Turkish ministry of education secures free access to Delphi for an estimated one million students

Edit: The title in my initial post could be misinterpreted, so i have altered it to better reflect the nature of the situation. My apologies for the misunderstanding, I used the initial text copied verbatim from the source, translated from Turkish to Norwegian (and further to English), and in this case an important nuance was lost in that process.

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The ministry of education in Turkey recently announced that they will be offering Delphi free of charge to their body of students. An estimated one million students will thus have access to Delphi through this initiative.

Getting object-pascal back into universities and education is very important. Not just for Delphi as a product or Embarcadero as a company, but to ensure that the next generation of software developers are given a firm grasp on fundamental programming concepts; concepts that represent the building-blocks that all software rests on, and that will benefit the students for a lifetime.

I find it incredibly sad that Java and C# somehow crept into the curriculum of computer sciences around the turn of the century. The result of that opportunistic move is that we have several generations of developers who has graduated utterly oblivious to fundamental concepts; concepts such as memory management, interrupts, low-level optimization, inline assembler and (to be blunt) how a computer actually works beyond the desktop. This is why a formal education of C and Pascal is powerful and enduring. It gives the student a depth and wingspan that is hard to match.

Object Pascal as a language (including Freepascal, Oxygene and various alternative compilers) have been fluctuating between #11 and #14 on the Tiobe Index for a few years. Tiobe is an index that tracks the use and popularity of languages around the world, and helps companies get an indication of where to invest. So despite what people have been led to believe, Delphi has seen stable growth for many years and is far more widespread than sceptics like to admit.

As an ardent Delphi developer myself this is excellent news! Not only will it help the next generation of students learn proper engineering from the ground up – but it will also help to retire some of the unfounded myths surrounding the language (and Delphi in particular) that is sadly still in circulation. Most of these rumors stem from the hostile takeover (or elimination) of Borland by Microsoft some two decades ago, and does in no way reflect the reality of 2020. Delphi in particular has been through several phases of evolution, and is today en par with it’s companion language C/C++.

I am thrilled that so many young developers will now have access to a modern and relevant Delphi edition. Delphi has been a favorite of teachers and students everywhere, and the return of Delphi to academia – is a sign that the age of compromise is losing its grip.

Thank you to Hür Akdülger for informing the Delphi Developer community about this. Truly a monumental sign of growth. Congratulations Embarcadero and the Turkish students!

Source [in Turkish]:
https://www.timeturk.com/meb-den-1-milyon-meslek-lisesi-ogrencisine-yazilim-egitimi/haber-1337091