The Delphi Advocacy Group

I posted this request / challenge to The Delphi Advocacy Group. You can follow the discussion and contribute your comments there if you like.

This group is the Delphi Advocacy Group. I am curious if anyone out there is interested in doing some serious advocating of Delphi. I have a few ideas and would love to bounce them off some other interested people.

What I have planned will be of mutual benefit of all those involved (as well as our favorite tool) but only if those involved are serious about doing this. I know we have 174 members right now. I also know that many of us are not using Delphi as our primary tool any more - not as our choice, and with much protest I am sure. I am now doing C# development in Visual Studio (shudder!)

What I expect is that we will start a smaller group of those few who are serious, and then we can pull from this larger group as we need additional support.

I was thinking maybe we might have a TDAG bof (Birds Of a Feather) at BorCon 2004 if there is enough interest. I know Robert and Nick are on this list and will be there. Anyone else?

I see Aughtly owns tdag.org through August of next year. Hopefully we can put that to good use as well.

Now is a great time to act with the pending release of Delphi 9, which Borland is promising will knock our socks off. Here's hoping!

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I'll tip my hand. Delphi's main trouble is image. It is perceived as a "boutique language" by many people, if they have even heard of it (either that or they think it died when Microsoft took Anders). So what we do is increase the public perception and awareness of Delphi. If we look at how people develop their perceptions and awareness about a tool or technology we see that much of it comes from the news media (development magazines, conferences, web sites, etc.)

How often do you see a article about Delphi from a non-Delphi news source? Fairly rarely. What I am suggesting (among other things) is that we start an article writing campaign. Sure, we could write articles for Borland Developers Network, Delphi Informant or The Delphi Magazine. What I am suggesting is that we target other, more general magazines.

Delphi 8 recently won two awards from non-Delphi magazines:

2004 .NET People's Choice Winner best IDE / Editor for MSD2D.com http://www.msd2d.com/PeoplesChoice_result2004.aspx (link broken / expired)

Best Development Tool from Best of TechEd Europe 2004 Award Winner. http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/43218/43218.html

Oddly I doubt there are many article about Delphi in these magazines. Typically a Delphi developer keeps to themselves unless they are proselyting, and then they end up in religious wars.

There are three types of Delphi articles we can write for non-Delphi magazines:

1) An article that highlights a unique feature of Delphi in a non-biased way (from a technical standpoint, not a "review" or "fan" article)

2) An article that covers a general programming topic, but uses Delphi code in the examples. This would be effective since it would grab peoples attention by talking about some general concept without scarring them off by having "Delphi" in the title.

3) An article that reviews Delphi, or a related tool or technology.

Magazines love people to submit articles. In fact they usually pay people to do it. I have previously spoken to an editor for Dr. Dobbs and he said that if someone would just submit an article about Delphi he would publish it.

Dr. Dobbs is just one of many general development magazines. There are a number of magazines that cover Web Services or .NET development specifically. Delphi does all of that, but there are no articles about it in these magazines. Lets fix that.

Now I know that we are not all writers, but writing requires more then just writers, we need grammatical and technical reviewers. So if some one wants to write and then everyone else can review the articles and provide constructive feedback then that would be a huge help. Other times we might collaborate on articles.

So what is the benefit to those who participate? Borland offers a number of programs through developer relations to benefit people who support their tools. Typically you receive free copies of any development tools you support. Now I am not advocating that Borland send free copies to everyone on this list, but for those who make a considerable contribution to the effort I would suspect they would gladly help us out.

A few years back I co-contributed a chapter on Kylix to a book on .NET web services. I was surprised at Borland's eagerness to help us out. I know through their Tools and Components Partner program they also provide development tools. Borland is very generous to those who help them.

Also anyone who writes articles will be getting paid from the magazines that publish their work. For anyone who works as a consultant or trainer this will increase their exposure and make them more valuable. For the rest of us in the employ of some company we are aware of the fact that lay off's happen and companies go out of business, and having writing credit on your resume really helps you stand out from the rest of the crowd.

There are a lot of talented people on this list. I know if we can get a commitment from a few you to work together on this we can have a huge impact. If we can save but one soul from the perils of using an inferior development tool then it will all be worth it (sorry, switched into proselyting mode again). If we can get a free copy of Delphi, make a few bucks and improve our resumes along the way then all the better.

I already have a couple articles in the hopper that need some feedback and editing, so we can hit the ground running if there is any interest.

Going to BorCon

Well, it looks like I will be going to BorCon 2004. I am excited to see DiamondBack, the next version of Delphi (shall we call it Delphi 9?) as well as see everything else that is going on in the world of software development.

Delphi 9 is especially exciting since Delphi follows the opposite pattern from the Star Trek movies. While every even Star Trek movie rocked, every odd Delphi also rocks! Not to say the odd Star Trek movies, or even Delphi releases are all that terrible (ignoring Star Trek 1 and Delphi 4), but that their counterparts are just that much better.

Let me illustrate:

• Delphi 1 - Introducing true RAD!
• Delphi 3 - Fabulous COM!
• Delphi 5 - More improvements then I can list! Some people still say this is the best!
• Delphi 7 - Cross platform with Kylix or .NET (preview) as well as Web Services!
• Delphi 9 - Guess you will need to go to BorCon. ..

I am not trying to say the even numbered ones were that bad. Just as Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was a good movie too. . . The even numbered Delphi releases were actually revolutionary:

• Delphi 2 - 32-bits!
• Delphi 4 - (Suggestions anyone? I didn't use this one. . .)
• Delphi 6 - Web Services and Kylix
• Delphi 8 - .NET

It just seems that there are more applications written in the odd numbered releases. People upgrade to the odd numbered releases quicker. A lot of people only upgrade to the odd releases (skipping the even ones). The odd numbered ones tend to have more excitement about them, and people keep using them for longer (well at least until the next odd numbered release).

I am glad one of the major development tools providers for the Microsoft platform still supports their developers with updated releases and conferences. . . .

See you all at BorCon!

Microsoft PDC Canceled

Microsoft has canceled PDC 2004 and postponed PDC 2005.

PDC 2005 was originally scheduled for spring 2005, but it has been pushed back to at least the fall. If Microsoft follows their trends as of late to continue pushing things back then PDC 2005 might be canceled as well (or moved to 2006, depending on how you look at it).

A visit to PDC Central shows it still has not been updated since 2003. My first inclination is that PDC was canceled due to lack of interest. This may only be part of the cause. Microsoft has gone a really long time without a major release as of late. It is used to be that they had a release every year, every other year at most. These days their release cycle keeps getting longer and longer. Not sure what this is an indicator of. . . .

UPDATE: Turns out Microsoft only has PDC every 2 years. In related news, PDC 2005 has been announced.

INETA

CONGRATULATIONS! Your group (Boise Software Developers Group) has been approved to be an INETA member based on your dedication to the .NET user group community. Welcome to INETA! If you have any questions about the goals of INETA, or if I can personally be a source of encouragement and information for you, do not hesitate to drop me an email!

I see INETA as a way for the user groups (especially through the groups leadership) to connect with other user groups', answer each other's questions, and generally support each other. I hope you'll be interested in participating as an INETA member group as INETA continues to evolve.

As you may know, INETA maintains a Speakers Bureau and will be happy to provide a nationally known industry guru to speak at one of your meetings. In addition, INETA will provide money for refreshments (pizza, soda, etc) for this event as well. Just go to the Speakers Bureau tab on the INETA site and file out the form to request a speaker.

We publish a monthly newsletter which you will start receiving at the beginning of next month. You can find past newsletters in the Repository on the INETA Website. We would love to have you submit an article on any user group related subject or a write up and pictures of a recent meeting. We are looking for community building information not technical, for the newsletter.

Best regards,

Julia Lerman

Extrapolated Facts

I have started a second blog. This is a personal blog where I will post things that are not really related to the group or programming. There may be some programming related posts there too, just as there may be some non-programming related posts here. Just to make things more confusing.

Wanted: Delphi Developer in Beaverton, Oregon

Senior Software Developer in Beaverton, Oregon

Healthcare software company looking for Senior Software Developer to join our outstanding development team. Contribute to the development and implementation of core company products in a dynamic, positive environment.

• Technical Requirements: 7+ years software development experience, 4+ years of Delphi, 2+ years SQL/Database development.
• Personal Requirements: Proven leadership and interpersonal skills, self-motivated, innovative.
• Preferred Requirements: knowledge of healthcare EDI and/or hospital business operations.

EEOC with great medical benefits, profit sharing and company funded IRA. Send resumes to srdev2004@yahoo.com

The Delphi "with" statement

I agree with Hallvard on his comments about the with statement, as well as his follow-up. One big problem I find in dealing with other coders is they would rather have syntactical sugar over using comments and formatting in their code. I suspect the reason his reader likes his version using the "with" statement is because it offsets the code in a block. There is not reason you couldn't do this:

var
  a: TForm1;
begin
  // 'a' is a local reference to the global Form1
  // which is not the current form referenced by self
  a := Form1;

  // we use 'a' here as a short hand for
  // setting a few properties
  //-------------------------
    a.foo := 123;
    a.bar := 'xyz';
    a.Caption := 'Test';

  // finished using 'a'
  a := nil;

  // now setting properties on the current form
  Caption := 'Foo Bar';
end;

You could even make a comment about using a instead of a with statement to make the code more readable and easier to debug / maintain. What really gets me about other people's comments is usually they comment the obvious, and ignore the obscure. Comments like these drive me crazy:

//------------------------
// procedure name FooBar
//------------------------
procedure FooBar;

Sometimes they even go so far as to tell me the name and types of the parameters. This is information I can easily obtain by reading the source code. It would be nice if they told me what FooBar does and what is expected in the parameters.

August 2004 Meeting Wrap-Up

We had a great turn out last night. Steve was planning to share Mono with everyone, but had a grundle of technical difficulties that prevented that. Now he is going to share twice as much Mono in September! If you really can't wait until then, head over to Ars Technica for their article on Mono.

We discussed the need for Virtual Machines. Virtual machines allow to have multiple, different OS's installed and running simultaneously on the same PC. This can be useful for testing (since the virtual machines are isolated and can roll back to previous states) or development environments. Once again Ars Tehnica has a comparison between VMWare and Microsoft Virtual PC (previously of Connectix). They ranked VMWare a higher then Virtual PC, even though it costs a bit more. VMWare out performed Virtual PC, and in some cases out performed the host system. If you are on a really tight budget, or need to run a virtual machine on a non IA-32 compatible CPU check out Boch, the Open Source IA-32 Emulator. It will run any IA-32 (aka x86) OS on just about anything.

In case you haven't heard about Microsoft's Express products, you might want to check them out. These currently beta products are development tools for the .NET framework version 2.0. While in beta they are free, but after beta the plan is to charge less then $100 per product. Their target is non-professional programmers.

Steve pointed out a useful CD and DVD burning program called Burn 4 Free (who's site seems to be currently having some trouble). This free utility makes it easy to burn and copy most any format of CD or DVD. It supports all kinds of data types, drives and languages.

Since Richard Hundhausen wasn't able to attend we went out to his blog to catch up on his news. We also chatted with him on-line a little bit from Tampa.

If you are up for some competitive programming with cash prizes then you might want to check out TopCoder and their 2004 TopCoder Open, which is sponsored by Microsoft with $150,000 in prizes. Computer Associates is also offering a $1 million dollar bounty for tools to help people migrate to their open source Ingres database.

For anyone with a need to create a diagram, but who doesn't have access to Visio (also now owned by Microsoft), you can use Dia. Not only is Dia free / open source, but it actually has some features not found in Visio. It uses gtk+ so it runs on most any platform. If you want to run it on a Win32 platform, then you will need a special version for Win32.

For those that like spicy food, head over to Flying Pie Pizza for their Double Habanero pizza. This spicy delicacy is only available for the month of August. Steve and I, along with a few friends, met their for a single habanero pizza this week. It was good and hot.

Finally we declared Code Complete finished and had a good discussion about what book to read next. Randy suggested The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World saying that it is easy and fun to read, and could save our careers. In the end we decided to go with Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design by Alan Shalloway and James R. Trott since we were in the move for a more nitty-gritty technical book. Steve is going to check the book out and give us a quick review first part of next week and then we will make reading assignments if everyone decides to go with that book.

Coming up. . . .

So as a reminder, September we will have Steve sharing Mono, possibly me with Code Rush for Visual Studio, and the first few chapters of our new book.

Rational will be here in October, and November has Chris with SharpDevelop.

See the next Delphi at BorCon 2004

"In-depth details on DiamondBack, the code name for the next Delphi release, will be shown throughout BorCon 2004 (US). If you use Delphi, you'll want to be there! "

From the list of sessions we can see that the next version of Delphi will in fact support both .NET and Win32. Looks like it will also have refactoring support. All of this in addition to the features found in the current two versions of Delphi. Sounds pretty exciting to me!

20 Questions

Want to play 20 Questions? This is a simple concept done really well. The basic concept is a binary search tree. The computer asks a question, and then depending on a yes or no answer it goes to another question until it runs out of questions, and then it knows the answer.

This one uses a fuzzier approach. Instead of just yes and no it takes multiple answers (maybe, unlikely, etc.) and it also keeps track of all the answers it gets, realizing that people disagree. The result is a system that is really good at guessing what you are thinking about in 20 questions or less.