In the 2000s Delphi was one of the most popular languages. Since then its popularity has been decreasing for a set of internal and external reasons. As a consequence of a declining market, Delphi is considered to be a dying technology by many developers used to work with it formerly. Delphi application maintenance or modernization is required for lots of softwares written previously.
Delphi skills gap
On one hand, Delphi job offers worldwide are precious few. A quick search for a “delphi developer" on Glassdoor resulted in 206 opportunities only, while “Java developer" jobs issued 22409 results, Python developer jobs - 19214 and C developer jobs - 50074. The results demonstrate convincingly that Delphi vacancies are very few and it is not the language of choice for a software engineer cultivating a career. The majority of young developers are attracted by popular languages which are more agile and offer more opportunities for all types of development than Delphi.
On the other hand it’s really hard for companies to hire Delphi developers for their projects. Delphi experts are rare and therefore an expensive resource. Frankly, the Delphi IDE and version upgrades are costly as well.
Lack of knowledge
The root of the problem with Delphi developers finding is the lack of expertise among developers nowadays. As there is no free or student version, newer generations cannot easily learn Delphi (while Eclipse for Java is freely available, for example). Moreover, Delphi is poorly promoted and studied at colleges and universities courses, which used to be the major source of experts. Enterprises are also not willing to offer Delphi courses for their stuff, since they opt for more prosperous technologies.
While a typical Delphi developer today is a 50+ expert nearing retirement, who works without precise coding standards. Consequently, when the rest of developers leave, there will be hardly any young experts with Delphi programmer CV to take their place.
Delphi maintenance projects only
That little demand for Delphi skills available nowadays mostly refer to Delphi maintenance and support projects. Companies having some legacy applications aiming at outsourcing a Delphi programmer who most likely have never built a Delphi application from scratch. A new programmer enters such a company and has to deal with an outdated piece of software, which is hard to modify and to add functionality. He may be assigned the task to modernize Delphi applications without changing the technology and will try in vain for a couple of years.
Leave Delphi and move forward for more opportunities
A technology which is not evolving any more can be used for personal or small projects only. Delphi applications of enterprise level cause performance problems and security risk. Outdated pieces need to be substituted sooner or later by modern languages supported by corporations and a large community. It makes sense to convert Delphi to C#, Java or Python, which offer significantly more possibilities for business growth.
Advantages of Delphi application conversion
Among the benefits of converting a Delphi application to a new language are decreased costs and lower risks in the post-migration period. The most obvious benefit of Delphi migration is that it gives a new life to applications full of opportunities and further improvement.
After Delphi conversion a company might consider investing in cloud storage. It would also contribute to additional flexibility for the business. It is the most reasonable and comprehensive approach that will pay back in the future. Smart software tools are able to do the greater part of the work and convert the legacy code into other languages.
Expert development skills and software are required in case of any modernization approach you choose. However, justified expenses and long-term results can be achieved with comprehensive modernization based on Delphi migration to Java, C# or Python. LSMSoft offers conversion services that will contribute to your company’s prosperity.