I am convinced that Tony Caduto is correct in everything he says about Delphi.
If you are with some Company, and you have your full time to devote to programming, and the support of a staff and a budget, why I am sure you can make anything work for you. If you throw enough time and money and manpower at any problem, you can solve it.
I knew a developer who developed the firewall product LOCKDOWN. He told me he did it in Delphi, and he explained all the advantages of Delphi.
The real issue in my mind with any given language, or operating system or tool is "where will it be 10 years from now, or 20." I used to program in the PICK system. That was an amazing language and OS to work in, but it was developed for dumb-ascii-terminals and really never seemed to make a transition to the Windows GUI world. Revelation was an implimentation of PICK under DOS, which also never seemed to make a smooth transition to Windows/GUI, although they attemted to do so with a product called OpenInsight. Look at the popularity of Ashton Tate DbaseIII, and then Foxpro which was bought out by Microsoft, in some ways, I suspect, to be shelved as competition. Look at the tremendous popularity in the 1980s for Focus database manager. Many companies sprang up with products and services developed in Focus.
Look at the vicissitudes of Borland's Interbase product, and those users who were devoted to it. Look at the history of Novell, and the history of the Btrieve product, bought out by Novell, then neglected, then bought back by the original developers, then transmogrified to the point that original Btrieve enthusiasts were disillusioned and sought a rebirth/reformation with the Tsunami product.
Look at the rise and fall of Borland and Turbo Pascal.
My point is simple, whatever one chooses to "go with", in order to lay a foundation for some software/programming effort-project, .... well, a building is only as secure as the foundation upon which it rests.
I guess that is why open source is so popular. Even if the things in open source world are not as bright and shiney and glittering as some proprietary products, well. at least there is some hope that it will be there in years to come, ... some hope that you can take control of it,.... control of its direction and evolution.
What is difficult to control is public opinion, and tastes, and popularity contests, and the technology of hardware and communications upon which such operating systems and languages function....
Just thinking out loud... thanks for listening...