Turkey buys Delphi licenses for an estimated one million students

The ministry of education in Turkey recently announced that they will be offering Delphi free of charge to their students through a license deal with Embarcadero. An estimated one million students will thus learn object oriented programming through this initiative.

Getting object-pascal back into universities and education is very important. Not just for Delphi as a product and Embarcadero as a company, but to ensure that the next generation of software developers are given a firm grasp on fundamental programming concepts; concepts that represent the building-blocks that all software rests on; a curriculum that has taken heavy damage from the adoption of Java and C# in the early 2K’s.

Object Pascal as a language (including Freepascal, Oxygene and various alternative compilers) have been fluctuating between #11 and #14 on the Tiobi index for a few years. Tiobi is an index that tracks the use and popularity of languages around the world, and helps companies get an indication of where to invest. And despite what people have been led to believe, object pascal has seen stable growth for many years, and is far more widespread than sceptics would have you believe.

As an ardent object pascal developer this is excellent news! Not only will it help the next generation of students learn proper programming from the ground up – but it will also help to retire some of the unfounded myths surrounding the language (and Delphi in particular) that is sadly still in circulation. Most of these rumors stem from the hostile takeover of Borland by Microsoft, coupled with rampant piracy of outdated and antiquated versions of Delphi online.

Thank you to Hür Akdülger for informing the Delphi Developer community about this. Truly a monumental sign of growth. Congratulations Embarcadero and the Turkish students!