Skip to content

A Christmas Carol for Delphi Developers: “AI Humbug!” … or Maybe Not? 🎄

Every December, you can hear it echo across developer forums:
“AI? Bah, humbug! It doesn’t help with real Delphi code!”

If you’ve spent decades refining your Delphi craft — from Turbo Pascal to today’s VCL and FireMonkey projects — you might share that sentiment. But let me show you why those days are fading faster than a pine tree in January.

Recently, I built a new Delphi system information component, TSysInfo, in about one hour.

No, not because I worked all night — but because AI helped.

Screenshot of component in RAD Studio IDE

A Modern Helper for a Classic IDE

TSystemInfo is a drop-in VCL component that gives your Delphi application quick access to essential system details — without digging through Windows APIs or typing endless GetSystemInfo calls.

The component makes it easy to fetch:

  • CPU details (model name, number of cores/threads)
  • Memory statistics (total and available)
  • Hard drive information (drive names, capacity, and free space)

Think of it as your one-stop shop for environment diagnostics — ideal for about dialogs, diagnostics windows, or logging system information for support tickets.

How to Use It — A Simple Example

Once installed and dropped onto a form, you can access all system information directly through its properties or by calling simple methods.

Here’s an example:

uses
  SysInfo;

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  i: Integer;
begin
  // Retrieve CPU information
  Memo1.Lines.Add('CPU: ' + SysInfo.CPU.Name);
  Memo1.Lines.Add('Cores: ' + SysInfo.CPU.PhysicalCores.ToString);
  Memo1.Lines.Add('Threads: ' + SysInfo.CPU.LogicalCores.ToString);
  Memo1.Lines.Add('');

  // Retrieve memory information
  Memo1.Lines.Add('Total Memory: ' + SysInfo.Memory.TotalGB.ToString + ' GB');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('Available Memory: ' + SysInfo.Memory.AvailableGB.ToString + ' GB');
  Memo1.Lines.Add('');

  // List all hard drives
  Memo1.Lines.Add('Drives:');
  for i := 0 to SysInfo.Drives.Count - 1 do
  begin
    Memo1.Lines.Add(Format('%s - %.2f GB (Free: %.2f GB)',
      [SysInfo.Drives[i].Letter,
       SysInfo.Drives[i].TotalSpaceGB,
       SysInfo.Drives[i].FreeSpaceGB]));
  end;
end;

That’s it — no WinAPI digging, no juggling of units, and no head-scratching conversions. Just Intel inside, memory data, and storage insights — all ready to go.

How AI Helped

Now, here’s the interesting part. The concept for TSystemInfo took me minutes to outline. But usually, creating a Delphi component involves quite a bit of boilerplate:

  • Declaring published properties
  • Handling RTTI and registration
  • Writing repetitive wrapper code around the Windows API

That’s where AI came in — it drafted the structure, outlined unit organization, built the initial interface for CPU/Memory/Drives, and handled most of the verbose setup.

I reviewed and adjusted the details, ensuring it matched Delphi conventions and quality.

Together, we got something finished, tested, and published in about an hour.

Challenge Accepted?

So, dear fellow Delphi developer, before you utter “AI? Bah, humbug!” — try it yourself.

Clone the repo:
👉 https://github.com/holgerflick/delphi.sysinfo

Drop it into your IDE, call SysInfo, and see the results.

Ask yourself honestly — could you have built it faster without a digital helper?

Final Thought — The Spirit of Future Code

AI doesn’t take away what makes you a great Delphi developer — it frees you to focus on the parts that matter. The design, the logic, the polish — not the scaffolding.

Maybe this Christmas, it’s time to hang up the “humbug” and start saying,
“AI, compile me something beautiful.” 🎅