This is indeed ancient wisdom. That Delphi stuff sounds very similar to the Xmt Layout widget in the X11/Motif world of the mid-90s (which used "attach" terms rather than "anchor"). Both are actually pretty closely related to how TeX does stretchable space/alignment layout. While it helps to _know_ pixels/be able to _intervene_ at the "ground level" (much like assembly code), it should never have been a dominant specification paradigm. Dots-per-inch variation increases have made pixels less & less the relevant coordinate (though TeX already was dealing with 1200 DPI magazine & 50 DPI dot matrix outputs in the 1970s).
I blame the popularity of Visual BASIC user-experience during a time when DPI variation on video displays was particularly narrow for diluting this wisdom. VB may have improved by now (??), but I have definitely seen little apps in the past couple years that decidedly require low DPI to be well conceived. The wrinkles I imagine i18n adding are just measurement accuracy of fancier glyphs and/or fonts lying about their metrics more often (possibly real concerns, but not fundamental to the approach, and probably a problem with any other approach..).
