I'd been a Delphi dev for several years. One of the funny things I share with other devs is how Universities are sometimes maligned for teaching content that is interesting and in depth, but perhaps not applicable in the real world.

I learnt Pascal in my first year of University. After a brief stint of BASIC, I fixed up a failing project using Delphi. This was the start of a long (long..) stint of Delphi programming.

I've now opted for a lower paying role to learn new skills. I'm loving it. I should have done this a long time ago, but life is what happens while you make plans.

I think one of the biggest problem older Delphi apps have is that they lock themselves in to working well in a Windows GUI environment. Early Delphi based project successes, because of quick initial deliveries (due to RAD/ROI), of mostly working applications mask the problem of a lack of architectural forethought.

I suspect a very difficult problem for most Delphi apps these days is disentangling working, legacy business logic from many sometimes very old forms and code into a more web consumable format. I've thought of starting a business to do this very thing, but others are doing this quite well I think.

The well thought out apps, that did have some reasonable architectural forethought, have probably been ported to C# by now. The apps that can't do this can be quite tricky to work with.

Working in a dynamic lang, Python, Scheme, etc. also I think allows easier shape-changing for new requirements. Whereas I think Delphi apps can get bit locked down into a way of thinking/doing tasks (GUI talking to a DB).

YMMV,. but that's my experience :-)

Glossary: RAD: Rapid Application Development ROI: Return On Investment