Nick Hodges

The Coming RAD Studio Update

13
Nov

This week we were in the early stages of rolling out what was to be “RAD Studio Update 2” with a large number of bug fixes.  We put the update out on the web and the registered users page, and posted an article on the Embarcadero Developer Network. We were excited, because there are a lot of bug fixes in it, making an already solid product even more solid.

However, once a few people started installing it, they noticed that they were being asked to register every time RAD Studio was run.  The product is properly registered, but the dialog box still pops up every time you run RAD Studio.

So, first, if this is happening to you, we’re sorry.  You can simply click cancel whenever you see that dialog and be on your merry way with the benefit of the fixes for Update 2.  Your product should be properly registered, regardless of what the dialog may tell you. 

Second, we have recognized the issue and pulled the Update from distribution.  We want you to have the best experience, obviously, so the continued distribution of the Update clearly isn’t in anyone’s interest.  We don’t want folks to run into the problem – again, obviously. 

Third, we are working on a fix that will cover everyone.  If you’ve installed Update 2 and are running in to the issue above, then we’ll have a fix for you.  If you haven’t installed Update 2 yet, we apologize for the delay, and we’ll have an update for you that doesn’t have this issue.  I can’t say when we’ll have it, but obviously we want it to be as soon as possible.  We want you to have this Update in your hands as much as you do.

Finally, we’re sorry for the hassle, and we’ll get this fixed as soon as possible. 

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #134

02
Nov
  • We have published Help Update #1 for the RAD Studio 2010 help.  You can find out more at the Developer network.  The Help Update should be available through the IDE’s automatic update system.  If you have that turned off by default, you can invoke it via the Start menu.
  • Question:  Can you ever really have “Release Candidate 1”?  If you call it that (as opposed to just “Release Candidate”), is it really a release candidate?
  • The marketing folks have been busy – they’ve taken your input and created a Delphi and C++Builder Application Showcase page.  On that page, you can find all different kinds of applications that are built with RAD Studio, from licensing tools to Client/Server applications to games and media players.  If you want to see the power and speed of what can be done with your favorite development tool, that is the place to go.  And of course, if you want to be included in that impressive lineup, then let us know.
  • I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating:  If your most current version of RAD Studio is 2005 or earlier, then 31 December 2009 is the last day you can take advantage of upgrade pricing.  So if it has been a while since you’ve upgraded, now is the time.  That page is also our Upgrade Center, which has information and links about the latest new features, how to migrate to Unicode, and getting your third-party tools updated to the latest version.  There isn’t going to be a better time to make the move to the best version of RAD Studio ever. 
  • And of course, if you’ve moved to Windows 7, RAD Studio is the tool for doing your Windows 7 development.

On the Road with Nick

30
Oct

Hey, I might not be the Delphi Product Manager any more, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be going out on the road to see customers and show off RAD Studio 2010!  I will be making three tour stops as part of the RAD Studio 2010 Road Show.  I’ll be doing the Philadelphia, Raleigh, and Minneapolis/St. Paul meetings.  (The last one is nice because I’ll get to see my folks and my old running mates in the Twin Cities).  Each of those three events will be held “right after work” from 0:600pm – 08:00pm.  Follow the links for more information about the venues.

So please sign up – I’d love to see you all again or meet you for the first time, as the case may be.  :-) And remember, it’s all free!

The Delphi Survey

26
Oct

Hey, the Delphi Survey is back!  It’s long, but well worth the time.  Please go and fill it out as completely and as thoroughly as you can.  We really read and study and use and act on the valuable information we get from it.  Your opinions really matter and really make a difference. Thanks in advance for taking the time.  We really do appreciate it.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #133

21
Oct
  • First the GOTO was disparaged into oblivion.  Then the ‘with’ statement came into the cross-hairs.  Is the ‘if’ statement next?
  • Hey, the CodeRage 4 replays are online – lot of good stuff in there, especially about the new things available for RAD Studio 2010.  If you are looking at upgrading, the presentations from CodeRage 4 would be a good place to get a look at what you can do with  RAD Studio 2010. 
  • Are you using Windows 7? Want to develop for Windows 7?  Delphi is ready for you to do just that.
  • Learned a new term today: Cargo Cult Programming.  (Saw the term on this excellent answer given by Mason Wheeler on StackOverflow).
  • I know that a lot of you do database management and development.  If you do, you should look into DBArtisanHere’s a nice review of the product if you want to learn more.  Being able to write an then really tune your SQL is a good thing.  We’ve used the tool internally on our database frameworks to ensure that dbExpress uses the most efficient SQL possible.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #132

15
Oct
  • Oh, by the way, another good way to get your comments deleted is to use profanity.  Should have mentioned that before.
  • The guys over at Gurock Software have a really cool article called “Working with Delphi’s new Exception.StackTrace” showing how you can get more information about stack traces at runtime. 
  • Want to write an iPhone application in Pascal?
  • If you haven’t tried IDE Insight in RAD Studio 2010, then you should.  It is easy – hit F6 or CTRL+. – and then start typing what it is in the IDE that you are looking for.  Cool feature.  But here’s the question – what would a 16×16 pixel glyph look like if it represented “IDE Insight”?
  • Have you checked out all the code samples on the Delphi DocWiki?

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #131

09
Oct
  • We are looking for folks to submit their Unicode migration stories to the Unicode Migration Best Practices Cookbook.  If you have a tip or two, or a good story to tell, please let us know and help out the Delphi community.  Looks like you might win an iPod Touch if you submit something.  You’ll also get fame and glory and credit on our web site.  Nothing to blow your nose at.
  • If you are on RAD Studio 2005 or earlier and haven’t yet upgraded, now is the time to do it.  Your time for getting upgrade pricing is running out.  After January 1, only users of BDS 2006 and up will be eligible for upgrade pricing.   And with the release of RAD Studio 2010, there’s never been a better time to upgrade.  I may be biased, but I not so humble that I’m not willing to say it out loud:  Delphi 2010 is the bestest, most powerfulest and coolest Delphi ever.  :-)
  • I love IDE Insight.  You can get get to it two ways, F6 or CTRL-<period>.  (I tend to use F6, since that was the “original” keystroke during the beta.)  Getting in the habit
  • StackOverflow Post of the Week:  What are good arguments to convince management to upgrade to Delphi 2009 / 2010?

TurboPower Poll Results

07
Oct

Here’s a chart showing the results of the poll I took on what TurboPower projects are of interest to you. (You can certainly still take the poll if you want, but the trends are pretty clear by now…)

Seems that a lot more of you than I would have guessed are using AsyncPro.  I was also surprised at the popularity of Abbrevia, but that might be because that project has probably been the most active of all of them.

I would like to know who among you is still using the DOS-based Object Professional.  :-)

ChartExport

So what I am going to do from here is to start at the top of this chart and work my way down.  I’ll give each project a review, update the main page for the project to reflect the current status, and attempt to recruit developers who want to work on the given project.  I’ll also try to get instructions for pulling and building the project for starters. After that, maybe I’ll look into creating (or getting created) an install for each project so that folks who want to avoid doing the whole “Subversion Pull and Build” thing can do so. 

Naturally, if you want to get involved as a developer, let me know. 

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #130

05
Oct
  • Okay, some of you are saying that I’m “blocking comments”.  So, let me comment on that. :-) First, this is my blog, and I’ll allow or disallow any comments that I want for any reason at all.  Sorry.  But having said that, the vast majority of comments come through just fine.  Some get caught in our SPAM filter, which I check, but not every fifteen minutes.  I will, however, delete a comment if it is insulting or “content-free ranting”.  I haven’t deleted a comment in a long time.  Keep it civil, constructive, and non-insulting and all will be well.  I don’t “censor” negative comments that follow those guidelines.
  • The guys over at TMS Software have a nice free tool for you — TMS FTPUploader, a small free utility for your daily email routine that makes creating a link in your email in lieu of an attachment easier.  Cool.  And while you are there, give a look to some of the other excellent Delphi components that they have for sale.  Lots of very nice, and very innovative stuff.  And they are great guys to work with as well.
  • DataSnap has seen a lot of very powerful improvements over the last two releases, and one of them is the ability to give you complete control over the flow of data between client and the applciation server via filters.  The architecture is open, allowing you to write your own filters from processing the DataSnap stream.  Daniele Teti has done just that and has created DataSnap Filters Compendium (DSFC), a collection of nine DataSnap filters, released under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1.  This is very cool – both in the sense that it is cool technology, as well as in the sense that Daniele has made this available to the community.  Nice.
  • I’ve been working a little bit on the ShineOn project.  I have check-in rights, and have been spending some time familiarizing myself with the codebase.  It’s pretty cool – it’s an implementation of the Delphi RTL in Delphi Prism.  You know, SysUtils, DateUtils, etc.  It’s coming along, and should make porting library code from Delphi to Delphi Prism easier.  Check it out, and maybe even help out.

TurboPower Update #1

29
Sep

Wow – I think that my TurboPower blog post has generated more comments than any has in a while.  The response has been gratifyingly positive.  There have been a couple of issues and questions raised, so I’ll make a few further points:

  • Okay, first things first:  Is it Turbopower or TurboPower?
  • Please go to this one question survey and tell me what you think are the five most important projects in the list.
  • I want to be clear that this isn’t an “official” Embarcadero project.  I’m doing stuff “on company time” and off, but this is strictly a community project.  We Embarcadero folks are delighted that this code is “coming back to life”, but this is a more of a “Delphi Community” thing than anything else.
  • I’m going to be, for a very large degree, simply try to be a manager here.  I’m probably not going to do a lot of coding, but instead will be counting on you guys to do most of the development here.  I’m going to view my role here as a facilitator, cheerleader, and “Making Things Happen” type guy.
  • I’m not really up on how SourceForge works, so that will be my initial focus here – finding out what you can do on SourceForge and getting things updated.
  • I’m going to focus on getting these projects working for the post-Unicode world.  If the community wants to keep them working for the pre-Unicode world, that is great, and I’ll fully support that.  But the focus of my efforts will be on getting the projects working for current versions.  I know that this won’t make everyone happy, but given limited resources and focus, that seems like the obvious choice.

I am now tpsfadmin on SourceForge

28
Sep

There has been a lot of interest lately in the TurboPower projects on SourceForge.  Lots of folks have used Turbopower code in the past and are now wanting to bring this code forward to Delphi 2010.  There has been a lot of work done in this area already, but unfortunately, the SourceForge pages haven’t always reflected that.  Because there has really been only a few people with admin rights to the projets, folks have had to pull down the code, change it, and then post it somewhere else. (For instance, a whole  bunch of great stuff can be found at http://www.songbeamer.com/delphi/) .  Roman Kassebaum has also been doing some great work getting the code and components ready for Unicode and the newer versions of Delphi.

Over the weekend, I sent an email to the guy who had been the tpsfadmin (TurboPower SourceForge Administrator).  That account is the “godfather” for all the TurboPower projects on SourceForge.  I asked him what we could to open things up, and I was quite pleased and not a little surprised when he simply sent me the “crown jewels”.  So today I logged in, changed the password, and pointed the email address for the account to my gmail.com account.

And so I’m feeling a bit heady about this.   I’m definitely not drunk with supremacy just yet, but as Spiderman said, with great power comes great responsibilities.  There is a lot of amazing code here, and I want to make sure that as much of it gets made updated and made available to the community as possible.  But I should note that this isn’t an “officially sponsored” Embarcadero deal.  This is at best “semi-official”.  We aren’t officially taking over corporate sponsorship of these projects or anything like that.

Anyway, here are some further notes;

  • I’ll be going through all 19 projects and checking their status, updating their web pages, and getting the all up to date
  • If you have Turbopower code that you’ve worked on and haven’t been able to get checked in, let me know and we’ll make that happen.
  • I think I”m going to pretty much be using Subversion going forward.  I’ll be making sure that all the projects have Subversion access.
  • I think, too, that I’ll put up another little “mini-survey” to ask what are the most popular of the projects.  That ought to give all of us a better idea of which projects should be focused on first.

I’m very interested in hearing what the community has to say here.  Given that these projects are all open source, community involvement and community input and feedback are critical here.  I know there are a lot of you out there that have done a lot of work to maintain things, and I want to make sure that your work is recognized and incorporated for the good of the project as a whole.

As I said, this was pretty much a surprise, but I’m delighted at how things are working out.  This should be really fun, and we can really get things rolling again with this great code.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #129

18
Sep
  • Nice writeup about Delphi 2010 in Dr. Dobbs.  Money quote:  “And even with all the views activated, the IDE response remained lightning fast throughout my hours of testing it for this review.” (Thanks to Marco for the tweet pointing me to this article….)
  • Alex Ciobanu works in our Iasi, Romania office as a document writer, and he does a lot of terrific work.  Many of the great articles in the RAD Studio DocWiki are written by Alex, and they are very good.  If you aren’t reading his blog, you should be.  In addition, he has some cool projects going, such as the DeHL Library which is a nice set of classes that take advantage of some of the new language features in Delphi 2009.   A complete list of features is here.  It also has a home on Google Code.  There is some seriously nice code in there.  Take a look.
  • Speaking of wikis, Delphi Prism has a wiki as well. There is a lot of good content there, and of course, you are highly encouraged to add to it, update it, correct it, enhance it, whatever.  You can log in with our Embarcadero Developer Network account and contribute to the cause. 
  • Got a note from Ann Lynnworth of HREF.com.  The HREF folks recently acquired Rubicon, and they have put up a free version of Rubicon on CodeCentral. Rubicon is a really powerful text search engine for databases.  It’s the technology that powers the Tamaracka newsgroup search engine, so if you want to get a feel for what it can do, you can visit that venerable newsgroup archive. (I remember using their newsgroup archive searching stuff way back in the early days of Delphi….)  The license on the free version limits the number of words that can be indexed and there is a time-delay, but it should be good for lighter-trafficked sites or trialing. 
  • Darren Kosinski helps you navigate through your code.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #128

17
Sep

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #127

14
Sep

Cool Stuff with Delphi #28

12
Sep

PowerArchiver 2010

“PowerArchiver 2010 offers hundreds of features, yet remains easy to use, small and fast. Novice users will find a familiar interface complete with tutorial and detailed help, while more experienced users can take advantage of full Explorer integration, multiple encryption methods and advanced compression algorithms.”

What are you doing with Embarcadero Tools?

11
Sep

Tim Del Chiaro, RAD Studio Marketing Manager is asking a good question:  What have you built with Delphi and other Embarcadero Products? We’d love to know.  So, now is your chance to brag about that cool application you’ve been building all these years.  You can help us get the word out about what Delphi and our other tools can do by, well, telling us what you do with Delphi and our other tools.

What are your favorite GExperts features?

11
Sep

If you are a GExperts user, I’m interested in knowing what your five favorite features of that outstanding Delphi Add-in are.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=adxkD_2bIluwT5FgQf8bwSag_3d_3d

It’s a nice, short (two question) survey. Please take the minute or two to fill it out if you care to.

Thanks very much.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #126

10
Sep

Aspect Oriented Programming with Delphi Prism

09
Sep

I’ve created a short, eleven minute video showing the basics of Aspect Oriented Programming with Delphi Prism.  AOP is a really cool, powerful, and easy to use language feature of Delphi Prism.

You can read more about AOP  and how it works on Wikipedia.  You can read more about the specifics of Aspect Oriented Programming with Delphi Prism on the Delphi Prism Wiki.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #125

07
Sep

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #124

05
Sep
  • A bunch of guys here on the R&D team are hard at work putting together their CodeRage 4 presentations.  Most of the talks will concentrate on the new things you can do with RAD Studio 2010, including new IDE and VCL features. If you haven’t registered yet, I’d strongly recommend that you do so. 

196x196_logo

StackoverflowAd

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #123

31
Aug
  • Hey, RAD Studio 2010 is great – but don’t just take my word for it
  • And hey, if you have something great to say about RAD Studio 2010 and want the world to know it, please feel free to email me with your comments.   We’d love to have your thoughts included.
  • Our friends at TMS Software are hard at work.  They are updating their impressive array of VCL components to work with RAD Studio 2010.  I never cease to be amazed at the cool stuff that these guys come up with.  Bruno and his team are good guys, give good support, and are good partners.
  • This has been sitting in my inbox too long:  Many of you guys use InnoSetup – the very powerful and easy to use installation engine.  Kyle Miller wrote me to update me on it.  He writes: “I thought I would drop a line about a piece of news that may not have been mentioned in the Delphi feeds. Inno Setup, the very popular freeware installer, has been languishing in Delphi 2 & 3 code a many,many years. It looks like Jordan has finally brought Inno Setup into the 21 century by upgrading the code to Delphi 2009. His latest release is 5.3 beta and the What’s New notes mention Delphi 2009.”  Thanks for the update, Kyle, and thanks to Jordan Russell for the long support and for proving once again that Delphi is a powerful, capable development platform.
  • Allen Bauer has had a couple of interesting posts about the new  “delayed” directive.  An interesting side-note on the second one is the use of the new language feature: class constructors and class destructors.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #122

27
Aug

RAD Studio 2010 is Now Available

25
Aug

Well, after a lot of hard work, RAD Studio 2010 is now available.  You can buy it this very minute at our shop site and from our excellent partners around the world

Our team put in a lot of hard work and brain power to get this release done.  Quality continues to be the top feature in the product.  The language has advanced with new RTTI and Attributes, DataSnap now supports callbacks and data stream filtering, the IDE is more productive than ever with IDE Insight, and the VCL moves forward with gesturing and other goodies.  This is a cool release, and it was fun to develop. 

Some folks are blogging about it:

This new release also includes Delphi Prism 2010.  If you haven’t given Delphi Prism a look, you should.  Delphi Prism gives you your beloved syntax and language with full access to the .Net 3.5 Framework, including ASP.NET, WinForms, WPF, and Silverlight.  Delphi Prism 2010 includes some new capabilities including the ability to connect to DataSnap servers with the new features from Delphi 2010, as well as Aspect Oriented Programming built into the language.  Delphi Prism continues to lead the pack in language capabilities and in being the best .Net development solution for Delphi developers.

Also, the great “Buy One Get One Free” offer has been extended for another month until 24 September, so you can upgrade to 2010 and get another Embarcadero tool (of and equal or lesser value) for free.  That’s tough to pass up.

QC-based Features in RAD Studio 2010

25
Aug

There have been a bunch of sneak peaks and blog posts and a lot of attention paid to some of the “flagship” features in Delphi 2010 like Gestures, DataSnap, Firebird connectivity, IDE Insight, the Code Formatter, and more.  Cool stuff, to be sure (and you can find out more about all of these cool things by attending CodeRage 4 next month.)

“Big” features are always nice and very welcome, but sometimes it is the little things that can make a big difference as well.  Pursuant to that, at the beginning of the development cycle for RAD Studio 2010, we did a pretty thorough run through of the feature and enhancement requests in Quality Central, looking not only for the major items, but also for the smaller things that can really make a difference in usability.

The result of that can be seen in this QC query which has over 80 enhancements and features implemented in response to QC feature requests — more if you count the ones submitted by field testers.  A few of those were probably implemented in earlier versions, and some were the result of field test requests, but the large majority of them are good old fashioned customer requests that we implemented because you guys asked for them.

Now, that’s not nearly enough.  There are tons more great ideas tucked away in Quality Central, and we’ll continue to mine them to find more and better ways to continue Delphi’s lead as the most productive, power Windows development environment on the market.

FAQ about the W32/Induc-A Virus (Compile-A-Virus)

24
Aug

We posted an FAQ about the W32/Induc-A Virus.  Hopefully it will answer those, well, questions that are frequently getting asked.  :-)  The virus is easy to detect and easy to fix and easy to prevent.

To highlight a few things:

  • This only affects older versions of Delphi – versions 4 – 7 specifically.
  • The virus isn’t malicious; it doesn’t actually do anything other than replicate itself.  It is really easy to remove, as the FAQ describes.
  • The particular technique used by the virus isn’t specific or unique to Delphi.  It can be used against almost any programming environment.  As Craig Stuntz notes in his blog, this technique was first described 25 years ago
  • There is a lot of press interest in this, and rightly so.  Delphi is a very popular development environment with over 1.7 million users world-wide. Naturally such a virus will garner attention.
  • Just another reminder to keep your anti-virus software current and up to date.

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #121

21
Aug

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #120

19
Aug

*Yet Another Cool Little Feature

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #119

17
Aug
  • Now this is pure genius.
  • Now here’s a question for you:  Does a product even need a “README” anymore?  I mean, the classic “README.TXT” was originally supposed to be for “late breaking changes and other information that couldn’t make it into the help”, etc.  But in the day and age, shouldn’t that just be an article on the web, and the text in a readme would be “For late breaking information, go to <some link>”?  I suppose over time a readme has taken on the role of the “GettingStarted.txt”, but shouldn’t such a document be called, well, “GettingStarted.txt”?  In any event, our READMEs have started to take on a more generic tone as we put the “late-breaking” stuff on the web.  I suspect in the future, the notion of “readme” and other files will be come quaint and simply contain not a lot more than links to websites.
  • And along that same vein – why is the default behavior of an office phone to make an “internal” call.  Do you call more to internal numbers?  I almost never do that.  In the rare times when I do make a phone call (instead of IM, email, or Skype), it is almost always to a number outside our phone system. Should office phones default to dialing out, and make it so that you have to dial ‘9’ to get an internal number?
  • Change Manager will now support Interbase.  Look for this to be a trend among DatabaseGear tools.
  • The Delphi language continues to press forward.  Delphi 2010 will include new Run-time Type Information that should blow the baffles off the old system.  One nice thing that falls out from that is [Attributes].  Malcolm Groves has the goods, with a promise of more to come.
  • Have I mentioned VIsualSVN Server lately?  I can’t get enough of this tool.  First, I think most of us will agree that Subversion is very cool.  VisualSVN Server will set up your Subversion server in, like, one minute. Seriously.  You download it and install it, and – Boom! – you are done.  That’s it.  SVN is up and running.  The easy to use console app will provide you with a URL, and you are off to the races.  Get TortoiseSVN or the command line tool, and you are a source control management fool.  I can’t say enough about this excellent, totally free tool.

CodeRage 4 – September 8 – 11, 2009

13
Aug

Christine Ellis just posted this on our newsgroups:

Hosted on the Embarcadero Developer Network, CodeRage is four full days of 100% online technical sessions focused on software development and data management issues which you can attend from wherever you like to log in.  It’s bringing you top industry speakers, technologists, and industry practitioners to present on a wide variety of developer topics, a raging confluence of conveniently-delivered information you can’t get anywhere else.  And it’s FREE!

CodeRage 4 includes sessions covering Embarcadero products such as C++Builder®, Delphi®, Delphi® for PHP, Delphi Prism, InterBase® SMP, JBuilder® and RAD Studio.  You’ll even find sessions on our award winning database products included in the All-Access suite as well! 

Here’s what you’ll get from CodeRage:
* More than 90 FREE technical sessions led by industry and Embarcadero product experts
* An interactive chat area to converse with other software development professionals around the globe, working hard on the same technologies you do!
* Gain knowledge about optimizing your use of the world’s leading software development and database management tools from Embarcadero Technologies.
* Boost your development skills by learning from your peers on their best tips, tricks and processes for software development.
* Visit the virtual exhibit hall – see all the new HOT products out there

*See the complete list of sessions at http://conferences.embarcadero.com/coderage/sessions to pick which ones you want to attend.*

Registration is simple!  Just visit the CodeRage 4 Web site (http://conferences.embarcadero.com/coderage) and click the "Register Now" button to sign up for any or ALL of the education and training session days.

We can’t wait to "see" you to CodeRage 4!  We hope you’ll join us.

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