Delphi health check
For the Delphi application that still runs the business while the people who wrote it have retired. One week, fixed price, and you end up knowing exactly where you stand.
Who this is for
Manufacturing, logistics, laboratory and municipal systems written in Delphi 5 through XE, often with a BDE or Paradox past, a few third-party component suites of uncertain licensing, and a build that only works on one machine. If that sounds familiar, this is for you.
What happens in the week
- Inventory. Every unit, form, component suite and external dependency catalogued, with versions and licence status where it can be determined.
- Build. The application compiled on a current Delphi toolchain, or a precise list of what prevents it.
- Risk map. Where the code concentrates risk: database access patterns, Windows API use, threading, hard-coded paths, data formats nobody documented.
- Migration estimate. Three options costed in ranges: keep and maintain, modernise in place, or migrate to .NET. With the parts that AI-assisted translation handles well separated from the parts that need a person.
- Walk-through. A one-hour call with whoever owns the budget, and a written report you can forward.
What it costs
From 1,500 EUR for applications up to roughly 100,000 lines, agreed up front after a short look at the repository size. Larger systems are quoted after the same look. The first engagements are offered at a reduced price in exchange for a reference.
How the work is done
Remote, against a copy of the source under NDA. AI tooling is used to read and cross-reference the code faster than a person can; nothing goes into the report that I have not verified myself, and nothing from your code is used to train anything. Where it helps, a small migration pilot of one module to .NET 10 can follow the health check so the estimate is backed by a working example, not a guess.
Why me
- Delphi since version 3, and .NET since version 1.1, both in daily use.
- Years of maintaining and migrating production software used in live television.
- A history of decoding formats nobody documented: see About.