Here at Grijjy we are very excited about the announcement of the Delphi Community Edition. This new version lowers the entry point for new Delphi developers to $0 and still provides all the capabilities of the Professional edition while allowing developers to target both mobile and desktop platforms for commercial products.
Delphi has a lot to offer as a developer solution against other products, that frankly, get more attention. For years the entry point has been too high to attract younger, new developers to the product and hobbyists. Here at Grijjy we are both excited and hopeful this will expand the reach of Delphi to a new generation of coders that can see and appreciate the product that we still love and use each day.
Yes the key for a healthy development tool in long term are to get students and hobby programmers to use it. Some of those will use the same tool later in the professional work.