Niklaus Wirth Prize Acceptance Speech: A Personal View of the History of Pascal and D - Delphi-PRAXiS
Summary
This was an interesting computer, with a much faster CPU than the IBM one, Olivetti was a great Italian* company at the time, run with a modern organization and offering Silicon Valley style of benefits to the employees (but thats another story). Pascal compiled code is helping lighting the Niagara falls, moving container cranes in automated harbors, showing live 3D player data in sports on TVs, making tax returns and sending e-invoices to governments, designing CPUs and, you know, building Delphi itself! Its a slide I have in some of my sessions on the language, and keep repeating: "Power and simplicity, expressiveness and readability, great for learning and for professional development alike: these are some of the traits of todays Object Pascal." But there are a lot of active communities organizing 100+ people events in Germany and in Italy, but also in Japan and Australia, and many other countries around the world.Delphi clearly passed its hay days, but the product is still alive and generating a good business, justifying a solid R&D investment. Pascal compiled code is helping lighting the Niagara falls, moving container cranes in automated harbors, showing live 3D player data in sports on TVs, making tax returns and sending e-invoices to governments, designing CPUs and, you know, building Delphi itself!
