Sunday, December 10, 2006

Delphi, from a fresh perspective...

Here it is December 10th and I guess I've been so busy helping build CodeGear and getting plans in place for Q1 '07 and beyond that I completely missed an excellent blog post by Steve Shaughnessy, the new Delphi database architect.  Steve outlines his experience in learning Delphi, the language, and the VCL framework.  I bring this up because as Steve states, he's been with Borland for 17 years and had somehow avoided ever having the priviledge of using Delphi (shock!  horror! oh, the humanity ;-).  I have truly appreciated his perspective, insight and fresh perspecitve.  A healthy team is always not only looking forward but is also looking back and re-evaulating past decisions and implementations.  While it is good to look at what can be improved upon, it is also very good to celebrate and highlight all those things that the team did right!  So I encourage you to read Steve's post and feel good about your decision to use Delphi.  And if you're evaluating Delphi, Steve's insights into learning Delphi after extensive experience with many other languages can be valuable.

6 comments:

  1. Working sundays! Thats the spirit! ;-)

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  2. And if anyone wants to hear another guy's reasons for optimism regarding CodeGear and Delphi, they can read what I wrote recently:


    http://blogs.slcdug.org/jjacobson/archive/2006/12/08/4874.aspx


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  3. I understand this is not comment to your blog article. But I find it the only way to ask you.


    Isn't it possible to add, say, compiler directive to Delphi in order to shorten variable description in .NET. For example,

    instead of writing

    Var Label1:System.Windows.Forms.label;

    we could write

    Var Label1:label;

    or

    Var Label1:SWF.label;

    and let compiler know that SWF=System.Windows.Forms;

    It would be better when creating objects on the fly,too. And it saved developers time to describe variables too long or when creating (calling constructors,filling properties and so on)

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  4. Ok, we will forgive him that he did not spend his earliest 7 years using Delphi, afterall how many can claim that they used Delphi before 1995?


    However the most recent 10 years at Borland without using Delphi - that we can not forgive easily :-).

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  5. If there's one thing that was done right it was the creation of Delphi itself. To see it return with, hopefully, some of the same spirit that surrounded and enlivened its early incarnations (e.g. Turbo) is cause for celebration.


    There's a lot of cynicism out there - and with justification. Here's hoping that the way that was lost has again been found.


    Good luck guys!

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  6. Impatient Delphi LoyalistDecember 14, 2006 at 10:39 PM

    What is innovation?


    http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han

    ReplyDelete

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