Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene #159
02 Jun
- Delphi Prism 2011 is now available for purchase. There are some very cool features in it, the biggest of which is integration into Visual Studio 2010 and complete support for the .Net 4.0 framework. It also includes CodeSite Delphi Prism Edition, which gives you an amazing view into your code. And here is another cool thing: Buy RAD Studio 2010 and get a free upgrade to Delphi Prism 2011.
- Delphi Programming is now at #9 with two up green arrows, and Objective-C has shot like a bullet into the Top 10.
- I think some of you have been hearing about the Tool Cloud. We have a web page that talks about it, including some PDF’s for your reading pleasure. Delphi and RAD Studio are going to become part of the Tool Cloud in the coming releases, and so you might want to check it out. Let me clear, though, that if you aren’t interested in the Tool Cloud, you don’t have to participate. You’ll still be able to get your Delphi like you always have. But if you are interested in the Tool Cloud for RAD Studio, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on there.
- Have you signed up for Delphi Live yet? We are looking forward to seeing you there.
- More good stuff from Marco about the under-appreciated (and under-utilized, even by us) Help Insight feature. For the record, I have provided copious Help Insight comments for TSmiley. I actually found it rather fun to write the comments, and I personally don’t mind them in the code and don’t view them as “clutter”. A cool IDE feature would be to “auto hide all XMLDoc comments” or something like that.
It is buy RAD Studio 2010 and get Prism 2011 free (the new one, not 2010).
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:11 pmIt doesn’t look like you’re on the speakers list for Delphi Live this year, Nick. It also doesn’t look like they’ve got a schedule prepared yet. I find those both a bit unfortunate.
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:11 pmAn even better IDE feature for XMLDoc comments would be to format them in the IDE to hide the tags, but leave the comments, making them look like nice documentation.
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:12 pm@Mason: They have R&D sessions planned, but they won’t show up until they publish the schedule. The "What’s Cooking in the Lab" will be staffed by Nick, R&D and Developer Relations most likely.
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:14 pmJim –
Thanks, I fixed the error.
We will probably be doing some "What’s New, What’s Cooking" kind of event, as well as some sort of a meet the team event.
Nick
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:27 pmHi Nick,
some time ago I’ve implemented a workaround as follows: enclose the xmldoc comments in ‘xmldoc’ regions, and install a keyboard binding to quickly show/hide them all with Ctrl+Shift+D.
Blog: http://tondrej.blogspot.com/2006/03/xml-documentation-in-delphi-2006.html
Code: http://cc.embarcadero.com/Item/23955
June 2nd, 2010 at 1:13 pmNew (and old) compiler’s features of Delphi Prism are really nice.
June 2nd, 2010 at 2:56 pmWhen we will have some of this in the native Delphi?
There are any plan?
The Prism press release clearly states: "…develop cross-platform applications on Mac OS X, and even create iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad applications". Isn’t that clearly contradicted by Apple’s infamous iPhone developer license that effectively bans Mono/.NET?
Can someone from Embarcadero please comment?
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:12 pmM J Marshall –
The current version of the iPhone app store allows development with MonoTouch.
The new license is only in effect for the beta version of the iPhone, and thus isn’t in force yet.
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:17 pmXMLDoc is an abomination. You should have incorporated Doc-o-matic style natural language documentation extraction YEARS ago (and you still could).
Just because Visual Studio embraced XML that shouldn’t stop Embarcadero from, oh, what’s the word… begins with "i"… ah yes… INNOVATING (or IMPROVING). Ticking the box that says "we do it the same as XYZ" is the very definition of s product that is BEHIND the curve and FOLLOWING the competition.
Being DIFFERENT is the only way to be BETTER.
At the very least you should re-instate/complete the facility to maintain documentation separately from the code.
YOU may find that it doesn’t clutter the code, but there are TWO distinct forms of documentation that are needed when creating re-usable components:
1) "How to use it" documentation
2) "How to understand the way it works" documentation
It is ONLY the 2nd type that should be in the code. The 1st type really has no business being tied to the code itself and requiring it to be there leads to all sorts of jumbled noise and confusion as the two different sets of documentation seek to differentiate and separate themselves from each other.
Additionally, it is ONLY the 1st type that really needs to worry about translation to other languages, and again, allowing such documentation to be provided separately from the source code would make this easier.
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:34 pm"You’ll still be able to get your Delphi like you always have."
OK, that’s good information. I was beginning to panic.
@Joylon: sometimes the competition gets an idea that really advances the programming process. If you have genuine improvements to add to the concept, well and good. But changing it just for the sake of changing it is not. (there could be legal aspects, of course).
Separating documentation from the code leads to the two drifting apart. (even happens even if they are next to each other!) Some form of non-intrusive integration is better.
If we can stop thinking of code in terms of a flat text file and recognize that we write code with a sophisticated IDE with hide/expand functions (and not just a text editor) we can stop worrying about "clutter".
Indeed, with appropriately designed tools, it even becomes irrelevant where the description is physically stored. I just want to get the help I need where I need it and only the help I need, and that is what Insight/Intellisense does (if it worked properly…)
Remember the days when F1 would bring up the entire help file? And how Borand’s innovation of only bringing up the help of what you highlighted? This is refinement of that concept.
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:51 amWhile I wouldn’t go so far as to call XMLDoc an "abomination", I think Joylon’s sorta on the right track. XML is a bloated mess, and just about anything that it gets used for is usually overkill. It would be nice if we had something simpler.
June 3rd, 2010 at 7:41 amI also am one of those who doesn’t like xmldoc, i think it pollutes my code.
On the other side when writing php or java code, php/java doc is much much cleaner, and i really enjoy reading it.
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:13 amI’m a big fan of the built in XMLDoc stuff. I think the VCL should be EXTENSIVELY documented with it. It makes great sense to me for the code and documentation to co-exist. Aside from allowing the IDE to easily build the help tips, it keeps the help near the code it refers to which makes keeping the 2 in sync a much more straightforward affair. Alter code, alter help. Rebuild code, help rebuilds. - no need to fire up tools, track down entries, build help which may or may not stay in sync.
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:01 pm@Jolyon: different is not always better. Often it is only different or worse.
Also I disagree with your comment about the types of comments that should be in the code, pretty much completely. Since the XMLDoc stuff is actually optional, I would suggest the current method allows you to not use it, and me to use it - the best of both worlds.
Understanding, of course, that XMLDoc and the related tooltips are no substitute for a good help file and higher level documentation which should really cover "how to use all of this together effectively"
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:06 pm@Nick Hodges
"Delphi Programming is now at #9 with two up green arrows"
That is standing from last month May 2010. TIOBE is always late with their monthly updates.
If you find TIOBE important I suggest you add "Delphi Programming" to all the relevant pages of the Embarcadero site, because this is how this ranking is made. E.g. The Delphi language guide could have this tag on its pages.
http://tinyurl.com/DelphiLanguage2009
June 3rd, 2010 at 8:35 pmRif –
Yep, every time Tiobe sees "Delphi Programming", then the index goes up. That is why I type "Delphi Programming" as much as I can, and why I encourage all of you fine people to type "Delphi Programming" as much a you can as well.
June 4th, 2010 at 6:42 am