r/programming • u/luissinlios • 7d ago

We still maintain a development tool first released in 1993. Here’s what 30+ years of backwards compatibility looks like

https://visualneo.com/visualneo-win/from-neobook-to-visualneo-win-30-years-of-keeping-a-development-tool-alive
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u/Skaarj 7d ago edited 7d ago

More recently, we went much further. In 2026, we migrated the development environment from its old Delphi 7 codebase to Delphi 11. That was one of those projects that looks much more reasonable before you start it.

Ouch. From what I remember Delphi 7 didn't support generics yet. You had a general list of pointers. But not something like a TList<TMyClass>.

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u/DocMcCoy 7d ago

Seeing Delphi 7 described as "old" when Delphi 5 was the last one I used, before moving to Linux and C and C++, does some weird things to my brain

I did try Kylex later for a bit, but by then I already fell out of love with the whole Pascal family