Let’s get Familiar with Delphi Files

Before starting writing something in the code window, it’ll be great to get some familiarity with Delphi file types. If you create a delphi project you’ll see files with different extensions. Here are their explanations.

• .PAS – These are the main files in which you’ll write most of your code. The extension comes from the first three letters of the name of Delphi Ancestor "Pascal".

• .DFM – These are the files in which your GUI based information is saved i.e; any form that you’ll create will have 2 files, 1 .dfm and other one .pas. the .dfm file will contain the information about controls, where those has been placed, their link and the .pas file will contain the code, you’ll wrote.

• .DCU – Some sort of compiler specific files for debugging etc. Will be created each time you compile your project.

Why Choose Delphi

That was the very first thing that came in my mind when i started working on delphi. We have VB6, .NET, Java to make Desktop GUI then why Delphi?

I guess this will be the same question (if you are new to Delphi) thinking; why delphi?

The application that we were creating is for "all" users. So we can expect that a user may be having very good system or may be he is still on P-II or P-III. So, deploying an application which needs some extra SDK (.NET, Java) of some XXMB to run an application of size not more than 5MB is a hassle.

So, why we should not we choose VB6. Well, Microsoft is no longer providing support to it’s VB6 and descendant languages. The only focus of MS is now .NET platform. So choosing VB6 for a professional environment will be quite risky. Though i admit that there are enough things available on internet that can provide us enough support, but still the risk factor is there.

Hence, came the option to choose for Delphi. A language that was design to compete the increasing market of VB 6 for Windows platform and then continue its success towards Desktop application (Windows and *NIX). The language was initially designed/architect by Anders Hejlsberg. One of the architect of C# language.

Delphi, besides having all the necessary things required by a good programming language, is also full of enormous support of Windows Platform by using it’s ShellAPI. In simple words, if there is anything on your windows system accessible or usable by Visual C, it is achievable in Delphi as well. Your system level message, events, dlls, ActiveX, whatever that you can ever use in Visual C to make a good application is available here.