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.
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
Jon L. Aasenden 
I’m glad you’re a Delphi enthusiast. Products created in Delphi seem to be of a secret here in Canada. I only am aware of some of the products because Embarcadero informs me by their emails. Otherwise I would have no idea. Feels like a well kept secret.
There is roughly 10.000.000 object pascal developers in the world, so its a bit strange yes. A sad result of the rumor mill back in the day that still lingers on, coupled with rampant piracy of ancient Delphi versions online.
Can you expound on the “heavy damage” from Java and C#?
What exactly is lacking from that sentence? Should we begin with CPU spikes due to garbage collection, or the fact that students leave school utterly oblivious to how memory, interrupts and a computer functions? We all remember the first phones shipping with Java. It took what? 8 months for Google to throw the original architecture out and bust open the NDK? When kids dont even know loop unrolling or graduate without even understanding how a stack works, then that is nothing short of failure. A classical education with Pascal and C is timeless
Fact check: There was no takeover by MS.
Really? Wow. So they didnt poach engineers en-mass, nor give Anders Hejlsberg an ultimatum? Nor did they drive Borland out of business through systematic undermining of their tech partners? A “hostile takeover” doesn’t always mean usurping control of stocks, it also covers taking over control (or taking away control) by proxy and thus eliminate the competition through unfair means. Borland was put out to pasture because they bested Microsoft in just about everything – except raw financial power.
In what way did MS take over control or take away control of the company? A takeover always involves taking control of a company. Borland lost its way by concentrating on the wrong market segment. Towards the end, they started building products aimed at enterprise and it eventually became their downfall.
Poaching talents is business as usual. Anders, et al will not move to MS or other companies if its just for monetary reasons. There must already be a general consensus within Borland that the current regime has failed at the time.
Taking over a market when a competitor fails is business as usual.
It is in no way business as usual to have Bill Gates call you up in person to give you an ultimatum.
Nor is it business as usual to spend a fortune undermining partners and third party developers. That is not business but immoral and reckless.
You are correct that Borland had dropped the ball for a while, which typically happens when you have more non-technical people than engineers.
A fairly common venture capital situation. Sheep multiply and they will ruin the natural spinal reflex of a company with endless debates.
As for how they went about it, i just told you in the other commend. If you want intricate details, then you should do some research.
Wasting time convincing you of things i experienced first hand with partners here in Norway, is a waste of my time.
But google the subject, there should be ample info on both public and non-so-public events
Outstanding news and thanks for sharing! I am thankful for Turkey and their forward thinking. There will soon be a new market of Delphi developers eager to live consistent lives as software developers.
I have used Delphi on and off since version 3. It won’t be long before Delphi itself has been around for an entire generation – consistent. Haters be warned, it’s not going anywhere! 🤣
I’ve used Pascal ever since my father bought TP 2 way back in the mid-1980’ies, and later upgraded to TP 3.01a, TP 6.00, and even have a rarely used copy of BP7 (with its exquisite paper documentation!) Got D1/2/3 and 6 via freebie CD on UK computer magazines, tried FreePascal (and absolutely hate it)
Most of my normal programming is in PL/I on z/OS, but on the PC I use Virtual Pascal, and although that compiler has been unsupported since 200x, its IDE is still light-years ahead of FPC (Did I already mention that I hate that one, well that’s one of the reasons) and the executables are tiny by today’s standards. The VP generated code isn’t much better than that generated by TP6 (a polite way to say it’s sh*te), but it produces an assembler listing, and its in-line assembler, albeit limited to Pentium instructions) provides solace, as does https://defuse.ca/online-x86-assembler.htm , where I get the bytes to create my “db”‘ed AVX instructions. (NB, having tried FPC on more than one occasion, it also generates code that is pretty bad, but I guess it would allow me to use normal inline AVX instructions…)
I maintain, mostly for my own use, although I know others have used them in the past, a small set of programs to update some of the data on my website, and in some ways, I would like to try my hand at Delphi again, if only to create a tool to more interactively access my data on a more granular basis – everything is right now command-line only.
I really hope that Embarcadero will return to its roots and make the product available to a wider audience. M$ has a community edition (or whatever) of its Visual Studio, Embarcadero could, no should, do the same with Delphi, and silently I hope that some of those Turkish students…