Comment by pkphilip

Few things that made Delphi great: for one thing you could develop all sorts of apps in Delphi - from system management apps, to database heavy apps, to editors, to games etc.

1. The component architecture was just great - I have yet to see any language/platform with a more sophisticated component structure even now.

2. There were all sorts of free and commercial components that you could download and install into the IDE and have it running in your application in next to no time. ActiveX etc didn't even come close to the level of integration and speed that the Delphi component architecture provided.

3. Components could be loaded into the UI during the design time itself and you could see it functioning directly within the IDE when you place it on your form. Example: You could connect to a database, run a query, put that into a table with all sorts of sorting and navigation functions and you could see this working even without compiling the 3pplication.

4. It was trivial to develop components for Delphi - even though it was so sophisticated. You could develop one in about 15-30 minutes.

5. The compilation speed was just insane. It just blew everything else out of the water and so you could do fast compile+run cycles.