New article series on Delphi and C++ builder

It’s been a while since I’ve done some hardcore Delphi articles, and since that is now my job I am happy that I can finally allocate a good chunk of time for that work. Dont worry, there will be plenty of Smart Pascal content too – but I think it’s time to clean up the blog situation a bit. This blog is personal and thus contains a pot-pourri of topics, from programming to 3d printing, embedded hardware to retro-gaming. It’s a fun blog, I enjoy being able to write about things I’m passionate about, but having one blog for each topic makes more sense.

So in the near future I think it’s good that I publish Smart Mobile Studio content (except random stuff and drive-by posts) to http://www.smartmobilestudio.com, and Delphi to Embarcadero’s blog server. If nothing else it will be easier for the readers to deal with. If you only want to read about my Delphi escapades then embedded and retro stuff is not always interesting.

Deep dive into Delphi and C++ builder

So what can be cool to write about? I spent the better part of last weekend pondering this. Delphi articles have a little blind spot between beginner and advanced that I would like to focus on. There are plenty of “learn Delphi” articles out there, and there are likewise a lot of very advanced topics. So hopefully my first series will hit where it should, and be interesting for those in between.

Let’s peek under the hood!

Right, so the last time I read about database coding, and I mean “making your own database engine” was at least 10 years ago. The Delphi community has always been blessed with a large group of insightful and productive people, people who share their knowledge and help others. But everyone is working on something and finding the time to deep dive into subjects like this is not always easy. So hopefully my series on this will at least inspire people to experiment, try new things and fall in love with Delphi like I did.

The second article series that I am working on right now, is getting to grips with C++ builder. This is actually a very fun experiment since it serves more than a single function; I mean, just how hard is it for a Delphi developer to learn C++ ? What can Embarcadero do to help developers feel comfortable on both platforms? What are the benefits for a Delphi developer to learn C/C++?

 

C++ builder Community Edition rocks!

And yes I have had more than one episode where the new concepts drove me up the wall. It would be the world’s shortest article-series if Delphi Developer didn’t have my back and I didn’t buy books. Say what you will about modern programming, but sometimes you just need to sit down, turn off the computer, and read. Old school but effective.

Reflections

Embarcadero is very different from what I expected. Before I worked here (which is still a bit surrealistic) I envisioned a stereotypical american company, located in some tall office building; utterly remote from its users and the needs of the punters in the field. This past week has forced me to reflect more than I would have liked, and my armour of strong opinions (if not arrogance) has a very visible dent; because the company that has welcomed me with open arms is everything but that imaginary stereotype.

Et in Borland ego sum

The core of Embarcadero turned out to be a team of dedicated developers that are literally bending backwards to help as many developers as possible. I left yesterdays meeting with a taste of shame in my mouth, because in my blog I have given at least two of the people who now welcomed me, a less than fortunate overhaul in the past. Yet they turned out to be human beings with the exact same interests, passions and goals as myself.

Building large-scale development tools is really hard work. Seriously. As a developer you forget things like marketing, the sales apparatus, the level of support a developer will need, documentation, tutorials. The amount of requests, conflicting requests that is, from users is overwhelming. You have users who focus on mobile who don’t care about legacy VCL support, then you have people who very much need VCL legacy support and dont care at all about mobile platforms; It’s a huge list of groups, topics and goals that is constantly shifting and needs prioritization.

But all in all the Delphi community and Embarcadero is in good shape. They have worked through a lot of old baggage that simply had to be transitioned, and the result is the change we see now: community editions and better dialog with the users. Compare that to the situation we had five years ago, or eight years ago for that matter. The changes have been many and the road long -but with a purpose: Delphi is growing at a healthy rate again.

What will you need and what will we do?

The goal of the Delphi article is to implement the underlying mechanics of a database. I’m not talking about a “file of record” here or something like that, but a page and sequence based filestream and it’s support apparatus for managing blocks and available resources. This forms the basis of all databases, large or small. So we will be coding the nitty-gritty that has to be in place before you venture into expression parsing.

If time allows I will implement support for filters, but naturally a full SQL parser would be over the top. The techniques demonstrated should be more than enough for a budding young developer to take the ball and run with it. The filter function is somewhat close to a “select” statement – and the essence of expression parsing will be in the filter code.

Note: I will skip memory mapping techniques, for one reason only: it can get in the way of understanding the core principles. Once you have the principles under wraps – memory mapping is the natural next step and evolution of the thoughts involved, so it will fall into place in due time.

You wont need anything special, just Delphi. Most of the code will be classical object pascal, but the parser will throw in some generics and operators, so this is a good time to download the community edition or upgrade to a compiler from this century.

The C/C++ articles will likewise have zero dependencies except the community edition of C++ builder. I went out and bought two books, C++ Primer fifth edition and The C++ programming language by Bjarne Stroustrup himself. Which should be on presciption because i fell at sleep

My frontal lobe is already reduced to jello at the sight of these books, but let’s jump in with both feet and see what we make of it from a Delphi developers point of view. I can’t imagine it can be more of a mess than raw webassembly, but C/C++ has a wingspan that rivals even Delphi so it’s wise not to underestimate the curriculum.

OK, let’s get cracking! I will see you all shortly and post the first Delphi article.