64-bit Delphi version is ready

Embarcadero has finally released so long-awaited Delphi IDE version with 64-bit target compilation mode support. By far, I have been using Delphi 7 for about 10 years, and it still allows one to create first-class windows apps. I reluctantly considered an idea of upgrading to newer versions of IDE because of large amount of source code written during these years and of old habit. But I feel that now it is time to upgrade. For me, three main reasons are:

1. 64-bit compilation support

For example, if you have MS Office Add-In, clients will inevitably ask for support of 64-bit MS Office. You have to create 64-bit DLL in order to be able to integrate with any of 64-bit MS Office application, 32-bit, no matter how good it is, will not work. The only plausible solution before was to create a 64-bit stub DLL in Microsoft Visual Studio. Now one can provide 64-bit support without using another IDE.

2. Native Unicode support

Although using of WideString type instead of AnsiString everywhere, and components such as TNT Unicode Controls, in general solves the problem, there still remains some artefacts. For example, you can not register COM server with regsvr32 command, if DLL resides in a path that contains characters which are not representable in the default system Ansi Code Page. And WideStrings was designed to be compatible with system OLE interface calls, and thus they are not reference-counted and use a special system memory allocation routine, which degrade performance. In
contrast, since Delphi 2009, the new native UnicodeString type was introduced, which is reference-counted and uses internal memory manager to allocate space, more efficiently than system-wide does. TNT Unicode controls are also, while work, look a bit like a crutch.

3. Bugs fixing in the IDE

Delphi 7 is convenient IDE, but some intricate bugs sometimes annoy. These include "internal compiler error", AVs, and inability to customize the IDE watches and debug windows in arbitrary way (I constantly got AV after effort to do this). The same applies to C++ Builder 5.5 which I also used for several years.
Embarcadero seems to pay much attention to quality in last years, I hope that their latest products are much more stable.

Unfortunately, C++ Builder XE2 does not yet include 64-bit compilation mode, but its next version anyway seems to fix that. All what is said above, applies also to C++ Builder (I used it for several years).

During last years, Embarcadero are making great efforts to rehabilitate Delphi & Builder IDEs reputation in comparison with MS Visual Studio and open-source competitors. I hope that when demand of support for ARM CPUs will become evident, they will add it in time.