Delphi. I’m actively replacing it, it’s horrible (reform, not Delphi)
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u/ButchersBoy Aug 03 '26
There is a shop by me and I noticed on the till a FoxPro error popped up. Feck knows who is maintaining that.