I agree the impact of writing code and seeing something onscreen is very important.
> I had already started programming GUIs in Windows (MFC days)
MFC and Delphi's UI model are completely incomparable. One is statically built, often in code, inflexible, hard to iterate, hard to use custom controls... and one is modern OO, buildable visually (streamed to text, so editable in text), incredibly flexible, very fast to modify, and with thousands of custom controls.
And these days it builds for macOS, mobile (iOS and Android), and Linux too. So it's a decent choice.
> I had already started programming GUIs in Windows (MFC days)
MFC and Delphi's UI model are completely incomparable. One is statically built, often in code, inflexible, hard to iterate, hard to use custom controls... and one is modern OO, buildable visually (streamed to text, so editable in text), incredibly flexible, very fast to modify, and with thousands of custom controls.
And these days it builds for macOS, mobile (iOS and Android), and Linux too. So it's a decent choice.