TG: Programming: Delphi Florence

Home - Programming - Delphi Florence

I hate that I'm still spending money on development tools when most development environments are free or almost free, but Embarcadero's business model still sucks and I really, really, wanted to do single-source native cross-platform development. So I dropped $3000 on Delphi 13 Florence.

I didn't just do it for the fact that Delphi still dominates when it comes to rapid application development and ease of deployment. I also did it because my Delphi Seattle install is locked up in a 32 bit Windows 7 environment and it was past time to update my tool chain, in part because it was proving difficult to get AI coding assistance on a 32 bit OS.

So now I have Windows 11 (yuck) with Delphi Florence installed. Turns out using Claude to code in Delphi is not as straightforward as doing development on other languages using VS Code. It may be possible, but it's not straightforward. What I ended up doing was installing VS Code on the same system and using Claude from there.

I've discovered that Claude kind of sucks when it comes to Pascal programming. The task: Create an application that uses a REST service for authentication and data persistence, with forms for listing, inserting, editing, and marking for deletion datasets for customers, employees, and inventory. On the first attempt, I pulled up the code that it generated. Good Lord! If I had hired a human and they created code like that, I would have fired them on the spot. It didn't compile, it used the absolute worst coding practices... in short it was a joke.

Four iterations later, and after much training, it managed to create an application using FireMonkey (that I debugged and cleaned up a bit), so I can compile it to work on Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS. The REST services are written in Java running in Tomcat 9 on a Linux box. I also have Claude working on that. At first, given some simple updates to apply, it broke the hell out of a system that had been functional and running smoothly for a long time.

It's better now.

All in all, I'm getting to a point where I have AI working on multiple parts of a system at the same time. Next I want to improve Claude's ability to write functional Delphi apps and functional back end services on the first attempt, and then have it do end-to-end testing and debugging until everything works to spec.

I'm training Claude, and it's training me. Wish us luck.