> My side project was made in Delphi and quickly surpassed my full-time salary, so I formed my own company. The only reason I moved away from Delphi years later was that the database drivers were far less available than in .NET ecosystem (and I make database migration software and need many drivers) Moving to .NET was a pain, but it was obvious that without Anders Hejlsberg Delphi is going to wither down, and .NET is going to thrive and evolve.

Woah, this is exactly what happened with me too! Back in 2001 I wrote a security app with Delphi and launched it as a side product. Borland got sold and Delphi became expensive, dotnet became a thing, and the rest was history. Several years later, I'm on the 3rd generation of that security product, cross platform with dotnet core, and I've finally quit my day job to work on it full time!

I enjoy working with dotnet and Rider, but I have fond memories of working with Delphi. Compile times were insane, the RAD tools were great, and the IDE just flew - might be rose-tinted glasses, but I don't recall it ever crashing or being slow in any way.