May 10, 2011

The $8.5 billion Delphi application - Microsoft to acquire Skype

One of my favorite applications built with Delphi is Skype for Windows. We use Skype here every day. It's been great to see the success of Skype and so many millions of users experiencing and relying on a Delphi application for their day to day communication.

Today Microsoft announced that they will be acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion. I think that makes Skype the most valuable Delphi application out there.

Of course there are also many other great applications built with Delphi and you can see some of them in the Embarcadero Delphi Application Showcase.

If you haven't submitted your Delphi application for the showcase yet, you can do that here. We're always happy to learn about what you're creating with Delphi.

11 comments:

david howes said...

soon to be re-rewritten in C# I suspect :-)

Simon J Stuart said...

sadly I suspect it will become .net fodder.

LachlanG said...

Is the latest Skype v5 still written in Delphi? If you open it up in a hex editor it's not immediately obvious that it's a Delphi application like it was in Skype v4.

Jolyon Smith said...

@Lachlan - it does appear to be, although perhaps not using vanilla DFM resources. The Skype 5.1 exe contains a package info resource that identifies Delphi and a string table that looks to contain mostly RTL const strings. In addition Spy++ reveals a host of Txxxxx class names in the Skype app.

All points to it still being Delphi. Mostly, at least.

Anonymous said...

Only a very small part of Skype is written in Delphi, and not the most important part, if I dare say so.

So it's ridiculous to say that it's a Delphi application.

mart said...

I'm sure they are still using Delphi because they are looking for Delphi engineers all the time:
http://skypecareers.com/jobs/607-software-engineer-windows

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but all related to GUI programming. But the hard part is not the GUI.

Unknown said...

What about the versions of Mac and Linux, is made of FreePascal?

Marcos

Warren said...

Each client is written in a native language that makes sense for that platform. I'm pretty sure the Linux one is in C/C++ and the Mac and iPhone versions are written in Objective-C with Cocoa framework. Other (mobile) versions are written using the SDKs for that platform, usually involving a combination of native (C) and high level (C# or Java) code.

Warren

Anonymous said...

Since Skype is cross platform (and has been for a long time), including Android and IPhone. When did Delphi start to support these targets?

Talking about Skpye as a Delphi program is becoming ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

The Windows client for Skype is just that - a client. One of many others Skype cclient out there.