RAD Studio 2010 - IDE Insight Part 1

"Where on earth are my sunglasses?"

After searching for a full five minutes, I finally find them and get on my way to Embarcadero to take care of more important business. Most of us have set down our keys and forgotten exactly where. We *know* we saw them a while ago, but where exactly? A few seconds delay, or a few minutes, an unwelcome interruption. Valuable neuron time wasted on the mundane.

The same problem happens using software. You’re happily working away, firmly in the zone, when you need to do just one simple thing. Problem is, it’s not something you do every day. So now you have to try and remember how you got to that dialog, file, setting, program, whatever. What folder is it in? Which main menu item was it under? View? Window? Hm. Maybe it’s in a sub-menu. Nope. What was the hot key again? You relent and hit F1.

Now you’re out of the zone. Dang.

In Windows, Vista helps out by providing the Start Menu search box. Tap the Windows key, start typing and you’ll be presented with a list of choices, one of which is likely what you want. Google Desktop does the same thing with Ctrl+Ctrl. Yes! The entire filesystem at your fingertips.

RAD Studio 2009 caught on to this paradigm somewhat with the ability to search the component palette and in the component wizards. Very helpful and a great time saver.

Now RAD Studio 2010 brings palette search to entire IDE. We call it "IDE Insight", and it puts most functionality of the RAD Studio IDE at your fingertips. Just like Code Insight shows appropriate functions, methods, types, etc., based on the current editor context, IDE Insight uses the current IDE state to show you a list of things you can do, with a minimum of effort and distraction. My goal in developing it was to save you a few seconds a hundred times a day, and help you stay in that coding zone.

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Posted by mduncan on August 4th, 2009 under C++Builder, Delphi, RAD Studio | 5 Comments »

Hello world!

.MODEL SMALL
.STACK 100
.DATA
Message db ‘Hello, world$’

.CODE
start:
mov  ax,@data
mov  ds,ax
mov  ah,9
mov  dx,Message
int  21h
mov  ax,04c00h
int  21h
END  start

Posted by mduncan on August 4th, 2009 under Uncategorized | 3 Comments »