>It directly competed with VB6, an interpreted crap that needed dozens of files in a time when disks were slow. Delphi, on the other hand, compiled large products
Setting aside your particular use of Delphi in your product, I don't think VB6 directly competed with Delphi in general.
The cultural aspects and motivations were very different for VB vs Delphi. VB was more "internal corporate apps" and Delphi had more commercial vendor software adoption.
- Visual Basic in the 1990s was more attractive to ex-DOS programmers previously using xBase/FoxPro/Clipper to write internal corporate applications. The 2000s successor to VB with C#/.NET/ASP continued this trajectory. Both VB and later C# never really got adopted by commercial software shops. VB/C# has remained popular for enterprise LOB/CRUD.
- Delphi was more attractive to programmers who didn't want to use low-level C/C++ to mess around with raw Microsoft Win32 APIs for native executables. E.g. using C Language to code raw "CreateWinddow()" function calls was more tedious than using C++ MFC class wrappers but C++ was still more more tedious than Delphi. There are more examples of commercial software like Winrar, Nero CD Burning, Scooter Software BeyondCompare being written in Delphi. VB never got adopted by programmers to sell/deploy software like that.
Yes, there are a few counterexamples to the above but that was the general trend of the different communities.
VB wasn't really for xBase/FoxPro/Clipper etc users, Access and Visual FoxPro were for those - VB didn't even had database support until later versions and that was some grafted on minimal support.
Delphi was actually meant for the corporate apps you mean, even the name was a hint to it ("to talk to Oracle you go to Delphi" or something like that). It also came with much better database functionality than VB ever had.
Now because VB was wildly popular and easy to use and had Microsoft's name behind it (which was a big plus) it was used for internal corporate apps a lot, but that was a byproduct of VB being used a lot in general - during the turn of the century it was one of the most popular programming languages by far.
>VB wasn't really for xBase/FoxPro/Clipper etc users, Access and Visual FoxPro were for those
I understand that perspective especially since that's what Microsoft's "official" positioning of those products were.
But the reality on the ground was 4GL programmers in DOS text gui that transitioned to the "new Windows platform" usually ignored MS Access and Foxpro and instead used Visual Basic. In 1992/1993, all the corporate programmers I knew used VB3. My memory is hazy but I think one of the big drivers for VB instead of Access was the 3rd party VBX controls. I don't think you could use VBX in the crippled "Visual Basic" language in MS Access.
Visual Basic had early database access with DAO (Jet engine?), then RDO.
Delphi with syntax for pointers to memory (like C/C++) is a more "powerful" language than VB but I never saw Delphi adopted for corporate LOB/CRUD like VB. Most internal business apps didn't need a language with pointers. Delphi really attracted the programmers that wanted similar C/C++ power but with a rapid-iteration IDE and GUI toolkit.
>Microsoft's name behind it (which was a big plus) it was used for internal corporate apps a lot, but that was a byproduct of VB being used a lot in general - during the turn of the century it was one of the most popular programming languages by far.
VB didn't compile to native exes. Delphi did -- and that attracts the C/C++ type of programmers who want to release commercial software.
From the very beginning, VB vs Delphi attracted very different profiles of developers -- regardless of the marketing that tried to position Delphi for internal corporate LOB/CRUD apps.
Yes i was referring to the official positioning (hence the reference to Delphi's name too). In practice their uses got sort of swapped, though i think in VB's case wasn't that people didn't use it for what Microsoft intended it for but that because it was so popular it was also used for enterprise stuff.
But during the 90s and early 2000s a TON of commercial applications, especially from smaller software vendors were written in VB.
Setting aside your particular use of Delphi in your product, I don't think VB6 directly competed with Delphi in general.
The cultural aspects and motivations were very different for VB vs Delphi. VB was more "internal corporate apps" and Delphi had more commercial vendor software adoption.
- Visual Basic in the 1990s was more attractive to ex-DOS programmers previously using xBase/FoxPro/Clipper to write internal corporate applications. The 2000s successor to VB with C#/.NET/ASP continued this trajectory. Both VB and later C# never really got adopted by commercial software shops. VB/C# has remained popular for enterprise LOB/CRUD.
- Delphi was more attractive to programmers who didn't want to use low-level C/C++ to mess around with raw Microsoft Win32 APIs for native executables. E.g. using C Language to code raw "CreateWinddow()" function calls was more tedious than using C++ MFC class wrappers but C++ was still more more tedious than Delphi. There are more examples of commercial software like Winrar, Nero CD Burning, Scooter Software BeyondCompare being written in Delphi. VB never got adopted by programmers to sell/deploy software like that.
Yes, there are a few counterexamples to the above but that was the general trend of the different communities.