Riding the Integrated Development Environment

In a nutshell, Delphi is a program for making other programs. The actual program responsible for generating executable files from the source code is a compiler. It is typically implemented as a command-line application. When executing a command-line application, you can pass to it command-line parameters. Compilers take different command-line parameters, including the location of source code files necessary to generate the resulting binary file. Take a look at the following diagram:

It is possible to write your programs using a text editor like Notepad and then execute the compiler from the command line, but it is not the most efficient way of creating applications. Most programmers use IDE for working on apps. The idea of an integrated development environment originates from the Delphi ancestor, Borland Turbo Pascal, and comes from the integration of three previously separate programs: Code Editor, compiler, and debugger.