> Delphi designed in the 90s is still far superior to any web technology for building UI
Then where is it?
Also, I can make a standalone app in a few hours using Electron. I guess it would take me more than a few weeks with Delphi, given that I don’t know anything about it. So your point might just be that you know Delphi and not JavaScript.
> Are there even Delphi enthusiasts still, or is it just nostalgia?
There are.
There is a major commercially relevant DAW produced in Delphi. You can figure out which one.
> I believe Electron and web technologies are superior for UIs given their pragmatism and ubiquity.
This opinion is questionable given a clearly narrow view. Outside of this bubble they aren’t ubiquitous.
There are plenty of LOB apps still used and maintained in VB6. One of the most heavily used applications in the US federal government is a C++Builder app (the C++ RAD counterpart to Delphi) - it is a piece of crap, but that’s a factor of the authors not the language - and when it was first released more than 20 years ago it started up in a few seconds on hardware at the time with slow spinning disks! Looking at the vast majority of LOB web apps - nothing has gotten better on that front.
One of the employees they lured away was Anders Hejlsberg, former chief architect of Delphi, which built C# at Microsoft. WinForms had an uncanny resemblance to VCL.
Before that Microsoft had tried to extend-embrace-extinguish Java with J++, but got sued by Sun into submission.
MS were utter scum back then, but Borland’s mistakes certainly didn’t help either.
Then where is it?
Also, I can make a standalone app in a few hours using Electron. I guess it would take me more than a few weeks with Delphi, given that I don’t know anything about it. So your point might just be that you know Delphi and not JavaScript.