Why is Delphi so popular according to the Tiobe index?
https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
I attribute it entirely to the growth of African countries (growing economy, growing population) who have adopted it in academic institutions due to its "indie" nature.
I personally do NOT like it, the syntax is too foreign if you come from c, c++, c#, java, php background, it's like transitioning to python from c, except (try except too...) python is very easy but Delphi is different animal. The only program I've made on it was random mp3 player when i was a kid ages ago when you'd click on part of photography and the song starts/stops etc, in fact this was harder than opencv "ai" project i did around the same time for darpa in c++ - imagine that.
finally one reason that makes me a little "pro-delphi" is its creator: Anders Hejlsberg. Since I'm a big fan of C# and he kind of invented both of them, maybe there's more to the language I'm missing? Is their IDE as amazing as visual studio? I'm almost downloading it now...
For a while in the 90s there was intense competition between Delphi and Visual Basic as to which was easier to develop modern GUI applications and had more power. I'd say Delphi was the better alternative, but that's another story.
The thing is, Delphi never stopped. You can build desktop apps, web apps, mobile apps, APIs - all kinds of stuff. But to programmers in the 70s, 80s, and 90s? Pascal was a very familiar language.