I can''t decide which one to pick. I want to be able to make windows applications quickly and eaisly. I heard Delphi is faster than VB but VB is more popular so I could gat more help with it. Please help me decide.

As a delphi fanatic, my opinion won''t exactly be ''neutral'', but lemme try. VB is for the people ''passing by''. Doesn''t cost too much, language is not too hard, easy to create applications fast. However, in the end, delphi can do MUCH more. If you''re looking for an easy way to create GUI''s quickly, delphi would be the best choice. You can create a texteditor or mp3 player with it in a metter of minutes. Also, Delphi has a VERY good debugger, and good support, in the form of a giant help-database.
My advice: go for delphi Download delphi 6 personal for free from www.borland.com
Has most of the functions the pay versions have, and it''s free!!!

I''m a VB fan so I''ll give you my side of the story I''ll actually be quite fair about it.

I have Delphi 4 and VB 6, so maybe it''s just because I have an old version of Delphi that I don''t like it. I think in terms of functionality the languages both have their pros and cons and are equal. I just don''t like the Delphi language, maybe it''s a matter of personal taste. If you can, have a little go of both of them.

Here are advantages of VB
- Loads of help, many websites and books about VB
- Very easy to learn
- Has more uses than just the compiler, such as VBA in Access, Word, Excel, Frontpage etc. and also VBscript
- Support for VB in the DirectX SDK

Here are advantages of Delphi (I''m no expert, I haven''t used it much)
- Compiles to supposedly faster programs (I haven''t tested for myself though)
- Some OOP features that VB lacks (I think it has constructors like C++ etc. - or am I wrong?)
- A cool feature I was impressed with is that you can write ASM code straight in the middle of Delphi code, and mix it how you like. I only know the basics of assembler, but if you are doing advanced programming for games or graphics which need this kind of optimisation, I think it could be useful.

True, with vb, you can get much more help. And it''s also integrated much better. But uhm, perhaps that''s because it''s a microsoft product.....? heheh
All microsoft products are easy and handy to use. However, if you want something more original, you should go for another company. Just look at microsoft frontpage! Quite a good program, but all professional designers use dreamweaver....
Delphi compiled programs are faster and smaller in size.
Also, delphi has all the components vb has, but vb hasn''t got al the components delphi has.....
Anyway, just see for yourself. Delphi personal can be downloaded for free at www.borland.com
About vb, I think you should be able to locate it at www.microsoft.com

Hi there,

having used both VB versions (3,5 and 6) and delphi
versions (2,4,5 and 6) i would go for Delphi for the
following reasons


* Object inheritance and polymorphism - visual
basic does not support this in its so called classes
(which are actually com objects), if you want a com
object you can also create these in delphi.

This one feature helps so much in developing all
aspects of a game from the editor, graphics etc and
makes code so much easier to maintain.

example

suppose you have a class of TVisual and you want to
have a TCube and TCone which would also be visuals,
all you need to do is inherit these from TVisual and
if a seperate rendering routine is required for both
then just declare this as a virtual procedure

ie

TVisual = class
public
..procedure Render; virtual;
end;

TCube = class(TVisual)
public
..procedure Render; override;
end;

TCone = class(TVisual)
public
..procedure Render; override;
end;

... (and so on) then when you need to render them all
you need to do is create the object and call its render
method

ie

procedure RenderScene;
var
..Cube,Cone: TVisual;
begin
..Cube := TCube.Create;
..Cone := TCone.Create;

..Cube.Render; //calls TCube.Render
..Cone.Render; //calls TCone.Render
end;

(in VB you would need a totally seperate "class" for each
and it is a right pain (i cant remember the code to do it))

* Executables compiled in delphi are far faster than VB, although
you could probably get a spinning cube running at the same frame rates
on VB as delphi you will due to the fact that this is being draw by
the API opengl or D3D say, the same is not true of AI routines etc
which are all done on the CPU by your application.

* As others have said Delphi does support inline assembly,
however this is only usefull if you have a good knowlege of
assembly and incorrect use can actually slow a program down (or
worse)

* VB doesnt come with all the windows API functions defined
(although you can get utilities that copy and paste the declarations
into your code), this makes even doing a simple BitBlt operation a
total headache. This said the delphi headers for OpenGL arent totally
up to date so they need a bit of tweaking, and it doesnt come with
some of the NT header files for security settings, or in some instances
DirectX (althought i got this on the companion tools cd with D6 Pro)

* VD requires a huge setup routine ( even for a simple application
that puts "Hello World" on a button press.

* VB is very resource intensive ( delphi hogs a lot less but is still
not as efficient as raw C or C++ code ).

* Pascal is just as easy to learn and use as basic but it is
just a lot less forgiving of crap code ( if your programming abilities
are not very good use vb else use a proper language! ).

* Delphi6 pro & ent generate code which is almost totally compliant
with Kylix (Delphi for Linux) so you get a cross platform solution
wheras VB is strictly windows only.

Hope its of some help

Mark

Thanks for all your help.
I have decided to go with Delphi 6 like most of you suggested.