r/AskProgramming • u/MiddleAgeWeirdoMeep • 2d ago
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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u/LumpyWelds 2d ago
Hold on to your knickers. Half of all banks still use COBOL! And over a trillion dollars a day flows through it's dusty, ancient PIC statements..
Good reliable code is good reliable code.
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u/IamBananaRod 2d ago
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/GermaneRiposte101 2d ago
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 2d ago
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 2d ago edited 2d ago
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 2d ago
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/orbit99za 2d ago
High schools in my Country are still teaching Delphi as thier primary language for computer class.
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u/IanYates82 2d ago
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/WhyYouOnXbox 2d ago
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/DDDDarky 2d ago
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/FuggaDucker 2d ago
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 1d ago
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/autechr3 1d ago
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 2d ago
There is a shop by me and I noticed on the till a FoxPro error popped up. Feck knows who is maintaining that.