Delphi as a Teaching and Learning Language
Markus Greschat, 13.11.2018
Delphi is still a very good programming language today with a modern and efficient development environment.
Not only in general education, but also in universities and vocational schools, Delphi is the optimal entry point.
For decades, Delphi has offered students a simple and logical approach to learning programming and developing applications. In recent years, Delphi has continuously adapted to the advancements of the digital age. Today, developing applications without mobile devices is almost unimaginable. For this, Delphi provides the prerequisites with a modern IDE.
Delphi is a powerful and modern programming language that meets all the concepts and paradigms of a contemporary language, yet still offers a very easy entry point as a teaching and learning language with Delphi/Pascal.
With the many visual components and some very specialized mechanisms, it is easy for Delphi beginners to quickly achieve visible results. This, in turn, has the positive side effect that even with a low tolerance for frustration, students can quickly experience success.
Additionally, in various German-speaking Delphi forums, students who are overwhelmed with their programming tasks receive willing assistance.
Some interesting projects enthusiastically carried out by students with Delphi suggest that Delphi is "child's play."
For example, the project of class 6E at Lothar-Meyer-Gymnasium (LMG) in Varel can be mentioned here. Under the guidance of their teacher, the students developed small apps for smartphones and tablets with Delphi XE7, such as a fuel calculator or the board game "Mühle" (Nine Men's Morris).
Also, at the Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium in Kaiserslautern, students from class 8H developed an app for birdsong recognition.
What makes Delphi so interesting for the educational sector?
The most important aspect is probably the easily readable source code. Delphi is easy to understand and therefore easy to learn. Moreover, Delphi is based on the object-oriented programming language Pascal, which was developed as a teaching and learning language. From a technical standpoint, several arguments also speak in favor of Delphi. Its type-safe language, modularization, visual designer for various modern target platforms, and fast compiler are all significant advantages.
Often, especially in schools, cost is the decisive factor in choosing Delphi. Embarcadero offers the complete Delphi development environment free of charge for schools, universities, and vocational schools. Two licensing models are available:
Classroom licenses, where student PCs obtain their licenses from a dedicated school server.
Student licenses, allowing students to work at home with a fully-featured development environment on their school projects.
The licenses can be easily requested online at Embarcadero's Academic Program using the application form for the free academic program. The academic program applied for here includes 30 RAD Studio Professional licenses, including maintenance for one year, as well as 100 additional licenses for students. If more than 100 student licenses are needed, they can be easily requested from Embarcadero. The licenses are valid for one year and can be renewed by contacting Embarcadero.
To make the start even easier, there are numerous noteworthy sources and resources.
For example:
The Delphi Programming Course on Wikibooks available at: Programmierkurs Delphi
The Embarcadero Tutorial at: RAD Studio Tutorials
Marco Cantu's Fundamentals Book at: Marco Cantu's Website
Additionally, the Delphi-Praxis website at: Delphi-Praxis, which provides many tutorials, code libraries, and a friendly developer community centered around Delphi.
:Furthermore, teaching materials for Delphi are also available on the internet. On the website of the Berlin Vocational School Center Handel 1 at Oszhandel.de, you can find a comprehensive range of materials for various topics related to Delphi for classroom use.
