[yoava]

VB and Delphi reference architecture was 2 tier - client and database. With this reference architecture, you are right about the security and distribution problems. You just reminded me of the shareware market and the hacked shareware markets...

However, early on, around 1998, people started talking on 3 tier architecture of client - server - database on both platforms. There where even attempts to build web pages using both platforms (and later on .Net), which failed because of a lot of reasons, one big reason was not understanding the advantages of CSS.

[fendy3002]

Yes and nowadays there's nodejs with react, where there's javascript on both client and server, with addition of html and css making desktop app that's not multi platform, almost obsolete.

Which is why lately companies are trying to use electron or react native to replace them.