I personally always favoured Delphi
Yup Delphi is my 2nd favorite. Especially for GUI stuff. But I don't use Delphi much lately because of my migration to the *NIX world. Delphi is VERY VERY good.
which can produce machine code as fast as C++
Due to the GUI libs, some times it may take a bit longer but it's not noticable. Delphi produces greatly optimized executables. As I said, Delphi is a very good lang.
they can use archaic and complicated langauge, Not just an easy one.
First of all, C++ is not archaic and complicated. Just because you favor another lang, doesn't mean the others suck (not referring only to saxon).
And Delphi can get as tough to code in as you can want it to be. If you just write simple 1+1 apps, then yeah it's simple. As a matter of fact, it's not a lot simpler than C/C++. It's just the syntax and grammar that change a bit. Hey I started off Pascal, then went to Delphi and then C/C++. The migration from Delphi to C wasn't tough. But to C++ I needed to read some books about C++ stuff (the STL specifically).
