how many Delphi users over the world?

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+20 Q:

how many Delphi users over the world?

A few years ago, in a newsgroup thread, Michael Swindell revealed that there was about 1.75 million single users of Delphi (click Here for the thread).
What is the status today ? Can somebody tell us how the Delphi community evolved? Michael again? Nick? Anybody else?

Question reopened. The OP comment below helps explain the reason why and deserves to be here IMO (François):
The target of the question was to know if Delphi has still a solid user base. In my company, we are in need to rewrite a lot of legacy applications. Delphi seems like a very good choice but to convince my bosses, I needed to prove them that Delphi is more than just surviving. So I do not consider my question is so far from programming.

+5 A:

According to the TIOBE index it places 9th this month. Could be an argument to "prove" (ahum) that Delphi's still around and popular. It outranks popular dynamic language Ruby and Apple's Objective-C for instance (in this particular index).

No idea about the size of the user base though.

ChristopheD 2010-03-10 20:08:11

I'm really impatient to see the impact on Tiobe index and the Delphi popularity in general when the multi platform Delphi will be released. One of the most frequent criticism I heard about Delphi was that it is only for windows

loursonwinny 2010-03-10 21:27:44

Then you mix in some very strange circles indeed. Anyone complaining that Delphi was not multiplatform should quit whining and simply choose a multi-platform tool to get their job done. In the meantime, Delphi rocked as the BEST tool for writing Windows applications. That is something that was forgotten when Borland lost their way and went multi-platform (Linux/.NET) and I am afraid will happen again this time around because it's the same people at the helm.

Deltics 2010-03-10 23:39:13

Don't know if it'll happen again (Kylix fiasco). Never before I've seen such contact of the with the Delphi community and I believe this time they will get it right.

Fabricio Araujo 2010-03-11 17:54:29

+5 A:

I've heard between 1.5 (also from Michael Rozlog a few years ago) and 1.75 million users from different people at Borland and now Embarcadero. When pressed, they confirm that these are individual licenses (an upgrade isn't counted as a separate license).

I haven't heard anything official, but my impression is that after Delphi 7, adoption slowed or even went down. Since Delphi 2007, I think it's taking an upswing.

Anecdotally, I see questions being asked by developers who are new to Delphi in places like the Embarcadero forums and here. I also know about a couple of projects that abandoned Delphi, but have reconsidered for different reasons.

So, to answer your question, I think there is definitely a solid (and even growing) user base.

However, I don't know how much the user base has changed over the life of Delphi, and I doubt Embarcadero will share that information.

Bruce McGee 2010-03-10 20:18:00

If you followed the thread (and I'm sure you did as you participated in it) Michael Swindell also claims that the 1.75 million figure includes users of pirate licenses. By definition there is no way to know how many such users there are. Any allowance for pirate users must be a complete guess. Now that we have to put up with activation, the only meaningful number is the actual number of activated licenses for each recent version and active "Community" accounts (used for activation). Anecdotally, the user base is far from solid and is certainly dwindling, not growing.

Deltics 2010-03-10 23:44:45

Yes he did. Until you mentioned it, I didn't remember that he said "there is some piracy in there". I certainly hope any estimates they're making now only include legitimate copies. However, it doesn't change my impressions, sightings of new Delphi developers or new Delphi projects. http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Delphi/borland.public.delphi.non-technical/2007-08/msg02092.html

Bruce McGee 2010-03-11 12:46:31

+5 A:

Who cares? I'm being serious here so read on before downvoting.

It doesn't matter how many Delphi programmers are in Australia if your company is based in North Dakota and wants to hire people locally.

Take a look at the LOCAL job boards and talk to some recruiters. Find out what percentage of Delphi jobs are open or being filled compared to other languages. That right there will tell you whether you have a developer pool large enough to go forward with a long term project in that language.

Chris Lively 2010-03-10 20:26:09

Although I agree with the gist of the statement, I think the size of the developer pool should not imho be the ultimate deciding factor for choosing one language or another. Good developers should be able to pick up a (new) language easily.

ChristopheD 2010-03-10 20:32:48

Keep in mind that the relative number of Delphi jobs does not necessarily reflect the abilities of the developers in the area. If there are a lot of job openings for Delphi positions, then you can look at how many of them are being filled and come to a reasonable conclusion based on that, but if there are few or no Delphi jobs available, that doesn't necessarily say anything about the abilities of developers in the area.

Michael Madsen 2010-03-10 20:49:31

If a mature language is only in use by less than say 1% of the local dev population there might be a very good reason for that and should serve as a warning sign to companies before going down that path. Also, even if a good developer can pick up a new language fairly easily it still takes quite a lot of time to become an expert in that language. Which translates to paid on the job training.

Chris Lively 2010-03-10 20:51:57

Sorry for taking this a bit off-topic but I believe language popularity/adoption has a deeper correlation with marketing budget / vendor lock-in strategies / market domination, etc... then intrinsic qualities of the languages themselves. What I mean is: less popular does not imply defective or less useful (sometimes the opposite can be true). Also chances are that on such a *smaller* developer base you'll find (per 100) more passionate developers who know their language inside out (and know why they prefer their lesser known technology of choice) then in the *mainstream* masses... (imo)

ChristopheD 2010-03-10 21:14:13

Obviously, "loursonwinny" cares. If you don't think the question is useful, then vote it down, or just ignore it. If you don't think an answer to the question would actually solve the questioner's ultimate goal, then say so in the comments. "Who cares" is never an appropriate answer to a question on Stack Overflow.

Rob Kennedy 2010-03-10 21:14:36

@Rob: Obviously you didn't read the full thing. Who Cares refers to whether the world has 1.75 million devs or not. It doesn't matter if they aren't available to be hired based on locality. For all I know 1.72 million of those are in China which, unless they are outsourcing, probably means they can't hire them.

Chris Lively 2010-03-10 21:29:08

@ChristopheD: I think you're still on-topic ;) I agree, marketing has a big impact on the number of followers. I also agree that less dev's don't necessarily mean that the language itself is flawed. However, if a mature language has few followers then that is a big thing to take into consideration from a corporate perspective. Sure a C# guy can pick up Delphi pretty quick (common roots) but they are going to take quite a while to figure out the "real" Delphi way of doing things. In the meantime project dev time is diminished. And what happens when that person leaves? Back to square one.

Chris Lively 2010-03-10 21:34:07

Maybe do I have to be clearer. The goal of the question is to know if Delphi is in ascending wave, or not. About 5 years ago. My company was going to choose Delphi as main RAD. But the announce of Borland to sell it made my bosses abandon the Delphi path and choose Java. Today, they are disappointed by Java's productivity. They consider again Delphi. But they are afraid of all those sales. What I want is to give them a fact that helps believe that Delphi is not dead, and is not going to be dead.

loursonwinny 2010-03-10 21:42:52

You make a very valid point - so long as outsourcing is ignored. Why couldn't that company in ND outsource to Oz?

Mawg 2010-03-11 02:27:28

@mawg: They could absolutely outsource it. If that is their desire, then in my opinion language becomes a completely moot point.

Chris Lively 2010-03-11 17:01:07

+5 A:

Michael Swindell did update his figure in an August 2008 e-week article:

Swindell said the community of Delphi and C++Builder developers continues to grow. In 2006 there were 1.75 million Delphi developers and now there are more than 2 million, he said.

But I think this number is a bit high due to other evidence:

A year ago, Nick Hodges asked the question: How many developers are there in the world? The accepted answer was 12 million.

If the 12 million is correct, then the 1.75 million would be too high, since Delphi is only 9th in the Tiobe index. In a comment on Marcu Cantu's blog, it is suggested that the 1.75 million is the total number of licenses sold since D1, and NOT the number of users. Bruce McGee in another conversation agreed it was unique license holders.

On Meta Stack Overflow was this question: What is the number and distribution of the regular programmers in the world? The answer there quoted Evans Data which estimated about 15.2 million plus other info.

So ballpark agreement is from 10 to 20 million programmers.

Now what percentage would be Delphi? At 9th on the list, Tiobe indicates it is at 2.684% which is as good an estimate as any. If so, then I'd say maybe there's 250,000 to 500,000 Delphi programmers. That's still quite a lot when you think about it.

lkessler 2010-03-11 00:37:57

You're assuming that developers only work in 1 language, which they generally do not.

Mick 2010-03-11 05:33:18

@Mick: Why do you think I assume that? I don't. I simply find it hard to believe that out of 15 million programmers, over 10% of them use Delphi. Whereas I think Tiobe's 2.684% is more reasonable. i.e. One out of 40 programmers use Delphi.

lkessler 2010-03-11 07:38:50

I accept this answer because it has a good head on its shoulders. My company needs a language for desktop dev, they want to leave java and want to avoid MS languages. It remains then 3 choices from the top 10 of Tiobe : C, C++ and Delphi. My bosses are afraid of C and C++...

loursonwinny 2010-03-11 09:04:17

I don't think the Tiobe ratings translate to the percentage of developers over all. If it did, then C# (4.264%) has between 425,000 and 850,000, and I'm sure Microsoft would challenge these numbers.

Bruce McGee 2010-03-11 13:41:33

Bruce, I agree. Tiobe sources for stats are not a real snapshot of the real world. They use the stats of search engines. IMHO, I think that it decrease the Delphi results because delphi has good help provided with the product (I don't want to open a debate over the Delphi doc/help). IMO Tiobe index benefits to open source languages - we know how lazy are Open source guys when it comes to write help and documentation. Thus for their users the main source for finding help even for basic tasks is the web.However, at the moment, TIOBE is our only source of info.I know some will disagree...

loursonwinny 2010-03-11 15:44:26

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how many Delphi users over the world?

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