Like illunis, I too was educated mainly in Pascal and have always prefered it over C/C++ (though I have worked pretty regularly in both languages). Besides that I have found Delphi to compile to code that's just as fast as any written in C/C++. However I'd have to say the one definative reason I started using Delphi was, unlike VB (which my previous job required me to do), it actually "compiled" to a native executable and didn't require any runtime libraries. Which meant I didn't need to distribute 6+MBs of files with my programs anymore. Yeah things have changed since then, but I never really looked back at VB for any type of RAD work since I got my hands on Delphi.

P.S. VB also couldn't create console apps, which is just mind baffling.