• The new installer gets you set up right away without any hussle. Furthermore, even the registration process is handled very easily. You do not have to fiddle with any long key strings. You simply enter your user credentials and setup will select your products. VS2008 and VS2010 can be used side by side and the installer registers all the components in both IDEs - if you wish to.
• Uninstall is just as easy and leaves no baggage behind. I think everybody who ever used a 3rd party component set knows what I am getting at…
• One installer, all the products. I just love to only have to download one file, run one installer and also only to have to enter my user credentials once. A real time-saver. You have all the components for the different frameworks and also the IDE tools. Best, if you do not like it that way, DevExpress offers individual downloads as well.
• Full integration into VS 2010. The new Visual Studio has been released recently and I can make full use of it with all the controls I need. In particular all the designers and little IDE helpers work for the full development experience.
• VS is using WPF now. DevExpress offers huge improvements in that area. The new WPF controls and the added features to the already existing WPF control set made me realize how useful the subscription is in order to stay up-to-date and be able to deliver new, innovative technologies to my customers.
• ASP.NET MVC support. Heck, I have been waiting for that. I love the MVC approach for web applications and I truly did not develop any bigger projects with MVC as I was missing the variety for controls I could use. Yes, there are JavaScript libraries, but I did not have enough time to learn yet another language
• Grids, Layout Controls and Charts. All my apps rely heavily on displaying and editing of data (I mean, most apps do). The component set offers me a very good toolset, not only to allow the user to browse data, but also to edit data. 2010.1 really took yet another giant leap forward in that area as all basic components like textedit, button edit etc. are available in WPF now as well.

I could go on and on, but those are my favorite aspects I am very excited about.

I am a big big fan of strategy games on the PC platform. Thus, I bought Anno 1404, definitely a purchase I never regret as the game is truly the best real-time strategy game I ever played so far. I bought it from a vendor at Ebay as he had the best price. The language of the product was German. I played all campains and recently an Add-On for the game has been released. I bought that as well at a very good price, but did not pay attention to the language of the game. It was localized in English. I tried to install it, but I got immediately the error message that the game was in German and that it was impossible to add the new features to the German version. Understandable, but why have separate DVDs for seperate countries?

RAD Studio is so much better in this regard, because you simply cannot buy the wrong product. You get all the languages and you can even switch between different languages without having to install it again! All the patches are multi-language as well. What is the down-side? One might say that it takes longer for a product to be released but I know from first-hand experience that localization can be done right from the start and thus there will be no delays.

Having separate products with different languages truly is something that is not good for the customer.  Just thinking of Microsoft Office e.g. where the different localizations offer different difctionaries and it becomes really tough which language to install and also which patch to apply as there are more than one, one for every localization.

Thus, once again, this makes the flexible localization one of the most underrated features of RAD Studio.

Oh, yes, I had to order another Anno 1404 — this time in English.

Thus, I typed this snippet into my Objective-C code:

labelTimer.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%2d:%2d", minutes, seconds ];
[/code]


labelTimer.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%02d:%02d", minutes, seconds ];


A lot of people do not like it for reasons of their own and I do not want to get into those.

What I do want to discuss is that in an environment in which you are responsible to allocate and free memory yourself (like Delphi, C++, Objective-C), you might stumble about issues with frameworks or base classes you use.

In my case it was the libxml part of the iPhone OS which allows you to parse XML documents. (I even now of Delphi developers using this library to parse large documents). Its biggest advantage is that the xml document is not read in one go but step-by-step in chunks. The developer can hook into it with an event-driven approach and can thus interpret the file. However, during the parse operation the library tends to produce memory leaks that cost me two hours of debugging.

With iPhone applications it is very simple: the iPhone is a mobile device with limited memory. If you produce too many leaks in a certain amount of time, you will not have many customers using your application as it might crash frequently (it might not even be accepted if you want to deploy to the Apple AppStore due to this fact). This makes you very aware of producing code that produces absolutely no memory leaks of any sort. Apple delivers Instruments so that you can debug your code for memory leaks. As I was not familiar with the tool, I did not realize at first that the leak did occur in the library and not in or because of code I had written.

Now comes the important part: formulate a rule. I do not want to waste another minute because of issues that are in 3rd party code. However, it is not as easy, because it might not be the 3rd party library but you not handing over the data to the library correctly (especially when dealing with different languages and use DLLs e.g.). To state the rule ‘Always check the call stack where the leak originates.’ will not suffice. An example for this is that you allocate memory for an object instance and then hand a reference to this instance to a function or method. The method allocates memory again and returns another reference instead of using the one you provided. In that case you are responsible for the leak. Documentation needs to be clear in cases like this.

I think that fact is the biggest pro for garbage collection. Some people might call it lazy, but I prefer it considering how much time I spent when writing iPhone applications thinking  of proper memory management. iPhone OS comes with strict guidelines how to name methods so that you know if the caller or the function is responsible to allocate and free the memory which makes it easier, but it is still difficult enough.

As a final point, please be aware that my googling and analysis really points to a method in the parser of libxml leaking some bytes when parsing a document. In case you develop an iPhone app and use libxml, do not worry about the leaks that Instruments shows you that derive from a call to the parse mehod of the xml parser — not your fault.

The next couple of posts will be using RemObjects SDK and RemObjects DataAbstract with .NET to deliver data for an iPhone application. The two previous posts are needed in order to understand my train of thoughts. I will mark these posts with the Delphi category, i.e. they will be fed to DelphiFeeds.com. However, if I will write general posts about general development tasks with Xcode and other iPhone-specific tools, be they interesting for Delphi developers who want to learn about iPhone Development as well or not, I will NOT mark them with the Delphi category.

Thus, if you want to read all my posts, please use the complete feed of my blog and not only the Delphi one that DelphiFeeds.com does consume.

I want to make sure that the Delphi community will only read about Delphi-related topics on DelphiFeeds.com and thus I will make sure that general iPhone issues will not appear there.

Why different? Well, not only is the syntax of the programming language on Mac very odd getting used to for a Delphi or C# developer, but even more using the computer is also needing some time getting used to. Shortcuts are different, there are way less visible shortcuts than on a Windows system and the general approach how to get things done is very much different. With regard to the shortcuts it is sometimes a real pain to find them and they often differ from application to application. Mac OS is very much designed for mouse users, it seems, and keyboard enthusiasts will have to read the docs carefully. A lot of people claim that it is easier and more intuitive to get started, especially if you have not used Windows before. I would not sign that statement as Mac OS has also quite some oddities just as Windows has. Just yesterday, I dragged a file onto my desktop which did not show. When I dragged it again, Mac OS told me the file was already there and if I wanted to overwrite it. Thus, it is not without flaws either. And ever since Windows 7 one can completely forget the generalization “Mac is more stable than Windows”. My Windows systems are just as stable. However, I am derailing from my train of thoughts…

“How would one get started to code on the Mac or code applications for the iPhone?” was the question I had to get an answer to. Firstly, give yourself time to get used to the system.  Do not try to start developing right away. It will not work. Believe me. I tried. Give it some time. Fiddle around with a Mac system at least for 1 or 2 moths before you start developing. You need to get some insight in how the system works, how applications are assembled etc. This will not happen in a week and you definitely cannot read it in a book and hope to get the same understanding as learning by doing. Of course, a book to get started with Mac OS can help. Maybe, you are as lucky as me and have some hardcore Apple Affiliates at your workplace you can nag all day long… They will forgive you for the frequent interruptions sooner or later (thanks, Volker… ).

Secondly, get the tools for the job. With Apple it is very easy to get the right tools in order to develop Applications for the platform as the company publishes the development environment with the operating system itself. Be sure to have a look at your Leopard DVD and install the additional features. Besides, you will miss the command-line tools after a month or so anyways and they are there as well.

The main development environment is called Xcode and if you ever dare to load one of the sample projects you will be overmanned. Yes, you will. There is no way around it. The code simply hits you and it might result in an abrupt thought that may say something like “How did I ever think to develop for this platform in that language?” — It definitely feels like that at first.

Thus, get a book. Or get two actually. One is free, the other is not. I started learning the language with a book that is just about the language. Not about any platform. Just the language. The book is called ‘Programming in Objective-C 2.0′ bz Stephen Kochan and it gives you a very good introduction and gets you used to the funny syntax. Funny is an adjective every Delphi developer I know has used so far for that particular syntax.

For me it was very clear that I wanted to develop applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Thus, book number two. Apple has a huge archive of free documentation that comes in a very printer-friendly PDF format. The PDFs are seperated by certain topics, not just a simple reference that has been generated from source files or generated in some other way. It is like a big library at your fingertips. I read quite a few of them and they are very good to read and contain lots of useful information. Access is granted if you join the iPhone Developer Program. Unlike frequent misinformation about this topic, joining this program is free of charge. You get all the documentation and all the programming tools for free. No charge. Not once, not yearly. The only thing you are being charged for on a yearly basis is the ability to deploy to physical devices. There are several different subscription packages available, but in order to get started, you can use the free account. The software development kit (SDK) even comes with an iPhone simulator that allows you to test your application like it was running on an actual physical device. There are only a few restrictions that make using a physical device a necessity. But believe me, these will not affect you in the first couple of weeks of developing applications.

When you got your login details, you can use your iTunes Account as a sidenote, you can download the SDK which includes all the tools you need. Furthermore, during the download I had lots of time to read as the SDK is huge and take a long time to download through my pitiful bandwidth of 2MBits.

After the download, installation is only a double-click away and takes from 10 to 30 minutes. Be sure to drag Xcode into the dock - you will need it all the time.

But how to get started? Well, Daniel Magin suggested a book to me and that really got me started:

• iPhone SDK 3 (Visual QuickStart Guides) by Duncan Campbell

It gives an introduction with use-cases to the most important classes that you need to use in any project and it also describes all the visual components hands-on. After reading this book - it is not that big, so I did read it completely -  you are able to write little apps and are ready to dive into the details. Oh, and be sure to download the free bonus chapters of that book. I did that with two books from Apress from the same group of authors:

• Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark and Jeff Lamarche
• More iPhone 3 Development: Tackling iPhone SDK 3

Those will keep you busy, but afterwards you will be ready to write applications for the iPhone for sure. Patience is most important while typing the new language. Furthermore, Xcode is very different when entering source code. If it felt strange using Visual Studio when being used to Delphi, it is like that…

For the German audience one additional hint. The German Mac keyboard is a bit odd as it has not all keys printed completely. E.g. the {} and [] are nowhere to be found. I have no idea why the German Apple keyboards are built that way. Furthermore, typing source code on a German keyboard is very clumsy. Due to that,  I have coding-keyboard with US typeface, so that I can type source code more easily. It helps quite a lot.

Next time I will introduce you to some architectural ideas and implementations I am dealing with right now. I have some applications that need to work on a Windows Desktop as well as offer access using the iPhone. Furthermore, a web application is not an option  I consider for the iPhone. The usability employing a native iPhone application is just so much better in my opinion.

However, this is going to change in the next couple of weeks as I am finally ready to blog about some interesting, new, innovative things that have come my way the last couple of weeks.

I think it is normal that from time after time you have to catch up with all the technologies that are out there and have to find your way and decide which path to take. In the last months rather than weeks, I have been reading up on software development in general, new programming languages and frameworks in these languages.

For example, I finally caught up with C# and all the new aspects of its new version that is being released with .NET 4 (or Visual Studio 2010 — not sure about the release cycle). The language becomes more and more handy and is filled with quite some magic to make the life of the programmer a lot easier. However, one thing that still is not solved, even in its 4th incarnation, is the missing separation of specification and implementation. Being used to Pascal or Delphi, it is really tough not having a class definition on top and the concrete implementation at the bottom. Also the possibility to define properties and fields “anywhere” in a class makes C# a bit harder to read at first. I am not going to dive into the ‘braces debate’ as I think that it is a bit too geeky and completely insignificant. I do not care if I use ‘begin’ or ‘{’. The readability, however, is important.

From C# I went over to frameworks that .NET offers these days. Be it ASP.NET, MVC, LINQ, Entity Framework, WCF, WPF — I looked at them all with different levels of granularity. WPF I only touched the shell, as my design skills are rather limited. I understand how everything fits together now, though, and I think that must suffice. One has to emphasize the great options the developers have to bind data to the graphical user interface using WPF.

WCF - knowing Indy due to Delphi quite well - is also something that triggered my interest. However, there is one component set available, for free no less, that I never saw the need to jump into it deeper than knowing what is available and how one specifies services etc. Thanks go to Hadi Hariri, for writing some great articles to get you started!

EF - probably the greatest disappointment for me. I did not have the nerves to look at the release candidates or Community Technology Previews that are available for the second installment. The first version did not perform to my liking. I will clearly state that it is mostly not the problem of the product, but I guess think differently and I was not able to transfer my ER-models from my head into the framework. Especially reflexive associations gave me headaches. I never got the result I was looking for.

EF not being what I hoped it was, I looked at Linq to SQL. This required me to learn Linq first as the specializations of Linq - obviously - require a deeper understanding of the base. So, I read into Linq and soon realized that LinqToXml would make my developer days so much more easier. LinqToXml quickly became THE toolset to read and write XML. I can say without hesitation that ever since reading and learning about LinqToXml, I use nothing else when XML is involved and I have the .NET framework available. Especially the performance on huge files of it is breathtaking. As I understood that I went over to LinqToSql. Definitely a tool one can use to write great database apps in .NET, however, spoiled developer-me, who was used to ECO, still was not satisfied. Oh, ECO, yes, I still use it and I will mention it later in this post. I want to point out though that I was able to realize a small project with LinqToSql, which I never was able to do with EF. Yes, I know, it must have been me — still, I prefer LinqToSql to EF 1.0.

I just realized I only mentioned LinqToXml. The simplest incarnation of Linq, which is LinqToObjects, is absolutely not missing in any of my projects. At this point I want to mention that I use Linq in C# and Delphi Prism all the same. Remember, .NET is language-agnostic. Thus, Delphi Prism or C#. Both are becoming a bliss to use with LinqToObjects as soon as lists or any other in-memory data structure is involved.

Good. That were the desktop app frameworks I looked at. I also looked at ASP.NET and its ’spin-off’ MVC, which stands for Model-View-Controller. I like the idea behind it. Actually, I like Ruby on Rails for the same reason. But, I miss the server-controls and I absolutely loathe scripting Java Script to do AJAX in web applications. Thus, MVC never grew on me. Even with all the frameworks that are available… I still never got the hang of it.

As I talked to a buddy from the Delphi Community, he told me he had absolutely no idea what to look at first and how to prioritize. Thus, here is my own list, how I would prioritize things. I assume that you did look at .NET in general already and thus do not need to get started with that, because that would be my number one priority right now. I still do native programming - which reminds me to ask: Why is one old-fashioned coding native? The whole iPhone SDK is a native framework… thus, it is still an up-to-date topic and not to be neglected….

Thus, here the priorities for the technologies mentioned above:

1. Linq
   • Linq to Objects
   • Linq to XML
   • Linq to SQL
2. WPF
3. WCF
4. EF with version 2 just being around the corner

This concludes the list of Microsoft technologies of the .NET framework I looked at. Did I stop there? No. If you had asked me three years ago, I never would have thought it possible, but I went over to a different platform. Yes, really.

Apple - or MacOS.

Ever since I held an iPod Touch in my hands it became very clear to me I wanted to be able to develop applications for these devices. But more about that and how I can connect the Objective-C applications with my .NET applications in the next blog post which will most likely not take as long to write as this one… almost a year… wow.

Möchten Sie Webanwendungen (oder auch Websites) mit ASP.NET erstellen? Sie möchten dies mit Delphi tun?

Kommen Sie auf die RoadShow der DelphiExperts!

Wir zeigen Ihnen zunächst was Delphi Prism ist und wie man damit unter .NET arbeitet, danach erlernen Sie das Erstellen von ASP.NET Anwendungen. Wir werden als ganz konkretes Beispiel einen WebShop ausgehend von einem leeren Projekt aufbauen. Die komplette Themenübersicht finden Sie in den Anmeldedetails.

Wann: Montag, 27.07.2009, 09.00 – 17:00 Uhr
Wo: Düsseldorf, Intercity Hotel, Graf-Adolf-Straße 81-87

I hardly post about non-technical topics. However, having been a scifi fan my whole life this series is the first one I mention on my blog. Yes, even though I watched all there is to watch from Star Trek, Galactica is the first series I mention.

Why? Because it was fracking excellent! I watched it on DVD and I could hardly stop watching the “Final Season” or “Season 4.5″. Actually, it took me a working week to watch it. It is only 10 episodes, but still.

To be honest, the series did not catch my interest that much after the first couple of episodes. I even dropped watching it for over a year and had to catch up to the TV broadcasts. However, it was so worth it. As I mentioned, I watched Star Trek - most episodes multiple times. What I missed all the time with Star Trek, The Next Generation and all the following series is a proper story arc that was being ended to basically tell me: It was worth watching all the other episodes, because every single episode delivered parts of the big puzzle. Deep Space Nine had a huge story arc you might say, but it was not as fine-tuned as the one from BSG. Thinking about it, even the first couple of episodes gave hints about the ending. Sometimes the obvious did happen in the series, but the ending came as a total surprise to me. A well-thought through surprise I might add. I can hardly understand why the reviews on TV.com are only average for the last couple of episodes. Ironically, one of the major players in the Star Trek franchise is one of the bright minds behind BSG. It was just perfect as all the story arcs that I could identify while watching the series got resolved. I cannot get into the ending as I would spoil the story for a lot of people, but the only reason I can come up with for the bad reviews is that the people have not been open-minded enough or simply were hoping for a more action-filled ending. It is well-balanced … thankfully.

The question that I keep asking myself now is: What will the next episode be about? In November there will be one final TV movie. I fear, this will only harm the perfect ending that has been reached now.

And finally, something I have absolutely no interest in: Caprica. I watched the trailer and I simply do not care at all about the series. To be brutally honest, I do not get from the trailer what the series is supposed to be about. Oh well…

…back to technical posts

However, being an only-child myself, one of the new help links that have been introduced in Windows 7 to help users connect to each other, made me laugh. See for yourselves…

As an only-child, who doesn’t, eh?

Even though Microsoft means something totally different in that context and it is a great addition to that dialog, it still made me smile

Furthermore, I enjoy reading the newsletter by http://www.tmssoftware.com which also keeps you informed about great new controls for Delphi.

I also have to mention that a lot of the components announced there can be used for free and that alone makes the newsletters worth subscribing.

The first question one might pose is why one would want to write to NTFS having a Mac. Well, simple. I still do a lot of work on Windows systems and if I want to create files bigger than 2 (or is it 4?) GB, I cannot use any FAT derivative which can be used with Mac. Windows cannot read the Mac file systems either. Furthermore, I used Windows exclusively, so all my harddrives I used for backing up contain NTFS partitions with huge disk images. I cannot write any files to these partitions with a default Leopard install.

Today, I found a project called “MacFuse”. It is a developer SDK/API of some sort that allows you to develop 3rd party file-system support. Of course, there already exists an implementation for NTFS. The one I found is called “NTFS-3G” written by Erik Larsson.

In case you want to write to NTFS partitions as well, the following links will help you to get started. Please note that the latest release of  NTFS-3G does not require the installation of MacFuse as it comes “in the package” as well.

• MacFuse: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
• NTFS-3G: http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

My first session will be designed for the Delphi VCL programmer who wants to start with Delphi Prism and get started in the .NET world. I will give basic insights what is different and will offer hints what concepts of the VCL can be found in the .NET world when writing client/desktop applications. Furthermore, I will introduce the concept of data binding and will give an overview of the basic .NET classes for file operations, string handling and to build elementary data structures.

Second, I will be joining Olaf Monien for a one-day workshop about Delphi Prism which should get you started with Prism if you have not written any applications for the .NET Framework so far.

More detailed information about the conference can be found on http://www.delphilive.com. You can also simply click on the speaker button image in the left navigation bar. A list of my sessions can be navigated to directly using the URL http://delphilive.com/conferences/delphi_live/session/delphi_live/speaker/#2482.

We all know that Apple delivers great content in iTunes so that you can watch HD movies on your Mac and with the correct cables also on a TV. I use a Windows system right now to play movies on my TV, but I ran into quite some issues with iTunes. The videos get sluggish and if you play the very same content on a Mac it jut looks better and fluent. The problem seems to be the graphics card and the compression of the movie files…

However, the big question mark for me were a couple of things:

• Can I hook up my 5.1/7.1 sound system?
• Can I play BluRay movies or BluRay movie streams?

The first question is pretty quickly answered. However, you need to google to get a reply. You can switch your audio output to "digital" which allows you to hook up an optical toslink cable to the MacBook. Yes, the very same plug that you normally use with a well known headphone jack. The important thing is that Apple uses a mini-Toslink plug, so you need an adaptor plug that allows you to plug in a "normal" toslink cable that almost every TV or stereo uses these days. Thus, you need to order an additional adaptor and can get digital  audio, which I did today….

Now to the big problem. If you play DVD content on your MacBook you can listen to the audio on the speakers. Surprisingly, this works with any DVD. DVDs have mostly 5.1 audio which is either in DTS or AC3 format. Still, it works. However, if you create a mp4-video file with embedded AC3 audio with 6 channels (aka 5.1) you will not be able to hear anything over the speakers of your MacBook. Well, that is what I thought at first. As I dug deeper, I found out that not the hardware was the problem, the software was. If you download a different application to play the movie file, the 5.1 audio stream will just be played nicely on your MacBook stereo speakers.

I have not  tried so far to use Quicktime and deliver the audio using my stereo. I cannot make Quicktime play the audio over the internal speakers though. This has only been possible with other software products like XBMC Media Center, for example.

Furthermore, I found absolutely no way to play a BluRay movie on my MacBook. I simply could not find any software that plays BluRay movies. The only thing I could do was create a custom BluRay disk stream on my Windows system using an Image Writer, added 5.1 audio and converted that using Handbrake to a mp4 file with AC3 audio.

I will keep you posted on my findings which software combination works out best if I get the necessary cables to hook up my system.

Note: The Windows PC system is not able to play the mp4 with AC3 content at all. Quicktime needs a plugin which is not available afaik.

One is Jacob Thurman who also develops Castalia, an amazing IDE plugin for the Galileo-IDE.

The second is Daniel Magin. You may know Daniel from many conferences and other developer events. His sessions are legendary for the way he names the classes and objects in his examples. The class TEumel is my personal favourite….

Jacob published four applications so far: Boomshine, Scriptures, IdiotBox and iBelched. I know the Boomshine game from the web which is very much hooking you to the screen even though the rules and objectives are pretty quick to learn and master.

Daniel published his first application just yesterday and it is an awesome tool , especially if you do not have a Mac at home. The application allows you to group your contacts and send an email to a group of people. A feature that is completely missing from an iPhone/iPod Touch without the application.

Here is the complete description of Daniel’s application in German copied from the AppStore:

The application is available in English, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portugese as well.

I never realized Daniel could speak that many languages. I wonder what TEumel is called in Spanish

Great job guys!

Great!

I am still enjoying a lot of time away from the PC and not occupying myself with programming or computer scientific tasks and thus the content on this blog has been very slow.

But as with everybody, I already made my plans for the next year…

If you are in Germany at the end of February you might just be able to visit my seminars hosted by the Entwickler Akademie. The announcements have not been made in public yet, but have a look at this very blog in regular intervals if you are interested in Delphi seminars — I will also announce seminars by colleagues in the community which are held in the same timeframe. I talked to Olaf Monien e.g. who will be at the same event. So, details with exact dates and session schedule to follow…

Furthermore, I am in the process of writing a article about Delphi Prism and Delphi 2009. It will be published in one of the next issues of the Entwickler Magazin. If you are a Delphi developer and have not had a look at this magazine, you should. It is in German and a good resource for German Delphi developers.

You did not read anything from me recently. Not on the newsgroups, not on my blog. If you communicate with me directly, even email and Skype was not being answered for a long time.There is a reason. A hardware related one. Sadly, it was my own hardware, i.e. my body, that was faulty.

On October 10th I drove home from work and a nerve that is responsible to keep your body in balance simply switched off. I was able to stop the car in time and notify emergency services. Still, it was all very scary and I am very happy to report that I am back to normal - at least almost.

The last 4 weeks were completely awful considering my health and the first two weeks after the infarct  of my nerve I felt dizzy after moving my head for an inch and walking was difficult. Reading, watching TV or doing anything that one normally does, was simply impossible. I spent most of the day drinking a lot of water and simply resting, listening to Audio Books.

As I said, I am almost back to normal as reading is still tough. I can hardly read more than a couple of pages in a book before it becomes very hard and I have to rest. My eyes were affected by the illness and I still have to see (no pun intended) how that will turn out.

Gladly, I will still be able to live my life as I want it to and thus will be able to participate in the Delphi and .NET community. Right after it hit me that was not so clear,  but the folks in the ER were amazing in recognizing what was wrong with me.

So, please be patient. I will soon have some useful content and this blog again. However, allow me some more time to recuperate. Chances that this happens again are high if you work to much right away.

Reading through the new feature list it is being said that the new syntax for the Delphi 2009 language constructs is being supported, i.e. Anonymous Methods and Generics. Furthermore, a lot of productivity features habe been added to make creation of diagrams and navigating from those to your source code much easier.

Have a look at http://www.modelmakertools.com/modelmaker/history/mm1000.html for a complete list of features.

Our lab project will be a simple VCL Forms Application created using File / New … / VCL Forms Application.

On the dialog being shown as a result of this, we will drop a TButton and double-click it in order to implement the OnClick event.

The dialog should look like this:

In the OnClick event we will implement some very insightful piece of Delphi code:

The code checks the Sender reference if it has been instantiated from TButton and shows a message if true. Wonderful.

Now to debugging.

Breakpoints are great to start investigating variable values at a certain line in code. Delphi makes it easy to set breakpoints by pressing F5 (default layout) or clicking in the gutter on the left side of the code. Let’s add a breakpoint in line 28 (referring to the line numbering above):

When running the application and clicking the button, the debugger stops at the location we wanted it to, however, we are unable to gain any useful information without additional work.

First of all, the value of Sender is displayed as "()"  and the value of "Self" is denoted as inaccessible. This means that the compiler has optimized our code and this is something one can switch off in the project settings. Thus, cancel debugging by pressing Ctrl+F2 and select the menu items Project / Options…

In the "Delphi Compiler" section, select the item named "Compiler" and have a look at the "Code generation" group.

You will find the item named "Optimization". Set this to "false" and it will be much easier to debug your applications. Performance will be worse, but while developing applications it might be more helpful to be able to debug easily.

Furthermore, a lot of Delphi developers always complain that they get redirected to the CPU view showing Assembler code when they try to step into VCL code. CodeGear deploys the Delphi VCL and a lot of other things with source code, so one should be able to step into it, don’t you think?

A simple switch will make this possible: In the "Debugging" group on the same options page mentioned above, set "Use debug .dcus" to true and rebuild. Let me emphasize: reBUILD. A simple compile will not do the trick if you have already compiled your application and change the setting afterwards.

Let us rebuild the application, run it with debugging and click the button. We will find out that now we get a lot of information about "self". Great!

However, Sender is still displayed as (). If we evaluate the value using Run / Evaluate or simply press Ctrl+F7, we get the same thing. If we type TButton( Sender ) however, we get the information we desire.

So, it is good to remember that Sender is being passed as TObject and the debugger tries not to get into any trouble. It accesses the variable reference with this exact type and thus there is no information to display. You as the developer have to do the thinking and type-cast it manually to TButton.

One final note. The result displayed by the evaluation dialog is not very nice to read:

Click on the Inspect button in order to get an Object Inspector-like view:

Be aware that you only get this view to inspect Sender if you use the expression TButton(Sender) to type-cast it.

Hopefully this blog entry gave some insight into the awesome debugging features of Delphi. Not that they were unique to this IDE, but I found out that many people do not know about these informative tools included in the product. So, one does not have to buy third party tools to get good debugging results.