In the early days, Delphi was the name of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on the Object Pascal language and a Visual Component Library (VCL). Later on, the language was in fact called Delphi (as using Pascal was considered a "negative" feature by many external observers). In recent years, Delphi became a personality of a multi-language IDE, Borland Developers Studio.

Over the last year Delphi was released again as a single language IDE, dubbed Turbo Delphi (in honor of the world-famous Turbo Pascal product line that predates Delphi). Now the "Delphi" name has been attached, for the first time, to a product based on a different language, PHP. Delphi for PHP shares with the original product the same "experience" and the same "architecture" (RAD, component-based, object-oriented, and so forth). But not the language.

This is raising many complaints and concerns. Is CodeGear misusing the Delphi name, causing confusion among developers? Are they using "Delphi" as a branding tool to overcome the weakness of an almost unknown company name? Will this trend continue with other "Delphi for [x-language]" tools? I certainly don't have all of the answers and probably no one has them yet.

Huw Collingbourne, of the Bitwise Magazine, has an interesting article on the topic: So What is Delphi Anyway? He notices that in newsgroups there are many "who feel that the name of their programming language has been hijacked, distorted and devalued" and ends his article by stating that "given the fact that Delphi is CodeGear’s greatest asset, the company may need to think long and hard about the wisdom of reducing it to a mere brand name..."

Although I did share the initial negative impression (and see the confusion it has generated among developers), I also see the positive side of the equation, in particular for the "traditional Delphi" community. Despite always being a niche player, Delphi used to have a strong brand name in the past. Now this is not true anymore. While CodeGear can use the brand to venture in a new market, instead of building up a new product brand from scratch, the "Delphi for PHP" product is being talked a lot , thus spreading the Delphi brand. See Anders Ohlsson post for an example. Being a "Delphi" developer might become popular again, even if for the "newer Delphi"... by pushing a single brand it will become more recognizable also for the Win32 development.

Meanwhile, it has been officially stated that a lot of the technology behind Delphi for PHP comes from quadram software's qstudio and their PHP components library . Read also Tim Anderson article on The Register and also his related blog entry for an interesting (and somewhat critical) perspective on the product.

Update (March 1st)

Just a few hours after I posted this blog entry, David I of CodeGear wrote they are trying to figure out how to call the Delphi language (or the language formerly known as Delphi) in the future. He suggests a few and other ideas have been postes int he feedback by readers. I think Object Pascal remains a very good name, technically correct, sounding nice, known to many developers, and everything else. And for those who think Pascal is a silly language, we'll never win them over so let's them tell up front we don't use the C-language syntax and are very happy not to!

At the same time, Tim Anderson refers to the post by Anders Ohlson mentioned above showing that Google can't count (and the other search engines follow suit). By the way, notice that CodeGear CEO posted a response to the blog entry with the BTS signature. Actually he posted a feedback message on my blog in the past, as well!