9 Best Delphi Courses for 2024: Effortless Cross-Platform GUIs
Quickly design, code, and distribute cross-platform GUI applications for mobile and desktop with these free and paid courses, no programming knowledge required.
Are you a highschool student studying for an exam? A developer who needs to maintain and update a large codebase? A hobbyist who finds fun in learning new programming languages?
Delphi, a large niche in the small pond of niche programming languages, excels in cross-platform application development with its Visual Component Library (VCL) for Windows and FireMonkey (FMX) for cross-platform development.
In this Best Courses Guide (BCG), we feature courses that cover these essential libraries, catering to programming beginners and seasoned Object Pascal developers. We’ve also included free and paid courses that involve practical, real-world GUI application development. And more importantly, all of these courses use a recent version of Delphi (2010+ onwards) or Lazarus (v2).
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- Top Picks
- What is Delphi?
- BCG Stats
- Delphi Communities to Join
- Why You Should Trust Us
- BCG Methodology
Here are my top picks. Click on one to skip to the course details:
What is Delphi?
Delphi is a versatile software development environment designed for building applications across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux.
It leverages Object Pascal, an object-oriented extension of Pascal. This Pascal language, designed by the legendary Turing Award laureate Niklaus Emil Wirth (who passed away in January this year), predates even the ancient C language by two years. Yet despite its age, Niklaus’s vision for Pascal endures as Delphi half a century later: a language that is both easy to learn and easy to write.
But aren’t there more beginner-friendly languages like Python and JavaScript, I hear you ask? You may be right, but unlike these languages, Delphi isn’t hundreds of times slower than C (Delphi is on par) nor does it allow you to silently shoot yourself in the foot (Delphi has a strict, type-safe compiler).
What Delphi does have is its exceptional rapid application development (RAD) capabilities that makes it stupidly quick and simple for developers to design, code, and deploy applications, be it targeting Windows specifically (with Visual Component Library aka VCL), or multiple platforms (with FireMonkey aka FMX).
Besides being able to create visually stunning and high-performance GUI applications with minimal effort, developers can also be assured that their applications are built to last. Backwards compatibility is the number one concern for big enterprises, and more often than not you can expect decades old code to still compile on your latest Delphi IDE.
Who says Delphi is dead? Sure, it isn’t the talk of the block, but it is alive and kicking, with Delphi being the 12th most popular programming language according to the TIOBE Index, after Swift and Kotlin. Furthermore, Glassdoor reports the average salary of a Delphi developer to be $107K a year.
Thus, for those willing to invest the time to learn it, Delphi offers a powerful toolset for building applications that stand the test of time, whether you’re building a large-scale application development where maintainability and scalability are critical, or prototyping a small project where speed and efficiency are key.
BCG Stats
- Five of the courses are free while the other four are paid
- The courses either use recent versions of Delphi (2010+ onwards) or Lazarus
- There are three courses that use FireMonkey (FMX) instead of Visual Component Library (VCL)
- Almost all of the courses are from independent teachers.
Best Free Comprehensive Course for Absolute Beginners (Steve’s teacher)
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Completely new to programming? Jump into Delphi programming with Delphi Programming – Full Beginner Crash Course from Steve’s teacher!
This free course will get you up and running with Delphi. It comprehensively covers the curriculum of Grade 11 Delphi programming, making it an excellent resource for students or anyone eager to learn Delphi programming from scratch — especially for developing Windows applications.
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Develop Delphi Applications: Create, run, and understand the basics of Delphi applications, including working with user interfaces like images, buttons, and input fields
- Understand Programming Fundamentals: Use variables, mathematical & logical, operators, and conditional statements to perform calculations and make decisions within your applications
- Work with Data: Read from and write to files, manage arrays, and perform operations with strings, enhancing your ability to handle and store data effectively
- Utilize Delphi Components: Incorporate advanced UI elements such as checkboxes, radio buttons, and timers, and learn to manage multiple forms within your applications
- Interact with Databases: Connect to databases, perform CRUD operations (create, read, update, delete), and use sorting and filtering to manipulate data, providing a foundation for building data-driven applications.
| Channel | Steve’s teacher |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Prerequisites | None |
| Workload | 21 hours |
| Views | 64K |
| Likes | 1.1K |
| Cost | Free |
| Exercises | Code demos |
| Certificate | None |
Best Free Short Book for Absolute Beginners (Embarcadero)
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Prefer reading to lengthy video tutorials? You’re in luck!
Delphi Programming for Beginners is a free crash course on Delphi, written by Yuriy Kalmykov. The book is a culmination of his twenty-five years of experience instructing students at universities and preparatory schools in Moscow. It’ll teach you the basics of programming from the ground up, along with some GUI programming.
The book comes with coding exercises for you to complete. Unfortunately, they do not come with solutions.
Comprising of 25 modules in total, here’s what you’ll learn in each:
- Modules 1–5: Basic Programming Concepts and Introduction to Delphi
- Introduction to Delphi and its simple components
- Handling button press events
- Understanding variables, types, and type conversion
- Utilizing standard math functions
- Working with logical expressions, boolean variables, and operations
- Modules 6–10: Control Structures and Basic Delphi Programming
- Implementing conditional execution with IF…THEN…ELSE statements
- Using nested IF…THEN…ELSE statements and practicing task solving
- Introduction to procedures
- Introduction to functions
- Basics of graphics in Delphi
- Modules 11–15: Advanced Programming Constructs
- Understanding and implementing loops
- Working with strings
- Converting between strings and numeric types
- Introduction to TMemo control and its continued exploration
- Utilizing random numbers, constants, user-defined types, and arrays
- Modules 16–20: Arrays and Data Handling
- Working with single-dimensional static arrays
- Learning array sorting and the selection sort algorithm
- Introduction to StringGrid control
- Practical exercises with StringGrid
- Working with two-dimensional arrays
- Modules 21–25: Working with Time and Files in Delphi
- Managing date and time
- Utilizing the Timer component
- Working with text files
- Introduction to standard file dialogs.
| Institution | Embarcadero |
| Provider | learndelphi.org |
| Instructor | Yuriy Kalmykov |
| Prerequisites | None |
| Workload | N/A |
| Cost | Free |
| Exercises | Coding exercises |
| Certificate | None |
Best Free VCL Course for Beginners (Shaun Roselt)
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This is another free YouTube series designed for absolute beginners, but focusing on Visual Component Library (VCL), a library for rapid development of Windows applications.
Delphi Programming Tutorials (VCL) – For Absolute Beginners (by Shaun Roselt) is designed with South African students in mind, but can be taken by anyone. It doesn’t solely introduces programming concepts — you’ll also get to apply them in practice by building Windows applications like a Windows Media Player clone
You’ll learn the following topics:
- Basic UI and Component Usage: Introduction to using forms, buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, and dynamically creating components such as GroupBoxes, Buttons, and Edit components. You’ll also learn to change form colors and use color pickers
- String Manipulation and Data Types: Techniques for manipulating strings (e.g., changing case, finding length and position, copying, deleting, inserting segments), working with variables, and understanding data types
- Control Structures and Loops: Utilization of control structures like if-then-else statements, case statements, and loops (for, while-do, repeat-until) for controlling the flow of programs
- Database and File Handling: Basics of database interaction, including using Microsoft Access, adding records, and working with TextFiles for data storage and retrieval
- Advanced Concepts and Practices: Introduction to object-oriented programming (OOP), using multiple units, method overloading, installing third-party components, and creating applications.
Note: Make sure to start from Delphi Programming Series: 1 in the playlist, which the playlist doesn’t begin with.
| Channels | Shaun Roselt |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Instructors | Shaun Roselt |
| Prerequisites | None |
| Workload | ≈14 hours |
| Views | 75K |
| Cost | Free |
| Exercises | Coding demos |
| Certificate | None |
Best Paid VCL Course for Beginners (Alister Christie)
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Want to build Windows GUI applications the fast and easy way? Look no further than this paid Udemy course from Alister Christie, an Embarcadero MVP with over 20 years of Delphi experience.
Building Apps in Delphi With the VCL is a three-part course that’ll get you up to speed with Visual Component Library (VCL), the UI framework for Windows. Upon completing all three parts, you’ll have the necessary skills to confidently write complex multi-window GUI applications.
Building Apps in Delphi With the VCL Part 1
- Explore 20 essential visual controls (labels, edits buttons, etc.) and their Properties, Events and Methods (PMEs)
- Use Actions to keep the state of your application responsive, consistent, and updated with little to no code
- Project: Building a GUI for learning the periodic table, as well as an installer for easy distribution.
Building Apps in Delphi With the VCL Part 2
- Explore 40 more additional visual and non-visual controls, from datetime pickers to progress bars to animations.
- Project: Improving the periodic table GUI application with new controls (TGridPanel and TPaintBox) and implementing Drag and Dock.
Building Apps in Delphi With the VCL Part 3
- Tackle two of the most complex VCL components: TListView (for sequential information) and TTreeView (for hierarchical information)
- Cover dialog components, useful for opening, saving, deleting, warning, and more.
- Implement context-sensitive help (from pressing F1)
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Alister Christie |
| Prerequisites | Programming experience |
| Workload (total) | ≈19 hours |
| Enrollments (total) | 293 |
| Rating (average) | 3.8 / 5.0 (69) |
| Cost | Paid |
| Exercises | Coding demos |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Free Hands-On Mobile Dev with FireMonkey Course for Programmers (Blangkon FA)
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Get hands-on experience with full-stack mobile app development in this free YouTube course by Blangkon FA!
Perfect for those with some Delphi programming experience, you’ll build and design Saska, a shipping and delivery application. Some of the technologies you’ll use include:
- FireMonkey: You’ll design both the front-end and back-end interface
- Front-end: A sleek and responsive mobile user interface, with onboarding, login & registration, transaction search and tracking, and more. You’ll use Figma designs to help as a reference
- Back-end: A GUI for the desktop that’ll monitor transactions between server and clients
- WebSocket: You’ll learn how to have the app update in real-time by having data sent from the client to the server and from the server to the client independently and simultaneously
- SQLite Database CRUD: Create, Read, Update, and Delete — these four basic data transactions will be used to help manage and store transaction data persistently
- Push Notifications: A side-effect of using websockets, you’ll be able to inform the client whenever a transaction has successfully gone through in real time.
| Channel | Blangkon FA |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Prerequisites | Some Delphi programming experience |
| Workload | ≈12 hours |
| Views | 1.2K |
| Cost | Free |
| Exercises | Code demo |
| Certificate | None |
Best Paid FireMonkey Book for Delphi Programmers (Packt)
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One of the most exciting features of Delphi is FireMonkey, a cross-platform GUI framework that’s simple to use yet sophisticated enough for complex applications. And this paid book will explore everything you need to know to get comfortable with it!
Written by David Cornelius, an Embarcadero MVP with over 30 years of developer experience, Fearless Cross-Platform Development with Delphi will help you develop applications for all five major operating systems: Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android. Not only that, you’ll also pick up other skills such as interacting with REST APIs, leveraging IoT technologies such as Bluetooth and Beacons, working with embedded databases, and building your own backend server with RAD Server engine. By the end, you’ll have all the best tips and knowledge to deliver modern enterprise applications using Delphi confidently.
The code repository for this book can be found in this GitHub repo.
| Publisher | Packt |
| Instructor | David Cornelius |
| Prerequisites | Delphi programming experience |
| Workload | N/A |
| Rating (out of 5 stars) | 4.2 (Packt) / 4.8 (Amazon) |
| Cost | Paid |
| Exercises | Questions |
| Certificate | None |
Best Paid Hands-On Sales System Development Course in Portuguese (Marcos Fabricio Rosa)
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Feeling confident in your Delphi skills? Take them to the next level with this paid Udemy course led by Marcos Fabricio Rosa, a senior developer analyst.
As hinted at in the title, Desenvolver Sistema com Delphi e SQL-Server na PRÁTICA will have you develop a GUI Windows application for sales management with Delphi. Following Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) principles, you’ll equip your application with full-fledged business features, including:
- Registries for Product Categories, Products, Customers, and User Control
- Automatically creating and updating database tables as soon as the user enters the system
- A sales screen complete with inventory management and the ability to print transactions upon saving
- Ability to generate a variety of reports with the flexibility to choose a date range for printing
- And most important of all, store data persistently in an SQL database (specifically Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express).
This course is entirely in Portuguese. You can find the source code of the entire project in this GitHub repository.
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Marcos Fabricio Rosa |
| Prerequisites | Some experience with Delphi |
| Workload | 25 hours |
| Enrollments | 2.4K |
| Rating | 4.3 / 5.0 (545) |
| Cost | Paid |
| Exercises | Coding exercises |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Paid Comprehensive Hands-On Course for Absolute Beginners in Spanish (Vladimir Rodríguez)
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Programación en Pascal y Delphi (Delphi and Pascal Programming) is one of the best paid Delphi courses for programming beginners — especially if you understand Spanish.
Why? First, it’s extremely comprehensive, being over 50 hours long. It starts from the programming basics, including what variables and functions are, to the more advanced stuff: how to manage memory and use object-oriented programming. Not only that, you’ll also explore computer science topics such as implementing the binary tree (an important data structure), and also learn practical real-world skills, such as creating graphical user interfaces and storing and retrieving data with databases. It’s almost equivalent to a first year computer science bachelor’s course!
But that’s not all the course has to offer — you’ll also build multiple fun projects and explore case studies that’ll help you immensely in developing your hands-on programming skills: MineSweeper, Calculator, Pokémon DB, to name a few.
And even though the teacher, Vladimir Rodríguez, uses the free and open-source Lazarus IDE alternative to Delphi, almost everything you learn here can be used in Delphi too, thanks to both platforms using the Object Pascal language.
This course is divided into 6 modules:
- Module 1: Structured Programming:
- This module equips you with foundational programming tools and concepts applicable across any language, ranging from basic data manipulation and control structures to advanced data types and file operations
- Module 2: Dynamic Memory and Abstract Data Types:
- Delving into dynamic memory management using pointers and the abstraction of program components through Abstract Data Types (ADTs), this module sets the stage for mastering advanced programming techniques and the principles of object-oriented programming
- Module 3: Recursion and the Binary Tree ADT:
- Focusing on recursion, this module contrasts it with iterative methods, teaching its applications and how to implement binary tree structures
- Module 4: Object-Oriented Programming:
- Through this module, you’ll dive into the object-oriented programming paradigm, learning about object creation and manipulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and software design with UML, all to help you develop faster while making fewer mistakes
- Module 5: Graphical User Interfaces:
- By learning to design and implement user interfaces with the Lazarus LCL library, this module introduces you to event-driven programming and equips you with the skills to create interactive, user-friendly applications
- Module 6: MySQL and SQLite Database Basics:
- Offering a comprehensive overview of database programming, this module teaches you how to connect to databases, execute SQL commands, and transition data from tables to objects, providing you with the necessary expertise to effectively manage and maintain databases.
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Vladimir Rodríguez |
| Prerequisites | None |
| Workload | ≈55 hours |
| Enrollments | 24K |
| Rating | 4.5 / 5.0 (91) |
| Cost | Paid |
| Exercises | Coding exercises |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Free Official Course for Beginners (Embarcadero & Mr Long Education)
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If you’re a student familiar with Delphi and looking for a refresher, check out this free YouTube playlist curated by the official Embarcadero channel.
The playlist comprises of two types of videos:
- Short, less-than-ten-minutes long, focused tutorials from Embarcadero: These include a tour of the IDE, writing small applications for Mobile or Windows, exploring popular Delphi libraries, and the like
- Delphi programming lessons from Mr Long Education: The meat of the course. You’ll learn fundamental programming concepts, including: Selections, For Loops, Conditional Loops, Arrays, String Handling, Date and Time, Subprograms, and Errors.
For those completely new to Delphi but eager to learn anyways, start with Mr. Long’s introductory Delphi playlist before diving into this playlist.
| Channels | Embarcadero Technologies & Mr Long Education |
| Provider | YouTube |
| Instructors | Alister Christie & Mr. Long |
| Prerequisites | Knowledge of variables |
| Workload | ≈10 hours |
| Views | 18K |
| Cost | Free |
| Exercises | Code demos |
| Certificate | None |
Delphi Communities to Join
Delphi is a big niche in the world of niche programming languages, and there are many active Delphi programming communities you could join to help support your learning. Here are a few I recommend:
- Delphi Developers Telegram Channel
- Delphi Developers Slack Channel
- Delphi Developers Discord Channel
- The r/delphi Subreddit
- The DelphiPraxis forum
Why You Should Trust Us
Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.
Best Courses Guide (BCG) Methodology
I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous BCGs (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:
- Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database. Then, I made a preliminary selection of Delphi courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks. I also researched the internet for more resources.
- Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
- Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content, fit a set of criteria and be ranked according to comprehensive curriculum, affordability, release date, ratings and enrollments.
