Does anyone have any stats on the pool of Delphi developers across Australia and New Zealand? I am gathering some information for a review on hiring additional people for our products at Energy One.
What is the total number of Delphi developers in AU & NZ?
What are their experience levels?
Age brackets (looking at long term technology viability)?
The ADUG member area lists these stats:
Australia = 127 (NSW 21, ACT 3, VIC 57, QLD 27, WA 11, SA 8)
New Zealand = 5
Anecdotally through reviewing candidates during previous hiring I would estimate that only 1 in 6 Delphi developers is an ADUG member. Any other thoughts on that ratio? That would mean an estimate of around 800 Delphi developers across ANZ.
Has ADUG conducted any kind of survey to get information about members (or non-members) and their level of experience?
There was a worldwide Embarcadero RAD Studio survey in early 2024 but I donât recall any results of that being published.
I personally do not know how many developers there are worldwide (or even in Australia). I think, it is unlikely to be six million. It would be great if it was, wouldnât it? I do know that if you count all activecopies of Delphi - and thatâs not easy - then it is in the millions and the number I have seen suggested is around 3.5 million worldwide, but I hasten to add thatâs not something I can say is or isnât true.
I know it would be convenient for me to have some solid numbers from Idera, the parent company and also holder of such data, but they would choose not to. Thatâs their prerogative. Itâs also a bit of minefield; if they counted all copies activated since Delphi 1 (even if those stats were available which I suspect they are not) it would be many multiples of millions.
I donât know about you but as a Delphi user since the very first day of Delphi 1 I donât even know how many times I have installed and activated a version of Delphi or RAD Studio. I even purchased Delphi 8⌠ahem⌠and Delphi for PHP⌠I also had Kylix. If all those copies were counted as âusersâ then I personally would swell the numbers by dozens or more. But on the flip side - now I am an employee should I even be counted as âa userâ? I mean, I use Delphi every single day but would an accurate figure include staff? Probably not.
The only stat I can give you that I know for sure is accurate is that last year we increased our ânet newâ users (a stat we can track) - people who had never used Delphi or RAD Studio before. Yes, it was a tough market and the current trend appears to be a continued bear market for tech companies, but if I have anything to do with it, and I do, we will continue to push harder to improve quality and ensure we iterate over efforts to add in features that do not compromise quality but also keep the language up to date with modern features and suggestions from users along with thoughtfully including AI in ways that donât stomp all over your code and email it to your competitors.
Delphi is still an extremely easy to learn language and yet offers the power to creditably compete against the mother of all speed, C++. There is virtually nothing you canât do in Delphi, often easier than in any other choice out there. No language can be the answer to everything, but Delphi is the answer to most things, and I still say that doing it any other way is doing it the hard way.
AI is coming. AI is here. A lot of things are changing in the world of software development. I think itâs going to be even more relevant in the next six months; Microsoft didnât invest $6.5billion in AI just to fail or use OpenAI as a 'better spell checker and search engine". DeepSeek turned up at half the cost and must have rattled the doorknobs at Microsoft HQ
Finally, if the AI writes and compiles your code, is that also an âactive userâ?
Thatâs interesting. Do you know where that new growth is and what has driven it? e.g. A few large customers working on some new products, or universities adopting Delphi for CS courses, or just a general global trend?
You can say that again. The rate of advancement and expanding capabilities is pretty astonishing. In five years we may not even care or need to know which programming language is being used as long as the finished product satisfies the requirements, as we may not need to work with the code directly. Sad but that is the clear trajectory that we are on.
I also had Kylix. If all those copies were counted as âusersâ then I personally would swell the numbers by dozens or more. But on the flip side - now I am an employee should I even be counted as âa userâ? I mean, I use Delphi every single day but would an accurate figure include staff? Probably not.
