Magic number 5.5

WhiteStarUML just reached release 5.5 using the recent Delphi compiler version XE5 and some memories come back from the days when the Delphi’s ancestor Turbo Pascal 5.5 was the king of the hill in the early 90-ties. It gained popularity when the computer revolution was heating up and IBM PC class computers became widely available. For many young computer enthusiasts it was an opportunity to migrate from Basic/Assembler programming style on 8-bit computers to a fully procedural language with data structures like Pascal. It was really a blast to explore new concepts like recursion and data structures beyond simple tables and tackle with them more complex problems. Soon after came object orientation and opened yet again new horizons. On the base of Object Pascal Delphi was born offering higher level of abstraction of operating system resources without compromising language expressiveness.

One may point that Delphi was not a clear win as alternative approaches started to become more relevant. One example could be C++ focusing on the most efficient access to operating systems resources or another with Java focusing on delivering multiplatform solutions. Finally .NET became the major development environment for Windows overtaking many projects initially developed in Delphi.

Still Delphi had one advantage, it produced natively executed code with native speed and look and feel so programs like StarUML could be developed and impress with high quality and usability while being delivered by a small team. I believe the same spirit can now enrich WhiteStarUML and one day it will make as much progress as Delphi did since the days of Turbo Pascal.