Delphi Dying? Think again, Tiobe

At the beginning of last week, Tiobe once again threw a punch at Object Pascal. Playing the whole “Delphi is dying” tune, while focusing on outdated and quite frankly irrelevant episodes from the past. Hoping no doubt, to leave the reader with an impression that Delphi is stuck in the 90s.

This is the same pattern we often see whenever Delphi or Object Pascal in general experience significant growth; or to be blunt, when the author cannot be bothered to think independently, but simply parrot hearsay and misinformation on autopilot.

It is lame, superficial and Tiobe’s biggest mistake to date.

Guess “alternative news” is no longer limited to individuals like Alex Jones

Just to underline the problem areas here. The ranking is based on their internal system (there is no standard for how to rank popularity), and while I have issues with how they build up their score, it’s ultimately the March editorial text that has caused irritation and shock. You don’t declare a language as dead when there are over 10 million developers using it. This type of editorial could have very real consequences – which in turn brings us to their ranking system and how they arrived at their conclusions.

I would have understood their statement if it was issued between 2007 and 2010, because Delphi was at that time transitioning between Borland and Embarcadero. But to issue something like this in 2020? After a decade worth of restoration, optimization, modernization and above all – forging a thriving community that goes from victory to victory month after month, year after year? It makes absolutely no sense.

Significant growth

In 2018 there were roughly six million Delphi developers (I worked at Embarcadero at the time), with a total estimate of ten million Object Pascal developers worldwide when counting all alternative compilers, dialects and indeed – known piracy issues.

“Tiobe failed stupendously in their data mining operation, they seem to be oblivious regarding the demographic in which the language is used”

Since that time Delphi has made strides into the universities in Scandinavia, South-America and the Middle-East. Turkey recently announced their dedication to native and archetypal software development with Delphi (provided free for students), which adds a whopping one million students to the already large body of users.

Embarcadero has slowly but steadily rebuilt much of the infrastructure that existed under Borland. From professional training at Embarcadero Academy, to entry level training at LearnDelphi.org. The Idera community pages likewise produce a large body of articles on a weekly basis. Comparing the Delphi and C++Builder ecosystem today with it’s tragic state back in 2010, is like day and night.

Training is available for both Enterprise level developers and students alike

With so much positive happening in the world of Object Pascal, Tiobe’s article comes across as a grave, intentional misrepresentation at worst, or an intellectual emergency at best. It is completely out of place and carries the tell-tell signs of an echo chamber.

Tiobe has lost all credibility

I have to be honest. I have never taken Tiobe that serious, because they have made to many mistakes in the past to have any form of credibility when it comes to Delphi and Object Pascal as a language. And when I say mistakes, I mean monumental blunders that just annihilate all possibility that they treat languages on equal footing.

“not only have Tiobe failed in their indexing, they have completely and utterly misunderstood the demographic in which the language is used”

If we go back a decade, Tiobe actually based their numbers on the keyword “Pascal”. In other words they excluded not just Delphi commits to GitHub, BitBucket and similar services – they also managed to exclude Freepascal and every subsequent dialect that signify Object Pascal as a whole. So for quite some time their entire statistics was based on the off chance that people typed “Pascal” in their project or commit entries.

To make matters worse, their search tech was not smart enough to recognize “Pascal” in composite words. So if you wrote “ObjectPascal” in a single word, the commit was excluded; As was “Freepascal”, “Smartpascal”, “Oxygenepascal” and variations using a hyphen (and the same for abbreviations).

Developers also use the term Lazarus and FPC interchangeably since Lazarus typically means people use the LCL, the visual framework used to write desktop applications with Freepascal. So while Freepascal has nothing to do with Delphi in terms of intellectual property, the two compilers are used by the community as a whole.

But let’s look at why Tiobe’s indexing fails for Delphi. Just what are they doing wrong?

• Delphi has been around for 25 years, and it’s roots stretch back to the birth of C. Using Stack Overflow as an indicator for popularity is ludacris, since the majority of errors and problems have been largely ironed out in the past, leaving only extremely advanced and rare topics. If problems is the criteria, then I guess that explains why C# and Java soars in the ranking.
• Nobody searches google for “Delphi programming”. You search for explicit topics like composite polygon clipping with GDI+ and then add “delphi” to limit the search to said language. Just like C/C++, Object Pascal is an archetypal language. It stretches from kernel work with inline assembly, to cloud services and HTML5 rendering. So the topics people search for are usually straight out of the operating-system strata.
• Delphi developers communicate in dedicated groups, such as Delphi Developer on Facebook. There is also a thriving community on the Delphi Praxis forums, not to mention the Freepascal forums. None of which seem to be included in Tiobe’s activity statistics.
• Object Pascal has several frameworks and run-time libraries. Delphi ships with two:
  • Classical VCL for Windows development (which has seen enormous optimization in the past 8 years, covering UWP, WinRT et-al).
  • And then there is FireMonkey (FMX) for multi-platform, embedded and mobile targets.
• Freepascal operates with its own, open-source variation called the LCL
• Freepascal also targets WebAssembly and JavaScript and have variations of the LCL adapted those targets
• And then there is third party, commercial alternatives that covers HTML5/JS like TMS WebCore, Smart Pascal, Oxygene Pascal and the upcoming Quartex Pascal. Around these runtime libraries (VCL, FMX and LCL) there are thousands of libraries, components and frameworks, large and small, that don’t necessarily put  “Delphi” or “Object Pascal” in their metadata.
• Tiobe also fails to include feeds like BeginEnd.net or DelphiFeeds, which syndicate on average 3000 unique blog-posts a year, representing a consistent and very much alive stream of information and content.

Delphi and Freepascal, which represents the most widely used compilers, are predominantly used to write commercial, closed source products. Which by consequence means that code and the activity involved is not public. For Tiobe to so utterly misunderstand the demographic for Object Pascal in general, is quite frankly outrageous. If you are going to rank a language that involves millions of users -then at least have the decency of investigating the communities it involves.

Excluding the factors I have outlined above, makes as much sense as excluding mono from C#.

Incompetence or plain ignorance?

It was only after an avalanche of complaints in 2014, orchestrated by yours truly, where members of the Delphi Developer group on Facebook sent complaints en-mass to Tiobe that they addressed the use of “Pascal” to represent Delphi and associated dialects. Yet for all the complaints, outlined in letters that no sentient human being could misunderstand – all Tiobe managed to do was to add “Object Pascal” to their list. Which, believe it or not, was unfamiliar to them.

It’s funny because it’s true

But do you think they bothered to do it right? Afraid not. Instead of aggregating all of the dialects, frameworks and variations of names under a single banner, they still to this day operate with two very specific search elements, namely “Delphi” or “Object Pascal”.

I sure hope the dairy industry doesn’t hire Tiobe to do statistics on milk, because if their coverage of Object Pascal is anything to go by, they will be ranking by yogurt.

No updates since 2018? Really Tiobe?

When a global Index service like Tiobe manage to write, and I quote:

“However, the latest Delphi release is from 2018” -Source: Tiobe, March report

You really have to ponder if human beings are involved in their business at all. I’m not expecting much, honestly, but I do expect them to interact with the community they supposedly track and build a statistic on. Have they visited Delphi Developer and talked to the admins about growth numbers? Have they talked to Embarcadero to get some figures and coverage there? Did they contact the Freepascal community to get some download statistics from them?

Delphi 10.3 was released on november 21st 2019. The version that Tiobe seem to think is the last update, is in fact the last release with a city name (which was launched in 2018). Since then there have been three successive, regular updates; most developers are now using version 10.3.3. With 10.3.4 about to be released. This just underlines how oblivious Tiobe is to our part of the industry.

Modern Delphi is used by millions of professional developers globally

Delphi and Freepascal is different in more ways than one, but beyond language compatibility there is one aspect that is quintessential for them both; namely their role in the commercial sector. Where other languages, like C/C++ or (for example) JavaScript see a lot of open-source activity, especially with regards to Linux and Node.js – Delphi and Freepascal are predominantly used to write high-quality, commercial, closed source business applications. In other words, the vast majority of code produced by the millions of Object Pascal developers around the world – is never publicly committed to GitHub or BitBucket.

So not only have Tiobe failed stupendously in their data mining operation, they seem oblivious to the demographic in which the language is used.

The selection of books, video tutorials and coding material for Delphi is recovering at a rapid pace. And much like C/C++ there are classic books on Amazon that are just as relevant today as they were 10 years ago. Thankfully Delphi don’t suffer the “learn Delphi in 2 weeks” style books, because any developer worth his salt knows that such books are for the gullible and naive.

Developers use Delphi and Freepascal to deliver rock solid, data driven services; services that is expected to run 24/7 with zero downtime, processing millions of transactions. Delphi is used to write medical software that manages networks of hospitals, with tens of thousands of patients. Delphi is used by banks to power their ATM machines, and Delphi is used to do the heavy lifting in thousands of POS (point of sale) terminals across Europe. Terminals that don’t have time to wait for a garbage collector to kick in, only to cause catastrophic CPU spikes (I won’t mention names, but attempting to switch to C# was a disaster for one of the biggest POS terminal suppliers in Europe).

Delphi represents the back-bone of the medical software industry in Scandinavia and Europe at large. Many have tried to replace Delphi, but end up with expensive lessons in why archetypal languages are indeed called archetypal.

Object Pascal is used by governments, fortune 500 companies and the guy with a million dollar idea working out of his parents garage; It is used to write cloud accounting software, invoicing systems and medical journaling; It is used by the music industry and graphical design. There are large and extremely successful products out there that don’t advertise that it’s written in Delphi (just like you don’t stamp “made with C++” on a piece of software). You would be surprised!

Object Pascal it’s used by developers who value speed, security, creative freedom and the benefit of a mature feature matrix that only C/C++ and Object Pascal brings. C is by definition three years older than Pascal, but these two archetypal languages have evolved side by side.

There is a reason these two languages represented the university curriculum for close to two decades; further still if we include Turbo Pascal. And Delphi is once again returning home to academia. To the applause of teachers who were forced to teach Java, and hated every minute of it (I helped setup two universities with Delphi in Norway, so I have some first hand accounts in the matter).

Reflections

Since Delphi is growing aggressively these days, Embarcadero is making waves. A few months back we saw how a well known team of C# influencers took a stab at Delphi (and me in particular, no doubt because I have been so outspoken). And as Delphi now returns to academia – Tiobe is demonstrating a bias that leaves little to the imagination. Especially when you know their numbers account for nothing and are bordering on fiction.

If I didn’t know better, I would say someone is worried. And it’s not the Delphi and Freepascal communities. Modern Delphi is a power-house for software development, and it has the potential to disrupt and restore the devtool market.

There is a lot of money involved, so I am not surprised we are seeing a string of attempts at undermining the importance of Object Pascal. I had hoped Tiobe would adopt a higher standard though.

Then again, the ship of credibility sailed when they couldn’t tell Turbo Pascal from Object Pascal.

NVidia Jetson Nano: Part 2

Last week I posted a review of the NVidia Jetson Nano IoT board, where I gave the board a score of 6 out of 10. This score was based on the fact that the CPU in particular was a joke compared to other, far better and more affordable boards on the market.

Ubuntu running on the NVidia Jetson Nano

Since my primary segment for IoT boards involves web technology, WebAssembly and Asm.js (HTML5) in particular, the cpu did not deliver the performance I expected from an NVidia board. But as stated in my article, this board was never designed to be a multi-purpose maker board. This is a board for training and implementing A.I models (machine learning), which is why it ships with an astonishing 128 CUDA cores in it’s GPU.

However, two days after I posted said review, NVidia issued several updates. The graphics drivers were updated, followed by a custom Chrome browser build. Naturally I was eager to see if this would affect my initial experience, and to say it did would be an understatement.

Driver update

After this update the Jetson was able to render the HTML5 based desktop system I use for testing, and it passed more or less all my test-cases with flying colors. In fact, I was able to run two tests simultaneously. It renders Quake 3 (uses WebGl) in full-screen at 45 fps, with Tyrian (uses the gpu’s 2d functions) running at a whopping 35 fps (!).

Obviously that payload is significant, and all 4 CPU cores were taxed at 70% when running two such demanding programs inside the same viewport. Personally I’m not much of a gamer, but I find that testing a SoC by its ability to process HTML5 and JS, especially code that taps into the underlying GPU for both 3d and 2d – gives a good picture of the SoC’s capabilities.

I still think the CPU was a poor choice by NVidia. The production costs of adding an A72 CPU is practically non-existent. The A72 would add 50 cents (USD 0.5) to the boards retail value, but in return it would give us a much higher clock speed and beefier CPU cache. The A72 is in practical terms twice as fast as the A57.

A better score

But, fair is fair, and I am changing the review score to 7 out of 10, which is the best score I have ever given to any IoT device.

The only board that has a chance of topping that, is the ODroid N2, when (if ever) Hardkernel bothers to implement X drivers for the Mali GPU.

Quartex “Cloud Ripper” hardware

For close to a year now I have been busy on a very exciting project, namely my own cloud system. While I have written about this project quite a bit these past months, mostly focusing on the software aspect, not much has been said about that hardware.

Quartex “Cloud Ripper” running neatly on my home-office desk

So let’s have a look at Cloud Ripper, the official hardware setup for Quartex Media Desktop.

Tiny footprint, maximum power

Despite its complexity, the Quartex Media Desktop architecture is surprisingly lightweight. The services that makes up the baseline system (read: essential services) barely consume 40 megabytes of ram per instance (!). And while there is a lot of activity going on between these services -most of that activity is message-dispatching. Sending messages costs practically nothing in cpu and network terms. This will naturally change the moment you run your cloud as a public service, or setup the system in an office environment for a team. The more users, the more signals are shipped between the processes – but with the exception of reading and writing large files, messages are delivered practically instantaneous and hardly use CPU time.

Quartex Media Desktop is based on a clustered micro-service architecture

One of the reasons I compile my code to JavaScript (Quartex Media Desktop is written from the ground up in Object Pascal, which is compiled to JavaScript) has to do with the speed and universality of node.js services. As you might know, Node.js is powered by the Google V8 runtime engine, which means the code is first converted to bytecodes, and further compiled into highly optimized machine-code [courtesy of llvm]. When coded right, such Javascript based services execute just as fast as those implemented in a native language. There simply are no perks to be gained from using a native language for this type of work. There are however plenty of perks from using Node.js as a service-host:

• Node.js delivers the exact same behavior no matter what hardware or operating-system you are booting up from. In our case we use a minimal Linux setup with just enough infrastructure to run our services. But you can use any OS that supports Node.js. I actually have it installed on my Android based Smart-TV (!)
• We can literally copy our services between different machines and operating systems without recompiling a line of code. So we don’t need to maintain several versions of the same software for different systems.
• We can generate scripts “on the fly”, physically ship the code over the network, and execute it on any of the machines in our cluster. While possible to do with native code, it’s not very practical and would raise some major security concerns.
• Node.js supports WebAssembly, you can use the Elements Compiler from RemObjects to write service modules that executes blazingly fast yet remain platform and chipset independent.

The Cloud-Ripper cube

The principal design goal when I started the project, was that it should be a distributed system. This means that instead of having one large-service that does everything (read: a typical “native” monolithic design), we instead operate with a microservice cluster design. Services that run on separate SBC’s (single board computers). The idea here is to spread the payload over multiple mico-computers that combined becomes more than the sum of their parts.

Cloud Ripper – Based on the Pico 5H case and fitted with 5 x ODroid XU4 SBC’s

So instead of buying a single, dedicated x86 PC to host Quartex Media Desktop, you can instead buy cheap, off-the-shelves, easily available single-board computers and daisy chain them together. So instead of spending $800 (just to pin a number) on x86 hardware, you can pick up $400 worth of cheap ARM boards and get better network throughput and identical processing power (*). In fact, since Node.js is universal you can mix and match between x86, ARM, Mips and PPC as you see fit. Got an older PPC Mac-Mini collecting dust? Install Linux on it and get a few extra years out of these old gems.

(*) A single XU4 is hopelessly underpowered compared to an Intel i5 or i7 based PC. But in a cluster design there are more factors than just raw computational power. Each board has 8 CPU cores, bringing the total number of cores to 40. You also get 5 ARM Mali-T628 MP6 GPUs running at 533MHz. Only one of these will be used to render the HTML5 display, leaving 4 GPUs available for video processing, machine learning or compute tasks. Obviously these GPUs won’t hold a candle to even a mid-range graphics card, but the fact that we can use these chips for audio, video and computation tasks makes the system incredibly versatile.

Another design goal was to implement a UDP based Zero-Configuration mechanism. This means that the services will find and register with the core (read: master service) automatically, providing the machines are all connected to the same router or switch.

Put together your own supercomputer for less than $500

The first “official” hardware setup is a cluster based on 5 cheap ARM boards; namely the ODroid XU4. The entire setup fits inside a Pico Cube, which is a special case designed to house this particular model of single board computers. Pico offers several different designs, ranging from 3 boards to a 20 board super-cluster. You are not limited ODroid XU4 boards if you prefer something else. I picked the XU4 boards because they represent the lowest possible specs you can run the Quartex Media Desktop on. While the services themselves require very little, the master board (the board that runs the QTXCore.js service) is also in charge of rendering the HTML5 display. And having tested a plethora of boards, the ODroid XU4 was the only model that could render the desktop properly (at that low a price range).

Note: If you are thinking about using a Raspberry PI 3B (or older) as the master SBC, you can pretty much forget it. The media desktop is a piece of very complex HTML5, and anything below an ODroid XU4 will only give you a terrible experience (!). You can use smaller boards as slaves, meaning that they can host one of the services, but the master should preferably be an ODroid XU4 or better. The ODroid N2 [with 4Gb Ram] is a much better candidate than a Raspberry PI v4. A Jetson Nano is an even better option due to its extremely powerful GPU.

Booting into the desktop

One of the things that confuse people when they read about the desktop project, is how it’s possible to boot into the desktop itself and use Quartex Media Desktop as a ChromeOS alternative?

How can a “cloud platform” be used as a desktop alternative? Don’t you need access to the internet at all times? If it’s a server based system, how then can we boot into it? Don’t we need a second PC with a browser to show the desktop?

Accessing the desktop like a “web-page” from a normal Linux setup

To make a long story short: the “master” in our cluster architecture (read: the single-board computer defined as the boss) is setup to boot into a Chrome browser display under “kiosk mode”. When you start Chrome in kiosk mode, this removes all traces of the ordinary browser experience. There will be no toolbars, no URL field, no keyboard shortcuts, no right-click popup menus etc. It simply starts in full-screen and whatever HTML5 you load, has complete control over the display.

What I have done, is to to setup a minimal Linux boot sequence. It contains just enough Linux to run Chrome. So it has all the drivers etc. for the device, but instead of starting the ordinary Linux Desktop (X or Wayland) -we instead start Chrome in kiosk mode.

Booting into the same desktop through Chrome in Kiosk Mode. In this mode, no Linux desktop is required. The Linux boot sequence is altered to jump straight into Chrome

Chrome is started to load from 127.0.0.1 (this is a special address that always means “this machine”), which is where our QTXCore.js service resides that has it’s own HTTP/S and Websocket servers. The client (HTML5 part) is loaded in under a second from the core — and the experience is more or less identical to starting your ChromeBook or NAS box. Most modern NAS (network active storage) devices are much more than a file-server today. NAS boxes like those from Asustor Inc have HDMI out, ships with a remote control, and are designed to act as a media center. So you connect the NAS directly to your TV, and can watch movies and listen to music without any manual conversion etc.

In short, you can setup Quartex Media Desktop to do the exact same thing as ChromeOS does, booting straight into the web based desktop environment. The same desktop environment that is available over the network. So you are not limited to visiting your Cloud-Ripper machine via a browser from another computer; nor are you limited to just  using a dedicated machine. You can setup the system as you see fit.

Why should I assemble a Cloud-Ripper?

Getting a Cloud-Ripper is not forced on anyone. You can put together whatever spare hardware you have (or just run it locally under Windows). Since the services are extremely lightweight, any x86 PC will do. If you invest in a ODroid N2 board ($80 range) then you can install all the services on that if you like. So if you have no interest in clustering or building your own supercomputer, then any PC, Laptop or IOT single-board computer(s) will do. Provided it yields more or equal power as the XU4 (!)

What you will experience with a dedicated cluster, regardless of putting the boards in a nice cube, is that you get excellent performance for very little money. It is quite amazing what $200 can buy you in 2019. And when you daisy chain 5 ODroid XU4 boards together on a switch, those 5 cheap boards will deliver the same serving power as an x86 setup costing twice as much.

The NVidia Jetson Nano SBC, one of the fastest boards available at under $100

Pico is offering 3 different packages. The most expensive option is the pre-assembled cube. This is for some reason priced at $750 which is completely absurd. If you can operate a screwdriver, then you can assemble the cube yourself in less than an hour. So the starter-kit case which costs $259 is more than enough.

Next, you can buy the XU4 boards directly from Hardkernel for $40 a piece, which will set you back $200. If you order the Pico 5H case as a kit, that brings the sub-total up to $459. But that price-tag includes everything you need except sd-cards. So the kit contains power-supply, the electrical wiring, a fast gigabit ethernet switch [built-into the cube], active cooling, network cables and power cables. You don’t need more than 8Gb sd-cards, which costs practically nothing these days.

Note: The Quartex Media Desktop “file-service” should have a dedicated disk. I bought a 256Gb SSD disk with a USB 3.0 interface, but you can just use a vanilla USB stick to store user-account data + user files.

As a bonus, such a setup is easy to recycle should you want to do something else later. Perhaps you want to learn more about Kubernetes? What about a docker-swarm? A freepascal build-server perhaps? Why not install FreeNas, Plex, and a good backup solution? You can set this up as you can afford. If 5 x ODroid XU4 is too much, then get 3 of them instead + the Pico 3H case.

So should Quartex Media Desktop not be for you, or you want to do something else entirely — then having 5 ODroid XU4 boards around the house is not a bad thing.

Oh and if you want some serious firepower, then order the Pico 5H kit for the NVidia Jetson Nano boards. Graphically those boards are beyond any other SoC on the market (in it’s price range). But as a consequence the Jetson Nano starts at $99. So for a full kit you will end up with $500 for the boards alone. But man those are the proverbial Ferrari of IOT.

ARM Linux Services with Oxygene and Elements

Linux is one of those systems that just appeals to me out of the box. I work with Windows on a daily basis, but at this point there is really nothing in the way of me jumping ship all together. I mean, whenever i need something that is Windows specific, I can just fire up a virtual-machine and get the job done there.

The only thing that is stopping me from going “all in” with Linux (and believe me I have tried) is that finding proper documentation for Linux written with Windows converts in mind, is actually a challenge in itself. Most tutorials are either meant for non-developers, like how to install a program via Synaptic and so on; which is brilliant if you have no experience with Linux whatsoever. But finding articles that aims to help a Windows developer get up to speed on Linux, that’s the tricky bit.

Top-Left bash window shows the output of my Elements compiled micro-service

One of the features I wanted to learn about, was how to run a program as a service on Linux. Under Windows this is quite easy. You have the service manager that gives you a good overview of registered services. And programatically a service is ultimately just a normal WinAPI program that supports the service-api messages. Writing services in either Object-Pascal or C# is pretty straight-forward. I also do a lot of service work via Quartex Pascal (my own toolchain) that compiles to JavaScript. Node.js is actually a very capable service host once you understand the infrastructure.

Writing Daemons with Oxygene and Elements

Since the Elements compiler generates code for ARM Linux, learning how to get a service registered and started on boot is something that I think many developers will be interested in. It was one of the first questions I had when I started looking at Linux, and it took a while to find a clean cut answer.

In this little article I will show you how I went about this, but please keep in mind that Linux never has “one way” of doing something. Part of the strength that Linux delivers, is that you can configure and customize the system completely, from Kernel to desktop. You literally have different service sub-systems to pick from, as well as different windowing-managers, desktop systems (e.g Wayland or X) and even keyring implementations. This is what makes Linux so confusing when coming from a mono culture like Microsoft Windows.

As for hardware, i’m using an ODroid N2, which is a very powerful ARM based SBC (single board computer). You can use more or less any ARM device with Elements, providing the Linux distribution is based on Debian. So a Raspberry PI v4 with Ubuntu or Lubuntu will work fine. I’m using the ODroid N2 “full disk image” with Ubuntu Mate. So nothing out of the ordinary.

To make something clear off the bat: a Linux service (called a daemon, the ancient greek word for “helper” and “informer”) is just an ordinary shell application. You don’t have to do anything in particular in terms of code. Once your service is registered, you can start and stop it with the systemctl shell command like any other Linux service.

Note: There is also fork() mechanisms (cloning processes), but that’s out of scope for this little post.

Service manifest

Before we can get your binary registered as a service, we need to write a service manifest file. This is just a normal text-file in INI format that defines how you want your service to run. Here is an example of such a file:

[Unit]
Description=Elements Service
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
User=qtx
ExecStart=/usr/bin /usr/bin/ElementsService.exe

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Before you save this file, remember to replace the username (user=) and the name of your executable.

Note: The ExecStart property can be defined in 3 ways:

• Direct path to the executable
• Current working directory + path to executable (like above)
• Current working directory + path to executable + parameters

You can read more about each property here: System.d service info

Systemd

For debian based distributions (Ubuntu branches) the most common service-host (or process manager) is called systemd. I am not even going to pretend to know the differences between systemd and the older Init. There are fierce debates in the Linux community around these two alternatives. But unless you are a Linux C developer that likes to roll your own Kernel in the weekends, it’s not really relevant for our goals in this post. Our task here is to write useful services and make them run side-by-side with other services.

With the service-manifest file done, we need to copy the service manifest in place where systemd can find it. So start by saving the manifest file as “elements.service” here:

/etc/systemd/system/elements.service

As you probably guessed from the ExecPath property, your service executable goes in:

/usr/bin/ElementsService.exe

If all went well you can now start your service from the command-line:

systemctl start elements

And you can stop the service with:

systemctl stop elements

Resident services

Starting and stopping a service is all good and well, but that doesn’t mean it will automatically start when you reboot your Linux box. In order to make the service resident (persisted, so Linux remembers to fire it up on boot), you have to enable the service:

systemctl enable elements

If you want to stop the service from starting on boot, just disable it:

systemctl disable elements

Now there is a ton of things you can tweak and change in the service-manifest file. For example, do you want Linux to restart your service if it crashes? How many times should Linux attempt to bring the service back up? Should it only bring it back up if the exit-code is zero?

If you want Linux to always restart a service if it stops (regardless of reason), you set the following flag in the service-manifest:

Restart=always

If you want Linux to only restart if the service fails, meaning that the exit-code of the application is <> 0, then you use this value instead:

Restart=on-failure

You can also set the service to only start after some other service, for example if your service has networking as a criteria (which is what we set in the service-manifest above), or a database engine.

There is a ton of different settings you can apply to the service-manifest, but listing them all here would be a small book. Better to just check the documentation and experiment a bit. So check the link and pick the ones that makes sense to your particular service.

Reflections

You should be very careful with how you define restart options. If something goes wrong and your service crash on start, Linux will keep restarting it en-mass. Automatic restart creates a loop, and it can be wise to make sure it doesn’t get stuck. I would set restart to “on-error” exclusively, so that your service has a chance to exit gracefully.

Happy coding! And a special thanks to Benjamin Morel for his helpful posts.

 

 

Augmented reality, I don’t think so

The world used to be a big place, but having worked around europe for a few years – and lately in the US, it appears to me much smaller. But the fact of the matter is, that different nationalities have different tastes and interests.

The world is not as big as it used to be

In the US right now there is a strong interest in virtual-reality. The interest was so strong that Sony jumped on the VR bandwagon early, offering a full VR kit for the Playstation 4. This has been available for two years already (or is it three?). Here in Scandinavia though, VR is not that hot. People buy it, but not in the same volume we see in the US. It is expected to pick up this fall when the dark period begins; Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland are largely without sunlight most of the year – and during that time people use indoor hobbies more. But right now, VR is not really a thing up here.

In parallel with VR, Microsoft picked up the gauntlet that Google threw away earlier, namely that of augmented reality.  You probably remember the Google Glasses craze that hit California a decade ago right? Well Microsoft have continued to research and develop the technology which is now available for pre-order.

The problem? Microsoft Holo-lens II is a $3500 gadget that is presently aimed at business only. With emphasis on industrial design and medical applications. I don’t know about you, but forking up $3500 for what is ultimately just a curiosity is way out of my budget. There are much more important things to spend $3500 on to be frank.

Asia, the mother of implementation

While America and Europe are hotbeds of invention, it is ultimately Asia that implements, refine and eventually perfect technology. Some might disagree with that, there are always exceptions to the rule (3d printers and VR systems are very much American made), but what im talking about are “traits and inclinations” in the market. Patterns of commerce if you like.

What usually happens when something new is made, is that it costs a fortune. To push prices down companies move production to Asia, and there materials etc. are swapped out for cheaper alternatives. Some re-designing takes place — and before you know it, a product that cost $3500 when made in the US or the EU, can be picked up for $799 on Amazon. After some time, production volume has reached it’s zenith and the device that once cost an arm or a leg, can now be bought $299 or $199.

But, there are exceptions! When there is a technology that is wildly popular, like augmented reality and VR, Asia is quick to produce their own take on the technology early – trying to get a piece of the proverbial pie. This is often a good thing, especially for consumers. It can also be a good thing for the US and EU based companies – because mistakes and design-flaws they haven’t noticed yet are taken care of by proxy.

With that in mind, I ventured into the Asian markets to see what I could find.

Banggood and Alibaba

Having searched through an avalanche of cheap VR glasses for mobile phones, I finally found something that could be worth looking into. The advert was extremely thin, citing only augmented reality in english – with everything else in chinese (I presume, I must admit I would not spot the difference between chinese, japanese and korean if my life depended on it. Tibetan I can spot due to my Buddhist training, but that’s about it).

When I ran the string of characters through google, it returned this:

“VISION-800 3D Glasses Video Android 4.4
MTK6582 1G/2G 5MP AC WIFI BT4.0 2060P MIC”

Looking at the glasses they have pretty much everything you expected from an Augmented reality setup. There is a camera up front, lenses, audio jacks on both sides, a few buttons and switches – and the magic words “powered by Android  Wearable”. The price was $249 so it wouldn’t break the bank either.

The Vision 800 in all their glory

I should also mention that websites like Banggood and Alibaba have pretty good return policies too. These websites are actually front-ends for hundreds (if not thousands) of smaller, local outlets. The outlets gets a place to sell their goods to the west, and Alibaba and Banggood takes a small cut of each sale.

To manage this and make it viable, they have a rating system in place. So if one of the outlets scams you – you can vote them down. 3 complaints is enough to get the outlet kicked from either site, which I presume is a dire financial loss (considering the volume these websites push on a daily basis). So there is some degree of consumer safety compared to direct order. I would never order anything directly from a tech cornershop in mainland china, because should they rip you off – there is nothing you can do about it.

Augmented? I don’t think so

When the glasses finally arrived i was surprised at how light they were. You might expect them to be top-heavy and tip forward on the ridge of your nose – but since the weight is actually the lenses, not the circuitry, they balance quite well.

But augmented reality? Im sorry, but these glasses are not even in the ballpark.

The device is running a fork of Android – but not the fork adapted for wearables! The glasses also comes with a stock mouse (cordless), and you are in fact greeted by a plain desktop. The cordless mouse does work really well though, but I thankfully had the sense to order a $5 air-mouse (read: remote control for android devices) or I would go insane trying to exit applications properly.

What you can do is download some augmented reality apps from Google Play. These will tap into the camera on the glasses, and you can play a few games. But that’s really it. I noticed that the outlet had changed the title and text for these glasses a few days before they arrived here, so the whole deal is a little bit fishy. Looking at the instruction leaflet, these glasses have been sold as “movie glasses”. I would even go so far as to say they have nothing to do with augmented reality.

Media glasses

Augmented reality aside, there are interesting uses for glasses like this. If the field of view is good enough, they could make for a novel screen “on the road”. I mean, if you plug in a hybrid USB dongle that gives you both keyboard and mouse, there is nothing in the way of using the glasses as a monitor / travel PC. You have the same apps that you enjoy on your phone; a modern browser that gives you access to cloud services etc.

The glasses also have an SD card slot which is super handy – and 2Gb onboard storage. So if you are taking a flight from Europe to Australia and want to tune out noise and watch movies – these glasses might just be the ticket.

The audio works well

I must admit it was fun to install NetFlix on these and kick back. But this is  also when i started to have some issues.

The first issue is that there is no focal lense involved. You are literally looking at two tiny screens. And if you use regular glasses like I do, watching without my ordinary glasses is a complete blur. I had to use contact-lenses (which I hate) to get any use out of these. But if your eyesight is fine, you will no doubt have a better experience.

For me being 100% dependent on my regular glasses, it actually makes more sense to buy a cheap, second-hand Samsung Galaxy Edge, which were designed to be used as a proper VR display, and then permanently fixing it to a set of cheap Samsung VR casing. Even the most rudimentary VR casing offers focal lenses, so you can adjust the focus to compensate for poor eyesight.

The second issue has to do with display resolution. If you have 20/20 eyesight then high resolutions is wonderful. But in my case I would actually see better if the resolution was slightly lower. Sadly the devices seem fixed to what I can only presume is 1600×1024 (or something like that), and there are no options for changing resolution, offset display or skew the picture. Again, these are factors that only become important if you have poor eyesight.

Audio

The way they solved audio is actually quite good. On each arm of the glasses you have an audio-jack out. And the kit comes with two small earplugs. And again – if you are on a long flight and just want to snuggle up in your own world – this works really well.

If you have ear-pods like I do, you can use them via the standard BT interface. But I noticed that there was a slight lag when using these; no doubt the CPU had problems handling audio when playing a full HD movie. The lag was not there when i used the normal jack – so the culprit is probably the BT device cache.

Gaming?

I’m not a huge gamer myself, I mostly play games like Destiny in the Playstation. On the odd occasion that I jump into other games, it’s mostly retro stuff. And I have a house pretty much packed with Amiga, Silicon Graphics, and more arcade hardware than god ever intended a person to own.

Having said that, the device is capable of both native Android games – and emulation. I had no problem installing UAE (Unix Amiga Emulator), and it’s more than powerful enough to emulate an A1200 with AGA (advanced graphics architecture).

I didn’t test the casting option – because the device can display-cast to your living room TV. But somehow it seems backwards using these as a casting source – when you already have a supercomputer in your pocket. Any modern phone, be it a Samsung or Apple device, will outperform whatever is powering these glasses – so if gaming is your thing, look elsewhere.

Final words

These glasses have potential. Or perhaps better phrased – the technology holds a lot of promise. If they had opted for focal-lenses and a wider field of vision, they would have been a fantastic experience. I have no problem imagining this type of tech replacing monitors in the near future – at least for movie experiences.

I must admit it’s really tricky to hammer down a verdict. On one hand they are really fun, you can install NetFlix, browse the web and watch movies if you copy them over to an sd-card (the glasses come with a 16Gb sd-card). You have mouse control, BT and i have no problem seeing myself on a flight to hong-kong enjoying a movie marathon wearing these.

But are they worth $250 ? I would have to say no. A fair price would be something in the $70 region. If they corrected the lenses I would have no problem buying a pair at $99. And if they expanded the field of vision to cover the width of the glasses – I would absolutely pick them up at $150. But $250 for this? Sadly I can’t say they are worth the money.

I was also surprised to find pornhub as a pre-defined shortcut in the browser (I mean, who does that?). It made me laugh first, thinking it was a cheeky joke – but as a parent who could have bought these for a child, it is utterly unacceptable. It’s not the first time I have found smut on a device from Asia. But yeah, a bit creepy.

So, I would have to give them a 3 out of 6 verdict. If you have money to burn and a long flight ahead, then by all means – they will give you a comfy way of watching movies during the flight. But the technology is (for the lack of a better word) premature.

As for augmented reality – forget it. You are better off stuffing your phone inside a $100 Samsung VR casing. The official Samsung Galaxy Edge casing probably cost next to nothing by now. And for $250 you should have no problem sourcing a used Galaxy Edge phone too. Which will be 100 times better than this.

I started this post citing the inherent differences between nationalities in what they enjoy, but I must admit that through these, I can see why VR holds such potential. I can’t see myself strapping on a full suit, helmet and gloves just to play a game or do some work. But glasses like these (but not these) is absolutely in the vicinity of “practical”. Just a damn shame they didn’t do a full width LCD with focal lenses; then I would have promoted them.

Right now: a fun curiocity, good for watching the odd movie if you eyesight is perfect – but for the rest of us, it’s just not worth the dough

 

VMWare: A Delphi developers best friend

Full disclosure: I am not affiliated with any particular virtualization vendor of any sorts. The reason I picked VMWare was because their product was faster when I compared the various solutions. So feel free to replace the word VMWare with whatever virtualization software suits your needs.

On Delphi Developer we get new members and questions about Delphi and C++ builder every day. It’s grown into an awesome community where we help each other, do business, find jobs and even become personal friends.

A part of what we do in our community, is to tip each other about cool stuff. It doesn’t have to be directly bound to Delphi or code either; people have posted open source graphic programs, video editing, database designers – as long as its open source or freeware its a great thing (we have a strict policy of no piracy or illegal copying).

Today we got talking about VMWare and how its a great time saver. So here goes:

Virtualization

Virtualization is, simply put, a form of emulation. Back in the mid 90s emulators became hugely popular because for the first time in history – we had CPU’s powerful enough to emulate other computers at full speed. This was radical because up until that point, you needed special hardware to do that. You had also been limited to emulating legacy systems with no practical business value.

VmWare Workstation is an amazing piece of engineering

Emulation has always been there, even back in the 80s with 16 bit computers. But while it was technically possible, it was more a curiosity than something an office environment would benefit from (unless you used expensive compute boards). We had to wait until the late 90s to see commercial-grade x86 emulation hitting the market, with Virtuozzo releasing Parallels in 1997 and VMWare showing up around 1998. Both of these companies grew out of the data-center culture and academia.

It’s also worth noting that modern CPU’s now support virtualization on  hardware level, so when you are “virtualizing” Windows the machine code is not interpreted or JIT compiled – it runs on the same CPU as your real system.

Why does it matter

Virtualization is not just for data-centers and server-farms, it’s also for desktop use. My personal choice was VMWare because I felt their product performed better than the others. But in all fairness it’s been a few years since I compared between systems, so that might be different today.

A screengrab of my desktop, here showing 3 virtual machines running. I have 64 gigabyte memory and these 3 virtual machines consume around 24 gigabytes and uses 17% of the Intel i7 CPU power during compile. It hardly registers on the CPU stats when idle.

VMWare Workstation is a desktop application available for Windows, Linux and OS X. And it allows me to create virtual machines, or “emulations” if you like. The result is that I can run multiple instances of Windows on a single PC. The virtual machines are all sandbox in large hard-disk files, and you have to install Windows or Linux into these virtual systems.

The bonus though is fantastic. Once you have installed an operating-system, you can copy it, move it, do partial cloning (only changes are isolated in new sandboxes) and much, much more. The cloning functionality is incredibly powerful, especially for a developer.

It also gives you something called snap-shot support. A snapshot is, like the word hints to, a copy of whatever state your virtual-machine is in at that point in time. This is a wonderful feature if you remember to use it properly. I try to take snapshots before I install anything, be it larger systems like Delphi, or just utility applications I download. Should something go wrong with the tools your work depends on — you can just roll back to a previous snapshot (!)

A great time saver

Updates to development tools are always awesome, but there are times when things can go wrong. But if you remember to take a snapshot before you install a program, or before you install a component package — should something go wrong, then rolling back to a clean point is reduced to a mouse click.

I mean, imagine you update your development tools right? Suddenly you realize that a component package your software depends on doesn’t work. If you have installed your devtools directly on the metal, you suddenly have a lot of time-consuming work to do:

• Re-install your older devtools
• Re-install your components and fix broken paths

That wont be a problem if you only have 2-3 packages, but I have hundreds of components install on my rig. Just getting my components working can take almost a full work-day, and I’m not exaggerating (!).

With VMWare, I just roll back to when all was fine, and go about my work like nothing happened.

I made a quick, slapdash video to demonstrate how easy VmWare makes my Delphi and JS development. If you are not using virtualization I hope this video at least makes it a bit clearer why so many do.

Click the image to watch the video on YouTube

Quartex: Mali GPU glitches

EDIT: I did further testing after this article was written, and believe the source of this to be about heat. Even with extra fans, running games like Tyrian (asm.js) that are extremely demanding, plus resizing a graphics intensive windows constantly, the temperature reached 71 degrees C very quickly. And this was with two cabinet fans helping the built-in fan to cool the device. It is thus not unthinkable that when running solo (no extra fans) that the kernel shut the device down to not cook the chipset. Which also explains why the device wont boot properly afterwards (the device is still hot).

Glitches

Something really strange is happening on Chrome and Firefox for ARM. JavaScript is not supposed to be able to take down a system, and in this case it’s neither an attempt as such either — yet for some reason I have managed to take down the ODroid XU4 with both Chrome and Firefox lately.

ODroid XU4

I guess I should lead with that I’m not able to replicate this on x86. One of the things I really love about the ODroid XU4 is that it’s affordable, powerful and probably the only SBC I have used that runs stable on the mali GPU. As you probably know I tested at least 10 different SBC’s back in 2018, and whenever there was a mali GPU involved, the product was either haunted by instabilities or lacked drivers all together.

Since the codebase for Chrome (and I presume Firefox) is ultimately the same between platforms, it leaves a question-mark about the ODroid. It is by far the most stable SBC I have tested so far (except for the PI, which is sadly underpowered for this task), but stable doesn’t mean flawless. And to be honest, Amibian.js is pushing web tech to the very limits.

Not Mali again

The reason I suspect the mali to be the culprit behind all this, is because the “bug” if we can call it that, happens exclusively during resize. So if there is a lot going on inside a desktop-window, you can sometimes provoke the ODroid to cold-crash and reboot. You actually have to power the board down and switch it back on for it to boot properly.

Cloudripper ~ 5x ODroid XU4 [40 cores] in a PICO 5h cube

The resize and moving of windows uses CSS transformation, which in modern browsers makes use of the GPU. Chrome talks directly with OpenGL (or glES), so the operations are proxied through that. And again, since OpenGL is pretty rock solid elsewhere, we are only left with one common denominator: the mali GPU.

The challenge is that there is no way to debug or catch this error, because when it occurs the whole system literally goes down. There is no exception thrown, nor is the browser process terminated (not even a log entry, so it’s a clean-cut) — the system reboots on the spot. Since it fails on reboot when opening X (setting a screen-mode) I again point the finger at the GPU. Somehow a flag or lock survives the cold-reboot and that’s why you have to manually switch it off and on again.

This is the exact problem that made the NanoPI Fire useless. It only shipped with Android embedded drivers. The X drivers could hardly open a display without crashing. Such a waste of a good cpu.

x86 as head

ODroid is perfect for a low-cost Amibian.js experience, but I was unsure if it would handle the payload. Interestingly it handles it just fine and even with a high-speed action game running + background tasks we are not using 50% of the CPU even.

Ram is holding up too, with memory consumption while running Tyrian + having a few graphics viewers open, is at a reasonable 700 mb (of 2 gigabyte in total).

Tyrian jogs along at 45 fps ~ that is not bad for a $45 SBC

Right now this strange error is rare, but if it continues or grows into a problem (chrome is hardly useable at all, only firefox) then I have no option than to replace the master sbc in the cluster with something else. The x86 UP board is more than capable, but it would be a shame to break the price range because of that (excuse my language) crap mali GPU. I honestly don’t understand why board makers insist on using a mali. Every board that has a mali is haunted by problems and get poor reviews.

It will be exciting to check out the dragonboard, although I fear 1Gb memory will not be enough for smooth operation. Not without a sata interface and a good swap-file.

Android and Delphi

One alternative is to switch to Android and use Delphi to code a custom Chromium Embedded webview. I am hoping to avoid the overhead of Android, but Delphi would definitively be a bonus with Android embedded (“Android of things”).

We will see.

Five reasons to learn Delphi

A couple of days ago I had a spectacular debate on Facebook. Like most individuals that are active in the IT community, my social media feed is loaded with advertisement for every trending IT concept you can imagine. Lately these adverts have been about machine learning and A.I. Or should I say, companies using those buzzwords to draw unwarranted attention to their products. I haven’t seen A.I used to sell shoes yet, but it’s only a matter of time before it happens.

Like any technology, Cloud is only as powerful as your insight

There is also this thing that: yes, a 14-year-old can put together an A.I chat robot in 15 minutes with product XYZ. But that doesn’t mean he or she understands what is happening beneath the user-interface. Surely the goal must be to teach those kids skills that will benefit them for a lifetime.

Those that know me also know that yes, I have this tendency to say what I mean, even when I really should keep my mouth shut. On the other hand that is also why companies and developers call me, because I will call bullshit and help them avoid it. That’s part of my job, to help individuals and companies that use Delphi to pick the right version for their need, get the components that’s right for their goals – and map out a strategy if they need some input on that.  I’ll even dive in and do some code conversion if they need it; goes with the territory.

Normally I just ignore advertizing that put “cloud” or “a.i” in their title, because it’s mostly click-bait designed for non-developers. But for some reason this one particular advert caught my eye. Perhaps it triggered the trauma of being subjected to early Java advertising during the late 90s’s, or maybe it released latent aggression from being psychologically waterboarded by Microsoft Silverlight. Who knows 🙂

The ad was about a Norwegian company that specialize in teaching young students how to become professional developers. You know the “become a guru in 3 weeks” type publisher? What baked my noodle was the fact that they didn’t offer a single course involving archetypical languages, and that they were spinning their material with promises that were simply not true. The only artificial intelligence involved was the advertizing engine at Facebook.

The thing is – the world has more than enough developers on desktop level. The desktop and web market is drowning in developers who has the capacity to download libraries, drop components on a form and hook up to a database. What the world really needs are more developers on archetypical languages. And if you don’t know what that is, then let me just do a quick summary before we carry on.

Archetypal languages

An archetypical programming language is one that is designed around how the computer actually works. As a consequence these languages and toolchains embody several of the following properties:

• Pointers and raw memory access
• Traditional memory management, no garbage collection
• Procedural and object-orientation execution
• Inline assembler
• Little if no external dependencies
• Static linking (embed pre-compiled code)
• Compiled code can operate without an OS infrastructure
• Suitable for kernel, driver, service, desktop, networking and cloud level development
• Compiler that produce machine code for various chipsets

As of writing there are only two archetypical languages (actually 3, but assembly language is chipset specific so we will skip that here), namely C/C++ and Object Pascal. These are the languages you use to write all the other languages with. If you plan on writing your own operating-system from scratch, only C and Pascal is suitable. Which is why these are the only languages that have ever been used for making operating systems.

Delphi is one of the 20 most used programming languages in the world. It ranked as #11 in 2017. Like all rankings it fluctuates depending on season and market changes.

Obviously i’m not suggesting that people learn Delphi or C++ builder to write their own OS – or that you must know assembly to make an invoice system; I’m simply stating that the insight and skill you get from learning Delphi and C/C++, even if all you do is write desktop applications – will make you a better developer on all levels.

Optimistic languages

Optimistic or humanized programming languages, have been around just as long as the archetypical ones. Basic is an optimistic language, C# and Java are optimistic languages, Go and Dart are equally optimistic languages. Script engines like node.js, python and Erlang (if you missed Scott Hanselman’s epic rant on the subject, you are in for a treat) are all optimistic. They are called optimistic because they trade security with functionality; sandboxing the developer from the harsh reality of hardware.

An optimistic language is typically designed to function according to “how human beings would like things to be” (hence the term optimistic). These languages rely heavily on existing infrastructure to even work, and each language tends to focus on specific tasks – only to branch out and become more general purpose over time.

There is nothing wrong with optimistic languages. Except when they are marketed to young students as being somehow superior or en-par with archetypical languages. That is a very dangerous thing to do – because teachers have a responsibility to prepare the students for real life. I can’t even count the number of times I have seen young developers fresh out of college get “that job”, only to realize that the heart of the business, the mission critical stuff, is written in Delphi or C/C++, which they never learned.

People have no idea just how much of the modern world rests on these languages.  It is almost alarming how it’s possible to be a developer in 2019 and have a blind spot with regards to these distinctions. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the student’s fault, quite the opposite. And i’m happy that things are starting to change for the better (more about that further down).

The original full stack

So back to my little encounter; What happened was that I just commented something along the lines of “why not give the kids something that will benefit them for a lifetime”. It was just a drive-by comment on my part, and I should have just ignored it; And no sooner had I pressed enter, when a small army of internet warriors appeared to defend their interpretation of “full stack” in 2019. Oblivious to the fact that the exact same term was used around 1988-ish. I think it was Aztec or SAS-C that coined it. Doesn’t matter.

The original “full stack” holds a very different meaning in traditional development. While I don’t remember if it was Aztec-C or SAS-C, but the full stack was driver to desktop 🙂

Long story short, I ended up having a conversation with these teenagers about how technology has evolved over the past 35 years. Not in theory, but as one that has been a programmer since the C= 64 was released. I also introduced them to archetypal languages and pinpointed the distinction I made above. You cannot compare if you don’t know the difference.

I have no problems with other languages, I use several myself, and my point was simply that: if we are going to teach the next generation of programmers something, then let’s teach them the timeless principles and tools that our eco system rests on. We need to get Delphi and C/C++ back into the curriculum, because that in turn will help the students to become better developers. It doesn’t matter what they end up working with afterwards, because with the fundamental understanding in place they will be better suited. Period.

You will be a better Java developer if you first learn Delphi. You will be a better C# developer if you learn Delphi. Just like nature has layers of complexity, so does computing. And understanding how each layer works and what laws exist there – will have a huge impact on how you write high-level code.

All of this was good and well and the internet warriors seemed a bit confused. They weren’t prepared for an actual conversation. So what started a bit rough ended up as a meaningful, nice dialog.

And speaking of education: I’m happy to say that two universities in Norway now have students using Delphi again. Which is a step in the right direction! People are re-discovering how productive Object-Pascal is, and why the language remains the bread and butter of so many companies around the world.

Piracy, the hydra of problems

What affected me the most during my conversation with these young developers – was that they had almost no relationship to neither Delphi or C/C++. From an educational standpoint that is not just alarming, that is an intellectual emergency. The only knowledge they had of Delphi was hearsay and nonsense.

The source of the misrepresentation is piracy, openly so, of outdated versions that was never designed to run on modern operating systems. With the community edition people can enjoy a modern, high performance Delphi without resorting to illegal activities

But after a while I finally discovered where their information came from! Delphi 7 is being pirated en-mass even to this day. It’s for some strange reason very popular in Asia (most of the torrent IP’s ended up there when I followed up on this). So teenagers download Delphi 7 which is ancient by any standard, and the first thing they experience is incompatibility issues. Which is only to be expected because Delphi 7 was released a long, long time ago. But that’s the impression they are left with after downloading one of these cracked, illegal bundles.

I downloaded one of these “ready to use” bundles to have a closer look, and it contained at least 500 commercial components. You had the full TMS component collection, Developer Express, Remobjects SDK, ImageEN, FastReports, SecureBlackBox, Intraweb — tens of thousands of dollars worth of code. With one very obvious factor: both Delphi 7 and the components involved are severely outdated. Microsoft doesn’t even support Windows XP any more, it was written in the early bronze age.

So the reality of the situation was that these young developers had never seen a modern Delphi in their life. In their minds, Delphi meant Delphi 7 which they could download almost everywhere (which is illegal and riddled with viruses, stay well clear). No wonder there is confusion about the subject (!)

They were very happy to learn about the community edition, so in the end I at least got to wake them up to the awesome features that modern Delphi represents. The community edition has been a fantastic thing; the number of members joining Delphi-Developer on Facebook has nearly doubled since the community edition was released.

A few of the students went over to Embarcadero and downloaded the community edition, and their jaw dropped. They had never seen a development environment like this before!

Give me five good reasons to learn Delphi

In light of this episode, thought I could share five reasons why Delphi and object-pascal remains my primary programming language.

I don’t have any problems dipping into JavaScript, Python or whatever the situation might call for – but when it comes to mission critical data processing and services that needs 24/7 up-time; or embedded solutions where CPU spikes simply cannot be tolerated. It’s Delphi I turn to.

These five reasons are also the same that I gave the teenagers. So here goes.

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Great depth and wingspan

Object Pascal, from which Delphi is the trending dialect, is a fantastic language. At heart there is little difference between C/C++ and object pascal in terms of features, but the syntax of object pascal is more productive than C/C++ (IMHO).

Delphi and C++ builder actually share run-time libraries (there are two of them, the VCL which is Windows only, and Firemonkey which is platform independent). Developers often mix and match code between these languages, so components written in Delphi can be used in C++ builder, and libraries written in C can be consumed and linked into your Delphi executable.

One interesting factoid: people imagine Delphi to be old. But the C language is actually 3 years older than pascal. During their time these languages have evolved side by side, and Embarcadero (who makes Delphi and C++ builder) have brought all the interesting features you expect from a modern language into Delphi (things like generics, inline variables, anonymous procedures – it’s all in there). So this myth that Delphi is somehow outdated or unsuitable is just that – a myth.

The eco-system of programming languages

And there is an added bonus! Just like C/C++, Delphi represents a curriculum and lineage that spans decades. Stop and think about that for a second. This is a language that has been evolved to solve technical challenges of every conceivable type for decades. This means that you can put some faith in what the language can deliver.

There are millions of Delphi developers in the world; an estimated 10 millions in fact. The language was ranked #11 on the TIOBI language index; it is under constant development with a clear roadmap and time-line – and is used by large and small companies as the foundation for their business. Even the Norwegian government rely on Delphi. The system that handles healthcare messages for the Norwegian population is pure Delphi.  That is data processing for 5.2 million individuals.

Object Pascal has not just stood the test of time, it has innovated it. Just like C/C++ object pascal has a wingspan and depth that reaches from assembler to system services, from database engines to visual desktop application – and from the desktop all the way to Cloud and essential web technology.

So the first good reason to learn Delphi is depth. Delphi covers the native stack, from kernel level drivers to high-speed database engines – to visual desktop applications. It’s also exceptionally well suited for cloud services (both Windows and Linux targets).

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Easy to learn

I mention that Delphi is powerful and has the same depth as C/C++, but why then learn Delphi and not C++? Well, the language (object pascal) was especially tailored for readability. It was concluded that the human brain recognized words faster than symbols or glyphs – and thus it’s easier to read complex pascal code rather than complex C code. Individual taste notwithstanding.

Despite its depth, Delphi is easy to learn and fun to master!

Object Pascal is also very declarative, with as little unknown factors as possible. This teaches people to write clean and orderly code.

And perhaps my favorite, a pascal code-file contains both interface and implementation. So you don’t have to write a second .h file which is common under C/C++.

If you already know OOP, be it Java, C#, Rust or whatever – learning Delphi will be a piece of cake. You already know about classes, interfaces, generics, operator overloading – and can pretty much skip forward to memory management, pointers and structures (records in pascal, struct in C).

Swing by Embarcadero Academy and take a course, or head over to Amazon and buy some good books on Delphi. Download the Community Edition of Delphi and you will be up and running in no-time.

Also remember to join Delphi Developer on Facebook, where thousands of active developers talk, help each other and share solutions 24/7.

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Target multiple platforms

With Delphi and C++ builder it’s pretty easy to target multiple platforms these days. You can target Android, iOS, OS X, Windows and Linux from a single codebase.

One codebase, multiple targets

I mean, are you going to write one version of your app in Java, a second one in C#, a third one in Objective C and a fourth in Dart? Because that’s the reality you face if plan on using the development tools provided by each operating-system manufacturer. That’s a lot of time, money and effort just to push your product out the door.

With Delphi you can hit all platforms at once, native code, reducing your time to market and ROI. People use Delphi for a reason.

You will also enjoy great performance from the LLVM optimized code Delphi emits on mobile platforms.

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Rich codebase

The benefit of age is often said to be wisdom; I guess the computing equivalent is a large and rich collection of components, libraries and ad-hoc code that you can drop into your own projects or just study.

You can google just about any subject, and there will be code for Delphi. Github, BitBucket and Torry’s Delphi pages are packed with open-source frameworks covering everything from compiler cores, midi interfaces, game development to multi-threaded, machine clustered server solutions. Once you start looking, you will find it.

There is a rich constellation of code, components and libraries for Delphi and C++ builder around the internet.  Also remember dedicated sites like Torry’s

There is also a long list of technology partners that produce components and libraries for Delphi – and like mentioned earlier, you can link in C compiled code once you learn the ropes.

Oh, and when I mentioned databases earlier I wasnt just talking about the traditional databases. Delphi got you covered with those, no worries — im also talking about writing a database engine from scratch. There are several database engines that are implemented purely in Delphi. ElevateDB is one example.

Delphi also ships with Interbase and Interbase-light (embedded and mobile) so you have easy access to data storage solutions. There is also FireFAC that allows you to connect directly with established databases — and again, a wealth of free and commercial solutions.

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Speed and technique

What I love about Delphi and C++ is that your code, or the way you write code, directly impacts your results. The art of optimization is rarely a factor in some of the new, optimistic languages. But in a native language you get to use traditional techniques that are time-less, or perhaps more interesting: explore ways of achieving the same with less.

As a native language Delphi and C/C++ produce fast executables. But I love how there is always room for your own techniques, your own components and your own libraries.

Techniques, like math, is timeless

Need to write a system driver? Well, suddenly speed becomes a very important factor. A garbage collector can be a disaster on that level, because it will kick-in on interval and cause CPU spikes. Perhaps you want to write a compiler, or need a solid scripting engine? How about linking the V8 JavaScript engine directly into your programs? All of this is quite simple with Delphi.

So with Delphi I get the best of both worlds, I get to use the scalpel when the needs are delicate, and I get the chain-saw to cut through tedious work. Things like property bindings are a god sent. This is a techniques where you can visually bind properties of any component together, almost like events, and create cause and effect chains. So if a value changes on a bound property, that triggers whatever is bound, and so on and so on — pretty awesome!

So you can create a complete database application, with grid and navigation, without writing a single line of code. That was just one simple example, you can do so much more out of the box – and it saves you so much time.

Yet when you really need to write high performance code, or build that killer framework that will set your company apart from the rest — you have that freedom!

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So if you havent checked out RAD Studio, head over to Embarcadero and download a free trial. You will be amazed and realize just why Delphi and C++ builder are loved by so many.

Linux: political correctness vs Gnu-Linux hacker spirit

Unless you have been living under a rock, the turmoil and crisis within the Linux community these past weeks cannot have escaped you. And while not directly connected to Delphi or the Delphi Developer group on Facebook, the effects of a potential collapse within the core Linux development team will absolutely affect how Delphi developers go about their business. In the worst possible scenario, should the core team and it’s immediate extended developers decide to walk away, their code walks with them. Rendering much of the work countless companies have invested in the platform unreliable at best – or in need of a rewrite at worst (there is a legal blind-spot in GPL revision 1 and 2, allowing developers to rescind their code).

Large parts of the kernel would have to be re-invented, a huge chunk of the sub-strata and bedrock that distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, Kali and others rests on – could risk being removed, or rescinded as the term may be, from the core repositories. And perhaps worst of all, the hundreds of patches and new features yet to be released might never see the light of day.

To underline just how dire the situation has been the past couple of weeks, Richard Stallman, Eric S. Raymond, Linus Torvalds and others are threatening, openly and legally, to pull all their code (September 20th, Linux Kernel Mailing List) if the bullying by a handful of activist groups doesn’t stop. Linus is still in limbo having accepted the code of conduct these activist demand implemented, but has yet to return to work.

Linus Torvalds is famous for many things, but his personality is not one of them

But the interesting part of the Linux debacle is not the if’s and but’s, but rather the methods used by these groups to get their way. How can you enforce a “code of conduct” using methods that themselves are in violation with that code of conduct? It really is a case of “do as I say, not as I do”; And it has escalated into a gutter fight masquerading as social warfare where slander, stigmata, false accusations and personal attacks of the worst possible type are the weapons. All of which is now having a real and tangible impact on business and technology.

Morally bankrupt actions is not activism

These activists, if they deserve that title, even went as far as deciding to dig into the sexual-life of one of the kernel developers. And when finding out that he was into BDSM (a form of sexual role-play), they publicly stigmatized the coder as a rape sympathizer (!). Not because it’s true, but because the verbal association alone makes it easier for bullies like Coraline to justify the social execution of a man in public.

What makes my jaw drop in all this, is the complete lack of compassion these so-called activists demonstrate. They seem blind to the price of such stigmata for the innocent; not to mention the insult to people who have suffered sexual abuse in their lives. For each false accusation of rape that is made, the difficulty for actual abuse victims to seek justice increases exponentially. It is a heartless, unforgivable act.

Personally, I can’t say I understand the many sexual preferences people have these days. I find myself googling what the different abbreviations mean. The movie 50 shades of gray revolved around this stuff. But one thing is clear:  as long as there are consenting adults involved, it is none of our business. If there is evidence of a crime, then it should be brought before the courts. And no matter what we might feel about the subject at hand, it can never justify stigmatizing a person for the rest of his life. Not only is this a violation of the very code of conduct these groups wants implemented – it’s also illegal in most of the civilized world. And damn immoral and out-of-line if you ask me.

The goal cannot justify the means

The irony in all of this, is that the accusation came from Coraline herself. A transgender woman born in the wrong body; a furious feminist now busy fighting to put an end to bullying  of transgender minorities in the workplace (which she claims is the reason she got fired from Github). Yet she has no problems being the worst kind of bully herself on a global scale. I question if Coraline is even morally fit to represent a code of conduct. I mean, to even use slander such as rape-sympathizer in context with getting a code of conduct implemented? Digging into someones personal life and then using their sexual preference as leverage? It is utterly outrageous!

It is unacceptable and has no place in civilized society. Nor does a code of conduct, beyond ordinary expectations of decency and tolerance, have any place in a rebel motivated R&D movement like Linux.

Linux is not Windows or OS X. It was born out of the free software movement back in the late 1960’s (Stallman with GNU) and the Scandinavian demo and hacker scene during the 80’s and 90’s (the Linux kernel that GNU rests on). This is hacker territory and what people might feel about this in 2018 it utterly irrelevant. These are people that start the day with 4Chan for pete sake! The primary motivation of Stallman and Linus is to undermine, destroy and bury Microsoft and Apple in particular. And they have made no secret of this agenda.

Expecting Linux or their makers to be politically correct is infantile and naive, because Linux is at its heart a rebellion, “a protest of technical excellence and access to technology undermining commercial tyranny and corporate slavery”. That is not my personal opinion, that is straight out of a Richard Stallman book Free as in Freedom; His papers reads more like a religious manifesto; a philosophical foundation for a technological utopia, seeded and influenced by the hippie spirit of the 1960s. Which is where Stallman’s heart comes from.

You cannot but admire Stallman for sticking to his principles for 50+ years. And thinking he is going to just roll over because activists in this particular decade has a beef with how hackers address each other or comment their code, well — I don’t think these activists understand the hacker community at all. If they did they would back off and stop poking dragons.

Linux vs the sensitivity movement?

Yesterday I posted a video article that explained some of this in simple, easy terms on Delphi Developer. I picked the video that summed up the absurdities involved (as outlined above) as quickly as possible, rather than some 80 minute talk on YouTube. We have a long tradition of posting interesting IT news, things that are indirectly connected with Delphi, C++ builder or programming in general. We also post articles that have no direct connection at all – except being headlines within the world of IT. This helps people stay aware of interesting developments, trends and potential investments.

The head of the “moral codex” doesn’t strike me as unbiased and without an axe to grind

As far as politics is concerned I have no interest what so ever. Nor would I post political material in the group because our focus is technology, Delphi, object pascal and software development in general. The exception being if there is a bill or law passed in the US or EU that affects how we build applications or handle data.

Well, this post was no different.

What was different was that some individuals are so acclimatized to political debate that they interpret everything as a political statement. So criticism of the methods used are made synonymous with criticism of a cause. This can happen to the best of us; human beings are passionate animals and I think we can all agree that politics has taken up an unusual amount of space lately. I can’t ever remember politics causing so much bitterness, divide and hate as it does today. Nor can I remember sound reason being pushed aside in favour of immediate emotional trends. And it really scares me.

Anyways, I wrote that “I stand by my god given rights to write obscene comments in my code“. Which is a reference to one of the topics Linus is being flamed for, namely his use of the F word in his own code. My argument is that, the kernel is ultimately Torvalds work, and it’s something he gives away for free. I dont have any need for obscenity in my code, but I sure as hell reserve the right to do so in my personal projects. How two external groups (in this case a very aggressive feminist group combined with LGBTQIA) should have any say in how Linus formats his code (or you for that matter) or the comments he writes – it makes no sense. It’s free, take it or leave it. And if you join a team and feel offended by how things are done, you either ignore it or leave.

It might not be appropriate of Linus to use obscenity in his comments, but do you really want people to tell you what you can or cannot write in your own code? Lord knows there are pascal units online that have language unfit for publishing, but nobody is forcing you to use them. I cant stand Java but I dont join their forums and sit there like a 12 year old bitching about how terrible Java is. It’s just infantile, absurd mentality.

So that is what my reference was to, and I took for granted that people would pick up on that since Linus is infamous for his spectacular rants in the kernel (and verbally in interviews). Some of his commits have more rants than code, which I find hilarious. There is a collection of them online and people read them for kicks because he is, for all means and purposes, the Gordon Ramsey of programming.

And I also made a reference to “tree hugging millennial moralists”. Not exactly hard-core statements in these trying times. We live in a decade where vegan customers are looking to sue restaurants for serving meat. Maybe I’m old-fashioned but for me, that is like something out of Monty Python or Mad Magazine. I respect vegans, but I will not be dictated by them.

I mean, the group people call millennials is after all recognized as a distinct generation due to a pattern of unreasonable demands on society (and in extreme cases, reality itself). In some parts of the world this is a real problem, because you have a whole generation that expects to bag upper-management salary on a paper route. When this is not met you face a tantrum and aggressiveness that should not exist beyond a certain age. Having a meltdown like a six-year-old when you are twenty-six is, well, not something I’m even remotely interested in dealing with.

And I speak from experience here, I had the misfortune of working with one extreme case for a couple of years. He had a meltdown roughly once a month and verbally abused everyone in the office. Including his boss. I still can’t believe he put up with it for so long, a lesser man would have physically educated him on the spot.

The sensitivity movement

But (and this is important) like always, a stereotype is never absolute. The majority within the millennial age group are nothing like these extreme cases. In fact we have two administrators in Delphi Developer that both fall under the millennial age group – yet they are the exact opposite of the stereotype. They are extremely hard-working, demonstrate good moral and good behavior, they give of themselves to the community and are people I am proud to call my friends.

The people I refer to as the sensitivity movement consists of men and women that hold, in my view, demands to life that are unreasonable. We live in times where for some reason, and don’t ask me why, minorities have gotten away with terrible things (slander, straw-men tactics, blame shifting, perversion of facts, verbal abuse, planting dangerous rumours and false accusation; things that can ruin a person for life) to impose their needs opposed to the greater good and majority. And no, this has nothing to do with politics, it has to do with expectation of normal decency and minding your own business. As a teenager I had my share of rebellion (some would say three shares), but I never blamed society; instead I wanted to understand why society was the way it is, which led me to studying history, comparative religion and philosophy.

The minorities of 2018 have no interest in understanding why, they mistake preference with offence, confuse kindness with weakness – and are painfully unable to discern knowledge from wisdom. The difference between fear and respect might be subtle, but on reflection a person should make important discoveries about their own nature. Yet this seem utterly lost on men and women in their 20s today.

And just to make things crystal clear: the minorities I am referring to here as the so-called sensitivity movement, are not the underprivileged or individuals suffering a disadvantage. The minorities are in fact highly privileged individuals – enjoying the very freedom of expression they so eagerly want taken away from people they don’t like. That is a very dangerous path.

Linux, the bedrock of the anti-establishment movement

The Linux community has a history of being difficult. Personally I find them both helpful and kind, but the core motivation behind Linux as a phenomenon cannot be swept under the carpet or ignored: these are rebels, rogues, people who refuse to bend the knee.

Linux itself is an act of defiance, and it exists due to two key individuals who both are extremely passionate by nature, namely Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds.

Attacking these from all sides is shameful. I find no other words for it. Especially since its not a matter of principles or sound moral values, but rather a matter of pride and selfish ideals.

Name calling will not be tolerated

The reason I wrote this post was not to involve everyone in the dire situation of Linux, at least not to bring an external problem into our community and make it our problem. It was news that is of some importance.

I wrote this blogpost because a member somehow nicknamed me as “maga right-wing” something. And I’m not even sure how to respond to something like that.

First of all I have no clue what maga even is, I think it’s that cap slogan trump uses? Make america great again or something like that? Secondly, I live in Norway and know very little of the intricacies of domestic american politics. I have voted left for some 20 years, with exception of last norwegian election when I voted center. How my respect for Stallman and Linus, and how the hacker community operates (I grew up in the hacker community) – somehow connects me to some political agenda on another continent, is quite frankly beyond me.

But this is exactly the thing I wrote about above – the method being deployed by these groups. A person read something he or she doesn’t like, connects that to a pre-defined personality type, this is then supposed to justify wild accusations – and he or she then proceeded directly to treating someone accordingly. THAT behavior IS offensive to me, because there should be a dialog quite early in that chain of events. We have dialog to avoid causing harm – not as a means to cause further damage.

Is it the end of Linux as we know it?

No. Linus has been a loud mouth for ages, and he actually have people who purge his code of swear words (which is kinda funny) – but he has accepted the code of conduct and taken some time off.

The threat Stallman and the core team has made however is very real, meaning that the inner circle of Linux developers can flick the kill switch if they want to, but I think the negative press Coraline and those forcing their agenda onto the Linux foundation is getting, will make them regret it. And of course, articles like the New Yorker published didn’t help the situation.

Having said that, these developers are not normal people. Normal is a cut of average behavior. And neither Stallman, Linus of the hacker community fall under the term “normal” in the absolutesense of the word. Not a single individual that has done something of importance technologically fall under that group. Nor do they have any desire to be normal either, which is a death sentence in the hacker community. The lowest, most worthless status you can hold as a hacker, is normal.

These are people who build operating systems for fun. They are passion driven, artistic and highly emotional. And as such they could, should more gutter tricks be deployed, decide to burn the house down before they hand it over.

So it’s an interesting case well worth keeping an eye on. Preferably one that doesn’t add or subtract from what is there.

Nano PI Fire 3, part two

If you missed the first installment of this test, please click here to catch up. In this installment we are just going to dive straight into general use and get a feel for what can and cannot be done.

Solving the power problem

Like mentioned in the previous article, a normal mobile charger (5 volt, 2 amps) is not enough to support the nano-pi. Since I have misplaced my original PI power-supply with 5 volt / 3 amps I decided to cheat. So I plugged the power USB into my PC which will deliver as much juice as the device needs. I don’t have time to wait for a new PSU to arrive so this will have to do.

But for the record (and underlined) a proper PSU with at least 2.5 amps is essential to using this board. I suggest you order the official Raspberry PI 3b power-supply. But if you should find one with 3 amps that would be even better.

Web performance

The question on everyone’s mind (or at least mine) is: how does the Nano-PI fire 3 perform when rendering cutting edge, hardcore HTML5? Is this little device a potential candidate for running “The Smart Desktop” (a.k.a Amibian.js for those of you coming from the retro-computing scene)?

Like I suspected earlier, X (the Linux windowing framework) doesn’t have drivers that deliver hardware acceleration at all.

Lubuntu is a sexy desktop no doubt there, but it’s overkill for this device

This is quite easy to test: when selecting a rectangle on the Lubuntu desktop and moving the mouse-cursor around (holding down the left mouse button at the same time) if it lags terribly, that is a clear indicator that no acceleration exists.

And I was right on the money because there is no acceleration what so ever for the Linux distribution. It struggles hopelessly to keep up with the mouse-pointer as you move it around with an active selection; something that would be silky smooth had the GPU been tasked with the job.

But, hardware acceleration is not just about the desktop. It’s not some flag you enable and it magically effect everything, but rather several API’s at either the kernel-level or immediate driver level (modules the kernel loads), each affecting different aspects of a system.

So while the desktop “2d blitting” is clearly cpu driven, other aspects of the system can still be accelerated (although that would be weird and rare. But considering how Asus messed up the Tinkerboard I guess anything goes these days).

Asking Chrome for the hard facts

I fired up Google Chrome (which is the default browser thank god) and entered the magic url:

chrome://gpu

This is a built-in page that avails a detailed report of what Chrome learns about the current system, right down to specific GPU features used by OpenGL.

As expected, there was NO acceleration what so ever. So I was quite surprised that it managed to run Amibian.js at all. Even without hardware acceleration it outperformed the Raspberry PI 3b+ by a factor of 4 (at the very least) and my particle demo ran at a whopping 8 fps (frames per second). The original Rasperry PI could barely manage 2 fps. So the Nano-PI Fire is leagues ahead of the PI in terms of raw cpu power, which is brilliant for headless servers or computational tasks.

FriendlyCore vs Lubuntu? QT for the win

Now here is a funny thing. So far I have used the Lubuntu standard Linux image, and performance has been interesting to say the least. No hardware acceleration, impressive cpu results but still – what good is a SBC Linux distro without fast graphics? Sure, if you just want a head-less file server or host services then you don’t need a beefy GPU. But here is the twist:

Turns out the makers of the board has a second, QT oriented distro called Friendly-core. And this image has OpenGL-ES support and all the missing acceleration lacking from Lubuntu.

I was pretty annoyed with how Asus gave users the run-around with Tinkerboard downloads, but they have thankfully cleaned up their act and listened to their customers. Friendly-elec might want to learn from Asus mistakes in this area.

QT has a rich history, but it’s being marginalized by node.js and Delphi these days

Alas, Friendly-core xenial 4.4 Arm64 image turned out to be a pure embedded development image. This is why the board has a debug port (which is probably awesome if you are into QT development). So this is for QT developers that want to use the board as a single-application system where they write the code on Windows or Linux, compile and it’s all transported to the board with live debugging back to the devtools they use. In other words: not very useful for non C/C++ QT developers.

Android Lolipop

I have only used Android on a pad and the odd Samsung Galaxy phone, so this should be interesting. I Downloaded the Lolipop disk image, burned it to the sd-card and booted up.

After 20 minutes with a blank screen i gave up.

I realize that some Android distros download packages ad-hoc and install directly from a repository, so it can take some time to get started; but 15-20 minutes with a black screen? The Android logo didn’t even show up — and that should be visible almost immediately regardless of network install or not.

This is really a great shame because I wanted to test some Delphi Firemonkey applications on it, to see how well it scales the more demanding GPU tasks. And yes i did try a different SD-Card to be sure it wasnt a disk error. Same result.

Back to Lubuntu

Having spent a considerable time trying to find a “wow” factor for this board, I have to just surrender to the fact that it’s just not there. . This is not a “PI” any more than the Tinkerboard is a PI. And appending “pi” to a product name will never change that.

I can imagine the Nano-PI Fire 3 being an awesome single-application board for QT C/C++ developers though. With a dedicated debug port making it a snap to transport, execute and do live debugging directly on the hardware — but for general DIY hacking, using it for native Android development with Delphi, or node.js development with Smart Mobile Studio – or just kicking back with emulators like Mame, UAE or whatever tickles your fancy — its just too rough around the edges. Which is really a shame!

So at the end of the day I re-installed Lubuntu and figure I just have to wait until Friendly-elec get their act together and issue proper drivers for the Mali GPU. So it’s $35 straight out the window — but I can live with that. It was a risk but at that price it’s not going to break the bank.

The positive thing

The Nano-PI Fire 3 is yet another SBC in a long list that fall short of its potential. Like many others they try to use the word “PI” to channel some of the Raspberry PI enthusiasm their way – but the quality of the actual system is not even close.

In fact, using PI in their product name is setting themselves up for a fall – because customers will quickly discover that this product is not a PI, which can cause some subconscious aversion and resentment.

The Nano rendered Amibian.js running some very demanding demos 4 times as fast as the PI 3b, one can only speculate what the board could do with proper drivers for the GPU.

The only positive feature the Fire-3 clearly has to offer, is abundantly more cpu power. It is without a doubt twice as fast (if not 3 times as fast) as the Raspberry PI 3b. The fact that it can render highly demanding and complex HTML5 demos 4 times faster than the Raspberry PI 3b without hardware acceleration is impressive. This is a $35 board after all, which is the same price.

But without proper drivers for the mali, it’s a useless toy. Powerful and with great potential, but utterly useless for multimedia and everything that relies on fast 2D and 3D graphics. For UAE (Amiga emulation) you can pretty much forget it. Even if you can compile the latest UAE4Arm with SDL as its primary display framework – it wouldn’t work because SDL depends on the graphics drivers. So it’s back to square one.

But the CPU packs a punch that is without question.

Final verdict

There are a lot of stable and excellent options out there, take your time

I was planning to test UAE next but as I have outlined above: without drivers that properly expose and delegate the power of the mali, it would be a complete disaster. I’m not even sure it would build.

As such I will just leave this board as is. If it matures at some point that would be great, but my advice to people looking for a great SBC experience — get the new Raspberry PI 3b+ and enjoy learning and exploring there.

And if you are into Amibian.js or making high quality HTML5 kiosk / node.js based systems, then fork out the extra $10 and buy an ODroid XU4. If you pay $55 you can pick up the Asus Tinkerboard which is blistering fast and great value for money, despite its turbulent introduction.

Note: You cannot go wrong with the ODroid XU4. Its affordable, stable and fast. So for beginners it’s either the Raspberry PI 3b+ or the ODroid. These are the most mature in terms of software, drivers and stability.

Power for pennies, getting a server rack and preparing my ultimate coding environment

One of the benefits of doing repairs on your house, is that during the cleanup process you come over stuff you had completely forgot about. Like two very powerful Apple blade servers (x86) I received as a present three years ago. I never got around to using them because I there was literally no room in my house for a rack cabinet.

Sure, a medium model rack cabinet isn’t that big (the size of a cabin refrigerator), but you also have to factor in that servers are a lot more noisy than desktop PCs; the older they are the more noise they make. So unless you have a good spot to place the cabinet, where the noise wont make it unbearable to be around,  I suggest you just rent a virtual instance at Amazon or something. It really depends on how much service coding you do, if you need to do dedicated server and protocol stress testing (the list goes on).

Power for pennies

Sellers photo. It needs a good clean, but this kit would have set you back $5000 a decade ago; so picking this up for $400 is almost ridicules.

The price of such cabinets (when buying new ones) can be anything from $800 to $5000 depending on the capacity, features and materials. My needs for a personal server farm are more than covered by a medium cabinet. If it wasnt for my VMWare needs I would say it was overkill. But some of my work, especially with node.js and Delphi system services that should handle terabytes of raw data reliably 24/7, that demands a hard-core testing environment.

Having stumbled upon my blade servers I decided to check the local second-hand online forum; and I was lucky enough to find (drumroll) a second-hand cabinet holding a total of 10 blades for $400. So I’ll be picking up this beauty next weekend. It will be so good to finally get my blades organized. Not to mention all my SBC / Node.js cluster experiments centralized in one physical location. Far away from my home office space (!)

Interestingly, it comes fitted with 3 older servers. There are two Dell web and file servers, and then a third, unmarked mystery box (i3 cpu + sata caddies so that sounds good).

It really is amazing how much cpu fire-power you can pick up for practically nothing these days. $50 buys you a SBC (single board computer) that will rival a Pentium. $400 buys you a 10 blade cabinet and 3 servers that once powered a national newspaper (!).

VMWare delights

All the blades I have mentioned so far are older models. They are still powerful machines, way more than $400 livingroom NAS would get you. So my node.js clustering will run like a dream and I will be able to host all my Delphi development environments via VMware. Which brings us neatly to the blade I am really looking forward to get into the rack.

I bought an empty server blade case back in 2015. It takes a PSU, motherboard, fans and everything else is there (even the six caddies for disks). Into this seemingly worthless metal box I put a second generation Intel i7 monster (Asus motherboard), with 32 gigabyte ram – and fitted it with a sexy NVidia GEFORCE GTX 1080 TI.

All my Delphi work, Smart work and various legacy projects I maintain, all in one neat rack

This little monster (actually it takes up 2 blade-spots) allows me to run VMWare server, which gives me at least 10 instances of Windows (or Linux, or OSX) at the same time. It will also be able to host and manage roughly 1000 active Smart Desktop users (the bottleneck will be the disk and network more than actual computation).

Being a coder in 2018 is just fantastic!

Things we could only dream about a decade ago can now be picked up for close to nothing (compared to the original cost). Just awesome!

 

Smart Pascal file enumeration under node.js

Ok. I admit it. Writing an RTL from scratch has been one of the hardest tasks I have ever undertaken. Thankfully I have not been alone, but since I am the lead developer for the RTL, it naturally falls on me to keep track of the thousands of classes it comprises; how each affect the next, the many inheritance chains and subsequent causality timelines that each namespace represents.

We were the first company in the world to do this, to establish the compiler technology and then author a full RTL on top of that – designed to wrap and run on top of the JavaScript virtual machine. To be blunt, we didn’t have the luxury to looking at what others had done before us. For every challenge we have had to come up with solutions ourselves.

Be that as it may, after seven years we have gotten quite good at framework architecture. So whenever we need to deal with a new runtime environment such as node.js – we  have already built up a lot of experience with async JSVM development, so we are able to absorb and adapt much faster than our competitors.

Digging into a new platform

Whenever I learn a new language, I typically make a little list of “how do I do this?” type questions. It can be simple, like writing text to stdout, or more elaborate like memory mapped files, inheritance model, raw memory access and similar topics.

But one of the questions have always been: how do I enumerate files in a folder?

While this question is trivial at best, it stabs at the heart of the sub structure of any language. On operating systems like Linux a file is not just data on a disk like we are used to from Windows. A file can be a socket, a virtual access point exposed by the kernel, a domain link, a symbolic link or a stream. So my simple question is actually motivated to expose the depth of the language im learning. I then write down whatever topics come up and then research / experiment on them separately.

Node, like the browser, executes code asynchronously. This means that the code you write cannot be blocking (note: node does support synchronous file IO methods, but you really don’t want to use them in a server. They are typically used before the server is started to load preferences files and data).

As you can imagine, this throws conventional coding out the window. Node exposes a single function that returns an array of filenames (array of string), which helps, but it tells you nothing about the files. You don’t get the size, the type, create and modify timestamps – just the names.

To get the information I just mentioned you have to call a function called “fs.stat”. This is a common POSIX filesystem command. But again we face the fact that everything is async, so that “for / next” loop is useless.

Luke Filewalker

In version 3.0 of Smart Mobile Studio our Node.JS namespace (collection of units with code) has been upgraded and expanded considerably. We have thrown out almost all our older dependencies (like utf8.js and base64.js) and implemented these as proper codec classes in Smart Pascal directly.

Our websocket framework has been re-written from scratch. We threw out the now outdated websocket-io and instead use the standard “ws” framework that is the most popular and actively maintained module on NPM.

We have also implemented the same storage-device class that is available in the browser, so that you can write file-io code that works the same both server-side and client-side. The changes are in the hundreds so I wont iterate through them all here, they will be listed in detail on the release-notes document when the time comes.

But what is a server without a fast, reliable way of enumerating files?

Well, here at the Smart Company we use our own products. So when writing servers and node micro-services we face the exact same challenges as our customers would. Our job is to write ready solutions for these problems, so that you don’t have to spend days and weeks re-inventing the wheel.

Enumerating files is handled by the class TNJFileWalker (I was so tempted to call it Luke). This takes care of everything for you, all the nitty-gritty is neatly packed into a single, easy to use class.

Here is an example:

Enumerating files has literally been reduced to childs play

The class also expose the events you would expect, including a filtering event where you can validate if a file should be included in the final result. You can even control the dispatching speed (or delay between item processing) which is helpful for payload balancing. If you have 100 active users all scanning their files at the same time -you probably want to give node the chance to breathe (20ms is a good value).

The interface for the class is equally elegant and easy to understand:

What would you prefer to maintain? 500.000 lines of JavaScript or 20.000 lines of pascal?

Compare that to some of the spaghetti JavaScript developers have to live with just to perform a file-walk and then do a recursive “delete folder”. Sure hope they check for “/” so they don’t kill the filesystem root by accident.

const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');

function filewalker(dir, done) {
    let results = [];

    fs.readdir(dir, function(err, list) {
        if (err) return done(err);

        var pending = list.length;

        if (!pending) return done(null, results);

        list.forEach(function(file){
            file = path.resolve(dir, file);

            fs.stat(file, function(err, stat){
                // If directory, execute a recursive call
                if (stat && stat.isDirectory()) {
                    // Add directory to array [comment if you need to remove the directories from the array]
                    results.push(file);

                    filewalker(file, function(err, res){
                        results = results.concat(res);
                        if (!--pending) done(null, results);
                    });
                } else {
                    results.push(file);

                    if (!--pending) done(null, results);
                }
            });
        });
    });
};

function deleteFile(dir, file) {
    return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
        var filePath = path.join(dir, file);
        fs.lstat(filePath, function (err, stats) {
            if (err) {
                return reject(err);
            }
            if (stats.isDirectory()) {
                resolve(deleteDirectory(filePath));
            } else {
                fs.unlink(filePath, function (err) {
                    if (err) {
                        return reject(err);
                    }
                    resolve();
                });
            }
        });
    });
};

function deleteDirectory(dir) {
    return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
        fs.access(dir, function (err) {
            if (err) {
                return reject(err);
            }
            fs.readdir(dir, function (err, files) {
                if (err) {
                    return reject(err);
                }
                Promise.all(files.map(function (file) {
                    return deleteFile(dir, file);
                })).then(function () {
                    fs.rmdir(dir, function (err) {
                        if (err) {
                            return reject(err);
                        }
                        resolve();
                    });
                }).catch(reject);
            });
        });
    });
};

The Tinkerboard Strikes Back

For those that follow my blog you probably remember the somewhat devastating rating I gave the Tinkerboard earlier this year (click here for part 1, and here for part 2). It was quite sad having to give such a poor rating to what is ultimately a fine piece of hardware. I had high hopes for it – in fact I bought two of the boards because I figured there was no way it could suck with that those specs. But suck it did and while the muscle was there, the drivers were in such a state that it never emerged for the user. It was released prematurely, and I think most people that bought it agrees on this.

The initial release was less than bad, it was horrible

Since my initial review those months ago good things have happened. Asus seem to have listened to the “poonami” of negative feedback and adapted their website accordingly. Unlike the first time I visited when you literally had to dig into recursive menus (which was less than intuitive in this case) just to download the software – the disk images are now available at the bottom of the product page. So thumbs up for that (!)

They have also made the GPIO programming API a lot easier to get; downloading it is reduced to a “one liner” for C developers, which is the way it should be. And they have likewise provided wrappers for other languages, like ever popular python and scratch.

I am a bit disappointed that they don’t provide freepascal units. A lot of developers use object pascal on these board after all, because Object Pascal gives you a better balance between productivity and depth. Pascal is easier to learn (it was designed for that after all) but avoids some of the pitfalls of C/C++ while retaining all the good things. Porting over C headers is fairly easy for a good pascal programmer – but it would be cool of Asus remember that there are more languages in the world than C and python.

All of this aside: the most important change of all is what Asus has done with the drivers! They have finally put together drivers that shows off the capabilities of the hardware and unleash the speed we all hoped for when the board was first announced. And man does it show! My previous experience with the Tinkerboard was horrible; it was the text-book example of a how not to release a product (the whole release has been odd; Asus is a huge, multi-national corporation. Yet their release had basement 3 man band written all over it).

So this is fantastic news! Finally the Tinkerboard delivers and can be used for real life projects!

Smart IOT

At The Smart Company we both create and use our core product, Smart Mobile Studio, to deliver third-party solutions. As the name implies Smart is a software development system initially made for mobile applications; but it quickly grew into a much larger toolchain and is exceptionally good for making embedded applications. With embedded applications I mean things that run on kiosk systems, cash machines and stuff like that; basically anything with a touch-screen that does something.

The Smart desktop gives you a good starting point for embedded work

One of the examples that ship with Smart Pascal is a fully working desktop embedded environment. Smart compiles for both ordinary browsers (JavaScript environments with a traditional HTML5 display) but also for node.js, which is JavaScript unbound by the strict rules of a browser. Developers typically use node.js to write highly scalable server software, but you are naturally not limited to that. Netflix is written 100% in Node.js, so we are talking serious firepower here.

Our embedded environment is called The Smart Desktop (also known as Amibian.js) and gives you a ready-made node.js back-end that couples with a HTML5 front-end. This is a ready to use environment that you can deploy your own applications through. Things like storage, a nice looking UI, user logon and credentials and much, much more is all implemented for you. You don’t have to use it of course, you can write your own system from scratch if you like. We created “Amibian” to demonstrate just how powerful Smart Pascal can be in the right hands.

With this in mind – my main concern when testing SBC’s (single board computers) is obviously web performance. By default JavaScript is a single core event-driven runtime system; you can spawn threads of course but its done somewhat different from how you would work in Delphi or C++.  JavaScript is designed to be system friendly and a gentle giant if you like, which has turned out to be a good thing – because the way JS schedules execution makes it ideal for clustering!

Most people find it hard to believe that JavaScript can outperform native code, but the JavaScript runtimes of today is almost a whole eco system in themselves. With JIT compilers and LLVM optimization — it’s a whole new ballgame.

Making a scale

To give you a better context to see where the Tinkerboard is on a scale, I decided to set up a couple of simple tests. Nothing fancy, just running the same web applications and see how each of them perform on different boards. So I used the same 3 candidates as before, namely the Raspberry PI 3b, the Hardkernel ODroid XU4 and last but not least: the Asus Tinkerboard.

I setup the following applications to compile with the desktop system, meaning that they were compiled with the Smart project. We got plenty of web applications but for this I wanted to pack the most demanding apps in our library:

• Skid-Row intro remake using the CODEF library
• Quake 3 asm.js build
• Plex

OK let’s go through them and see where the chips land!

The Raspberry PI 3b

Bassoon ran well, its not that demanding

The Raspberry PI was aweful (click here for a video). There is no doubt that native applications like UAE4Arm runs extremely well on the PI (which contains hand optimized assembler, not exactly a fair fight)- but when it comes to modern HTML5 the PI doesn’t stand a chance. You could perhaps use a Raspberry PI 3b for simple applications which are not graphic and cpu intensive, but you can forget about anything remotely taxing.

It ran Bassoon reasonably fast, but all in all you really don’t want a raspberry when doing high quality IOT, unless its headless code and node.js perhaps. Frameworks like Johnny #5 gives you a ton of GPIO features out of the box – in fact you can target 40 embedded systems without any change to your code. But for large, high quality web front-ends, the PI just wont cut it.

• Skid-Row: 1 frame per second or less
• Quake: Can’t even start, just forget it
• Plex: Starts but it lags so much you can’t watch anything

But hey, I never expected $35 to give me a kick ass ARM experience anyways. There are 1000 things the PI does very well, but HTML is not one of them.

ODroid XU4

The ODroid packs a lot of power!

The ODroid being faster than the Raspberry PI is nothing new, but I was surprised at how much power this board delivers. I never expected it to give me a Linux experience close to that of a x86 PC; I mean we are talking about a 45€ SBC here. And it’s only 10€ more than the Raspberry PI, which is a toy at best. But the ODroid XU4 delivers a good Linux desktop; And it’s well worth the extra 10€ when compared to the PI.

Personally I don’t understand why people keep buying PI’s when there is so much better options on the market now. At least not if web technology is involved. A small server or emulator sure, but not HTML5 and browsers. The PI just cant handle it.

• Skid-Row: 4-5 frames per second
• Quake: Runs at very enjoyable speed (!)
• Plex: Runs well but you may want to pick SD or 720p to avoid lags

What really shocked me was that ODroid XU4 can run Quake.js! The PI can’t even start that because it’s so demanding. It is one of the largest and most resource hungry asm.js projects out there – but ODroid XU4 did a fantastic job.

• Click here for video #1
• Click here for second video (Quake)

Now it’s not a silky smooth experience, I would guess something along the lines of 17-20 fps. But you know what? Thats pretty good for a $45 board.

I have owned far worse x86 PC’s in my day.

The Tinkerboard

Before i powered up the board I was reluctant to push it too far, because I thought it would fail me once again. I did hope that something had been done by Asus to rectify the situation though, because Asus really should have done a better job before releasing it. It’s now been roughly 6 months since I bought it, and roughly 8 months since it was released here in Europe. It would have been better for them to have waited with the release. I was not alone about butchering the whole board, its been a source of frustration for those that bought it. 75€ is not much, but no-one likes to throw money out the window like that.

Long story short: I downloaded the latest Ubuntu image and burned that to an SD card (I actually first downloaded the Debian Jessie image they have, but sadly you have to do a bit of work to turn that into a desktop system – so I decided to go for Ubuntu instead). If the drivers are in order I have a feeling the Jessie image will be even faster – Ubuntu has always been a high-quality distribution, but it’s also one of the most demanding. One might even say it’s become bloated. But it does deliver a near Microsoft Windows like experience which has served the Linux community well.

But the Tinkerboard really delivers! (click here for the video) Asus have cleaned up their act and implemented the drivers properly, and you can feel that the moment the desktop comes into view. With the PI you are always fighting with lagging performance. When you start a program the whole system freezes for a while, when you quit a program the system freezes – hell when you move the mouse around the system bloody freezes! Well that is not the case with the Tinkerboard that’s for sure. The tinkerboard feels more like running vanilla Ubuntu on a normal x86 PC to be honest.

• Skid-Row: 10-15 frames per second
• Quake: Full screen 32bit graphics, runs like hell
• Plex: Plays back fullscreen HD, just awesome!

All I can say is this: if you are going to do any bit of embedded coding, regardless if you are using Smart Mobile Studio or some other devkit — this is the board to get (!)

Like already mentioned it does cost almost twice as much as the PI, but that extra 30€ buys you loads of extra power. It opens up so many avenues of code and you can explore software far more complex than both the PI and ODroid combined. With the tinkerboard you can finally deliver a state of the art product built with off the shelves web components. It’s in a league of its own.

The ‘tinker’ rocks at last

When I first bought the tinker i felt cheated. It was so frustrating because the specs were so good and the terrible performance just came down to sloppy work and Asus releasing it prematurely for cash (lets face it, they tapped into the lucrative market established by the PI foundation). By looking at the specs you knew it had the firepower to deliver so much, but it was held back by ridicules drivers.

There is still a lot that can be done to make the Tinkerboard run even faster. Like I mentioned Ubuntu is not the racecar of distributions out there. Ubuntu is fat, there is no other way of saying it. So if someone took the time to create a minimalistic Jessie image, recompile every piece with maximum llvm optimization and as few running services as possible — the tinkerboard would positively fly!

So do I recommend it? I am thrilled to say that yes, I can finally recommend the tinkerboard! It is by far the coolest board in my collection now. In fact it’s so good that I’m donating one to my daughter. She is presently using an iMac which is overkill for her needs at age 10. Now I can make a super simple menu with Netflix and Youtube, buy a nice touch-screen display and wall mount it in her room.

Well done Asus!

Amibian.js on bitbucket

The Smart Pascal driven desktop known as Amibian.js is available on bitbucket. It was hosted in a normal github repository earlier – so make sure you clone out from this one.

About Amibian.js

Amibian is a desktop environment written in Smart Pascal. It compiles to JavaScript and can be used through any modern HTML5 compliant browser. The project consists of both a client and server, both written in smart pascal. The server is executed by node.js (note: please install PM2 to have better control over scaling and task management: http://pm2.keymetrics.io/).

Amibian.js is best suited for embedded projects, such as kiosk systems. It has been used in tutoring software for schools, custom routers and a wide range of different targets. It can easily be molded into a rich environment for SAD (single application devices) based software – but also made to act more as a real operating system:

• Class driven filesystem, easy to target external services
  • Ram device-type
  • Browser cache device-type
  • ZIPfile device-type
  • Node.js device-type
• Cross domain application hosting
  • Traditional IPC protocol between hosted application and desktop
  • Shared resources
    • css styling
    • glyphs and images
  • Event driven visual controls
• Windowing manager makes it easy to implement custom applications
• Support for fullscreen API

Amibian ships with UAE.js (based on the SAE.js codebase) making it possible to run Amiga software directly on the desktop surface.

The bitbucket repository is located here: https://bitbucket.org/hexmonks/client

 

FMX 4 linux gets an update

The Firemonkey framework that allows you to compile for Linux desktop (Linux x86 server is already supported) just got a nice update. Amoung the changes is a nice Radial Gradient pattern – and several bugs squashed.

This is an awesome addition if you already have Delphi XE 10.2 and if writing Ubuntu desktop applications is something you want – then this is the package to get!

Check it out: http://fmxlinux.com/

Smart Pascal: Amibian vs. FriendOS

This is not a new question, and despite my earlier post I still get hammered with these on a weekly basis – so lets dig into this subject and clean it up.

I fully understand that for non-developers suddenly having two Amiga like web desktops can be a bit confusing; especially since they superficially at least do many of the same things. But there is actually a lot of co-incidence surrounding all this, as well as evolution of the general topic. People who work with a topic will naturally come up with the same ideas from time to time.

But ok, lets dig into this and clear away any confusion

You know about FriendOS right? It looks a lot like Amibian

Custom native web servers has been a part of Delphi for ages, so it’s not that exciting for us

“A lot” is probably stretching it. But ok:  FriendOS is a custom server system with a sexy desktop front-end written in HTML5. So you have a server that is custom written to interact with the browser in a special way. This might sound like a revolution to non-developers but it’s actually an established technology; its been a part of Delphi and C++ builder for at least 12 years now (Intraweb being the best example, Raudus another). So if you are wondering why im not dazzled, it’s because this has been there for a while.

The whole point of Amibian.js is to demonstrate a different path; to get away from the native back-end and to make the whole system portable and platform independent. So in that regard the systems are diametrically different.

Custom web servers that talk to your web-app is old news. Delphi developers have done this for a decade at least and it’s not really interesting at this point. Node.js holds much greater promise.

What FriendOS has done that is unique, and that I think is super cool – is to couple their server with RDP (remote desktop protocol) and some nice video streaming for smooth video chat. Again these are off the shelves parts that anyone can add once you have a native back-end, it’s not really hard to code but time-consuming; especially when you are potentially dealing with large number of users spawning threads all over the place. I think Friend-Labs have done an exceptional good job here.

When you combine these features it creates the impression of an operating system like environment. And this is perfectly fine for ordinary users. It all depends on your needs and what exactly you use the computer for.

And just to set the war-mongers straight: FriendOS is not going up against Amibian. it’s going up against ChromeOS, Nayu and and a ton of similar systems; all of them with deep pockets and an established software portfolio. We focus on software development. Not even in the same ballpark.

To be perfectly frank: I see no real purpose for a web desktop except when connected to a context. There has to be an advantage beyond isolating web functions in one place. You need something special that your system does better than others, or different than others. Amibian has been about UAE.js and to run retro games in a familiar environment. And thus create a base that Amiga lovers can build on and play with. Again based on our prefab for customers that make embedded systems and use our compiler and RTL for that.

If you have a hardware product like a NAS, a ticket system or a retro-game machine and want to have a nice web front-end for it: then it makes sense. But there is absolutely nothing in both our systems that you can’t whip-up using Intraweb or Raudus in a few weeks. If you have the luxury of a native back-end, then adding Active Directory support is a matter of dropping a component. You can even share printers and USB devices over the wire if you like, this has been available to Delphi and c++ developers for ages. The “new” factor here, which FriendOS does very well i might add, is connectivity.

This might sound like criticism but it’s really not. It’s honesty and facts. They are going to need some serious cash to take on Google, Samsung, LG and various other players that have been doing similar things for a long time (or about to jump on the same concepts) — Amibian.js is for Amiga fans and people who use Smart Pascal to write embedded applications. We don’t see anything to compete with because Amibian is a prefab connected to a programming language. FriendOS is a unification system.

A programming language doesnt have the aspirations of a communication company. So the whole “oh who is best” or “are you the same” is just wrong.

Ok you say it’s not competing, but why not?

To understand Amibian.js you first need to understand Smart Pascal (see Wikipedia article on Smart Pascal). Smart Pascal (smartmobilestudio.com) is a software development studio for writing software using web technology rather than native machine-code. It allows you to create whatever you like, from games to servers, or kiosk software to the next Facebook clone.

Our focus is on enabling our customers to quickly program robust mobile applications, servers, kiosk software, games or large JavaScript projects; products that would otherwise be hard to manage if all you have is vanilla JavaScript. I mean why spend 2 years coding something when you can do it in 2 months using Smart? So a web desktop is just ridicules when you understand how large our codebase is and the scope of the product.

Under Smart Pascal what people know as Amibian.js is just a project type. There is no competition between FriendOS and Amibian because a web desktop represents a ridicules small piece of our examples; it’s literally mistaking the car for the factory. Amibian is not our product, it is a small demo and prefab (pre fabricated system that others can download and build on) project that people use to save time. So under Smart, creating your own web desktop is a piece of cake, it’s a click, and then you can brand it, expand it and do whatever you like with it. Just like you would any project you create in Visual Studio, Delphi or C++ builder.

So we are not in competition with FriendOS because we create and deliver development tools. Our customers use Smart Pascal to create web environments both large and small, and naturally we deliver what they need. You could easily create a FriendOS clone in Smart if you got the skill, but again – that is but a tiny particle in our codebase.

Really? Amibian.js is just a project under Smart Pascal?

Indeed. Our product delivers a full object-oriented pascal compiler, debugger and IDE. So you can write classes, use inheritance and enjoy all the perks of a high-level language — and then compile this to JavaScript.

You can target node.js, the browser and about 90+ embedded devices out of the box. The whole point of Smart Pascal is to avoid the PITA that is writing large applications in JavaScript. And we do this by giving you a classical programming language that was made especially for application authoring, and then compile that to JavaScript instead.

Amibian.js is just a tiny, tiny part of what Smart Pascal is all about

This is a massive undertaking that started back in 2009/2010 and involves a high-quality compiler, linker, debugger and code generator; a full IDE with a ton of capabilities and last but not least: a huge run-time library that allows you to work with the DOM (document object model, or HTML) and node.js from the vantage point of a programmer.

Most people approach web development as a designer. They write html and then style them using a stylesheet. They work with colors, aspects and pages. Which means people who traditionally write programs falls between two chairs: first they must learn about html and css, and secondly a language which is ill equipped for large scale applications (imagine writing adobe photoshop in nothing but JS. Sure it’s possible, but wouldnt you rather spend a month coding that than a year? In a language that actually makes sense?).

With Smart you approach web development like you do writing programs. You work with visual controls, change properties, write code in response to events. Even writing your own visual controls that you can re-use and inherit from later is both fun and easy. So rather than ending up with a huge was of spaghetti code, which sadly is the fate of most large-scale JavaScript projects — Smart lets you work like you are used to. In a language better suited for the task.

And yes, I was not kidding when I said this was a huge undertaking. The source code in our codebase is close to 2.5 gigabytes. And keep in mind that this is source-code and libraries. So it’s not something you slap together over the weekend.

The Smart source-code is close to 2.5 gigabytes. It has taken years to complete

But why do Amibian and FriendOS both focus on the Amiga?

That is pure co-incidence. The guys over at Friend Labs started out on the Amiga just like we did. So when I updated our desktop project (previously called Quartex Media Desktop) the Amiga look and feel came natural to me.

I’m a huge retro-computing fan that loves the Amiga. When I sat down to rewrite our window manager I loved the way Amiga OS 4.x looked, so I decided to implement an UI inspired by that.

People have to remember that the Amiga was a huge success in Scandinavia, so finding developers that are in their late 30s or early 40s that didn’t own an Amiga is harder than you think.

So the fact that we all root our ideas back to the Amiga is both co-incidence and a mutual passion for a great platform. One that really should have survived the financial onslaught of fat CEO’s and thir minions in the board.

But Amibian does a lot of what FriendOS does?

Probably. JavaScript is multi-tasking by default so if loading external URL’s into window containers, doing live resize and other things is what you refer to then yes. But that is the nature of web programming. Its like creating a bucket if you want to carry water; it is a natural first step of an evolutionary pattern. It’s not like FriendOS is copying us I would imagine.

For the record Smart started back in 2010 and the media desktop came in with the first hotfix, so its been available years before Friend-Labs even existed. Creating a desktop has not been a huge part of what we do because mobile applications, building a rich and solid run-time-library with hundreds of classes for our customers – and making an IDE that is great to use, that is our primary job.

We didn’t even know FriendOS existed. Let alone that it was a Norwegian product.

But you posted that you worked for FriendOS earlier?

Yes I did, very briefly. I was offered a position and I worked there for a month. It was a chance to work side by side with legends like David John Pleasance, ex head of Commodore for europe; and also my childhood hero Francois Lionet, author of Amos Basic for the Amiga way back in the 80’s and 90s.

We never forget our childhood heroes

Sadly we had our wires crossed. I am an awesome object pascal developer, while the guys at Friend-Labs are awesome C developers. I work primarily on Windows while they work mostly on Linux. So in essence they hired a Delphi developer to work in a language he doesn’t know on a platform he havent used.

They simply took for granted that I worked in C/C++, while I took for granted that they used object pascal. Its an easy mistake to make and its not the first time; and probably not the last.

Needless to say the learning curve would be extremely high for any developer (learning a new operating-system and programming language at the same time as you are supposed to be productive).

When my girlfriend suddenly faced a life threatening illness the situation became worse. It was impossible for me to commute or leave her side for the unforeseeable future; so when you add the six months learning curve to this situation; six months of not being able to contribute on the level I am used to; well I am old enough to know how that ends. So I did what was best for everyone and resigned.

Besides, I am a damn good Delphi developer with standing invitation to many companies; so it made more sense to just take a step backwards. Which was not fun because I really enjoyed the short time I was there. But, it was not meant to be.

And that is basically all there is to it.

Ok. But if Smart is a development tool, will it support Friend-OS ?

This is something that I really want to do. But since The Smart Company is a proper company with stocks, shareholders and investors – it’s not a decision I can take on my own. It is something that must be debated by the board. But personally yeah, I would love that.

As they grow, so does the need for proper development tools

One of the reasons I hope FriendOS succeeds is because it’s a win-win situation. The more they expand the more relevant Smart becomes. Say what you will about JavaScript but writing large and complex applications is not easy by any measure.

So the moment we introduce Smart Pascal for Friend, their users will be able to write large applications rapidly, with better time-to-market and consequent ROI. So it’s a win-win. If they succeed then we get a bigger market; If they don’t we havent lost anything.

This may sound extremely self-serving, but Friend-Labs have had the same chance as everyone else to invest in Smart; our investor plans have been available for quite some time, and we have to do what is best for our company.

But what about Amibian, was it just a short thing?

Not at all. It is put on hold for a few months while we release the next generation RTL. Which is probably the biggest update in the history of Smart Pascal. We have a very clear agenda ahead of us and Amibian.js is (as underlined) a very small part of what we do.

But Amibian is written using our next generation RTL, and without that our customers cant really do much with it. So it’s important to get the RTL out first and then work on the IDE to reflect its many new features. After that – Amibian.js development will continue.

The primary target for Amibian.js is embedded devices and kiosk systems, coupled with full-screen web applications and hardware front-ends (NAS and backup devices being great examples). So the desktop will run on affordable, off the shelves hardware starting at $40 and all the way up to the most powerful and expensive x86 boards on the market. Cheap solutions like Raspberry PI, ODroid XU4 and Tinkerboard will deliver what you today need a dedicated $120 x86 board to achieve.

Our desktop will run on many targets and is platform independent by design

This means that our deskop has a wildly different modus operandi. We will not require a constant connection to a remote server. Amibian will happily boot up on a single device, regardless of processor type.

Had we coded our backend using Delphi or C++ builder (native like FriendOS have done) we would have been finished months ago. And I could have caught up with FriendOS in a couple of months if I wanted to. But that is not in our agenda. We have written our server framework for node.js as we coded the desktop  – which means it’s platform and OS agnostic by design. If node.js runs, Amibian will run. It wont care if you are running on a $40 embedded board or the latest Intel i9 cpu.

Last words

I really hope this has helped and that the confusion between Amibian.js and our agenda, versus what Friend-Labs is doing, is now clearer.

From Norway with love

I wish Friend-Labs the very best and hope they are successful in their endeavour. They have worked very hard on the product and deserve that. And while I might come over as arrogant at times, im really not.

Web desktops have been around for a long time now (Asustor is my favorite) through Delphi and C++ builder and that is just facts. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put things together in new and interesting ways! Smart itself was first put together by existing technology. It was said to be impossible by many because JavaScript and object pascal are unthinkable companions. But it turned out to be a perfect match.

As for the future – personally I don’t believe in the web-desktop outside a specific context, something to give it purpose if you like. I believe for instance that Amibian.js will be awesome for Amiga users when its running on a $99 ARM laptop. Where the system boots straight into a full-screen desktop and where UAE.js is fully integrated into the core, making retro-gaming and running old programs close to seamless. That I can believe in.

But it would make no sense running Amibian or FriendOS in a browser on top of a Windows desktop or a full Ubuntu X session. Unless the virtual desktop functions as your corporate window with access to company mail, documents and essentially what every web-based intranet already does. So once again we end up with the fact that this has already been done. And unless you create a unique context for it, it just wont have any appeal. This is also why I havent pursued the same tech Friend-Labs have, because that’s not where the exciting stuff is happening.

But I will happily be proven wrong, because that means an even bigger market for us should we decide to support the platform.

Smart-Pascal: A brave new world, 2022 is here

Trying to explain what Smart Mobile Studio does and the impact it can have on your development cycle is very hard. The market is rampant with superficial frameworks that promises you the world, and investors have been taken for a ride by hyped up, one-click “app makers” more than once.

I can imagine that being an investor is a bit like panning for gold. Things that glitter the most often turn out to be worthless – yet fortunes may hide beneath unpolished and rugged surfaces.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.
Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, yet they are now the
biggest taxi company in the world. -Source: R.M.Goldman, Ph.d

So I had enough. Instead of trying to tell people what I can do, I decided I’m going to show them instead. As the american’s say: “talk is cheap”. And a working demonstration is worth a thousand words.

Care to back that up with something?

A couple of weeks ago I published a video on YouTube of our Smart Pascal based desktop booting up in VMWare. The Amiga forums went off the chart!

For those that havent followed my blog or know nothing about the desktop I’m talking about, here is a short summary of the events so far:

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Smart Mobile Studio is a compiler that takes pascal, like that made popular in Delphi or Lazarus, and compiles it JavaScript instead of machine-code.

This product has shipped with an example of a desktop for years (called “Quartex media desktop”). It was intended as an example of how you could write a front-end for kiosk machines and embedded devices. Systems that could use a touch screen as the interface between customer and software.

You have probably seen those info booths in museums, universities and libraries? Or the ticket machines in subways, train-stations or even your local car-wash? All of those are embedded systems. And up until recently these have been small and expensive computers for running Windows applications in full-screen. Applications which in turn talk to a server or local database.

Smart Mobile Studio is able to deliver the exact same (and more) for a fraction of the price. A company in Oslo replaced their $300 per-board unit – with off the shelves $35 Raspberry Pi mini-computers. They then used Smart Pascal to write their client software and ran it in a fullscreen-browser. The Linux distribution was changed to boot straight into Firefox in full-screen. No Linux desktop, just a web display.

The result? They were able to cut production cost by $265 per unit.

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Right, back to the desktop. I mentioned the Amiga community. This is a community of coders and gamers that grew up with the old Commodore machines back in the 80s and 90s. A new Amiga is now on the way (just took 20+ years) – and the look and feel of the new operating-system, Amiga OS 4.1, is the look and feel I have used in The Smart Desktop environment. First of all because I grew up on these machines myself, and secondly because the architecture of that system was extremely cost-effective. We are talking about a system that delivered pre-emptive multitasking in as little as 512Kb of memory (!). So this is my “ode to OS 4” if you will.

And the desktop has caused quite a stir both in the Delphi community, cloud community and retro community alike. Why? Because it shows some of the potential cloud technology can give you. Potential that has been under their nose all this time.

And even more important: it demonstrate how productive you can be in Smart Pascal. The operating system itself, both visual and non-visual parts, was put together in my spare time over 3 weeks. Had I been able to work on it daily (as a normal job) I would have knocked it out in a week.

A desktop as a project type

All programming languages have project types. If you open up Delphi and click “new” you are greeted with a rich menu of different projects you can make. From low-level DLL files to desktop applications or database servers. Delphi has it all.

Delphi offers a wide range of projects types you can create

The same is true for visual studio. You click “new solution” and can pick from a wide range of different projects. Web projects, servers, desktop applications and services.

Smart Pascal is the only system where you click “new project” and there is a type called “Smart desktop” and “Smart desktop application”. In other words, the power to create a full desktop is now an integrated part of Smart Pascal.

And the desktop is unique to you. You get to shape it, brand it and make it your own!

Let us take a practical example

Imagine a developer given the task to move the company’s aging invoice and credit system from the Windows desktop – to a purely web-based environment.

The application itself is large and complex, littered with legacy code and “quick fixes” going back decades. Updating such a project is itself a monumental task – but having to first implement concepts like what a window is, tasks, user space, cloud storage, security endpoints, look and feel, back-end services and database connectivity; all of that before you even begin porting the invoice system itself ? The cost is astronomical.

And it happens every single day!

In Smart Pascal, the same developer would begin by clicking “new project” and selecting “Smart desktop”. This gives him a complete desktop environment that is unique to his project and company.

A desktop that he or she can shape, adjust, alter and adapt according to the need of his employer. Things like file-type recognition, storage, getting that database – all of these things are taken care of already. The developer can focus on his task, namely to deliver a modern implementation of their invoice and credit software – not waste months trying to force JavaScript frameworks do things they simply lack the depth to deliver.

Once the desktop has the look and feel in order, he would have to make a simple choice:

• Should the whole desktop represent the invoice system or ..
• Should the invoice system be implemented as a secondary application running on the desktop?

If it’s a large and dedicated system where the users have no need for other programs running, then implementing the invoice system inside the desktop itself is the way to go.

If however the customer would like to expand the system later, perhaps add team management, third-party web-services or open-office like productivity (a unified intranet if you like) – then the second option makes more sense.

On the brink of a revolution

The developer of 2022 is not limited to the desktop. He is not restricted to a particular operating system or chip-set. Fact is, cloud has already reduced these to a matter of preference. There is no strategic advantage of using Windows over Linux when it comes to cloud software.

Where a traditional developer write and implement a solution for a particular system (for instance Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X or Linux) – cloud developers deliver whole eco systems; constellations of software constructed from many parts, both micro-services developed in-house but also services from others; like Amazon or Azure.

All these parts co-operate and can be combined through established end-point standards, much like how components are used in Delphi or Visual Studio today.

The Smart Desktop, codename “Amibian.js”

Access to products written in Smart is through the browser, or sometimes through a “paper thin” native host (Cordova Phonegap, Delphi and C/C++) that expose system level functionality. These hosts wrap your application in a native, executable container ready for Appstore or Google Play.

Now the visual content is typically the same, and is only adapted for a particular device. The real work is divided between the client (which is now very much capable) and your server back-end.

So people still write code in 2022, but the software behaves differently and is designed to function as a group (cluster). And this requires a shift in the way we think.

Above: One of my asm.js prototype compilers. Lets just say it runs fast!

Scaling a solution from processing 100 invoices a minute to handling 100.000 invoices a minute – is no longer a matter of code, but of architecture. This is where the traditional, native only approach to software comes up short, while more flexible approaches like node.js is infinitely more capable.

What has emerged up until now is just the tip of the ice-berg.

Over the next five to eight years, everything is going to change. And the changes will be irrevocable and permanent.

The Smart Desktop back-end running as a system service on a Raspberry PI

As the Americans say, talk is cheap – and I’m done talking. I will do this with you, or without you. Either way it’s happening.

Nightly-build of the desktop can be tested here: http://quartexhq.myasustor.com/

Amibian.js and the Narcissus hack

Wow, I must admit that I never really thought Amibian.js would become even remotely as popular as it has – yet people respond with incredible enthusiasm to our endeavour. I was just told that an article at Commodore USA mentioned us – that an exposure to 37000 readers. Add that to the roughly 40.000 people that subscribe to my feeds around the world and I must say: I hope I code something worthy of your time!

This is going to look and behave like the bomb when im done!

But there is a lot of stuff on the list before it’s even remotely finished. This is due to the fact that im not just juggling one codebase here – im juggling 5 separate yet interconnected codebases at the same time (!). First there is the Smart Mobile Studio RTL (run time library) which represents the foundation. This gives me object-oriented, fully inheritance driven visual controls. This have roughly 5 years of work behind it.

Still #1 after all these years

On top of that you have the actual visual controls, like buttons, scrollbars, lists, css3 effect engines, tweening, database storage and a ton of low-level stuff. The browser have no idea what a window is for example, let alone how it should look or respond to users. So every little piece has to be coded by someone. And well, that’s what I do.

Next you have the workbench and operating-system itself. What you know as Amibian.js, Smart Workbench or Quartex media desktop – take your pick, but it’s already a substantial codebase spanning some 40 units with thousands of lines of code. It is divided into two parts: the web front-end that you have all seen; and the node.js backend that is not yet made public.

And on top of that you have the external stuff. Quake III didn’t spontaneously self-assemble inside the desktop, someone had to do some coding and make the two interface. Same with all the other features you have.

The worst so far (as in damn hard to get right) is the Ace text editor. Ace by itself is super easy to work with – but you may have noticed that we have removed it’s scrollbars and replaced these with Amiga scrollbars instead? That is a formidable challenge it its own right.

Aced it! Kidnapping signals was a challenge

Whats on the menu this weekend?

I noticed that on Linux that text-selection was utterly messed up, so when you moved a window around – it would suddenly start selecting the title text of other elements around the desktop. This is actually a bug in the browser – not my code; but I still have to code around it. Which I have now done.

I also solved selection for the console window (or any “text” container. A window is made up of many parts and the content region can be inherited from and replaced), so that should now work fine regardless of browser and platforms. Ace theming also works, and the vertical scrollbar is responding as expected. Still need a few tweaks to move right, but that is easy stuff. The hard part is behind us thankfully.

Selection – works

Right now I’m working on ScummVM so that should be in place later today 🙂

Thats cool, but what motivates you?

Cult of Joy

Retro gaming is important, and we have to make it as easy for people to enjoy their retro gear without patent trolls ruining the fun. Im just so tired of how ruined the Amiga scene is by these (3 companies in particular).. thieves is the only word I can find that fits.

So fine! I will make my own. Come hell or high water. Free as a bird and untouchable.

So I have made some tools that will make it ridiculously easy for you to share, download and play your games online. Whenever you want, hosted where-ever you need and there is not a god damn thing people can do about it. When you realize how simple the hack is it will make you laugh. I came up with this ages ago and dubbed it Narcissus.

To understand the Narcissus hack, consider the following:

PNG is a lossless compression format, meaning that it doesn’t lose any information when compressed. It’s not like JPEG which scrambles the original and saves a faximile that tricks the eye. Nope, if you compress a PNG image you get the exact same out when you decode it (read: show it).

But who said we have to store pixels? Pixels are just bytes after all. In fact, why can’t we take a whole game disk or rom and store that inside a picture? Sure you can!

This tool is now built into Amibian.js

It’s amusing, I came up with this hack years ago. It has been a part of Smart Mobile Studio since the beginning.

You have to remember that retro games are super small compared to modern games. The average ADF file is what? 880kb or something like that? Well hold on to your hat buddy, because PNG can hold 64 megabyte of data! You can encode a decent Amiga hard disk image in 64 megabyte.

Can you guess what the picture on the right contains? This picture is actually ALL the Amiga rom files packed into a single image. Dont worry, I converted it to JPEG to mess up the data before uploading. But yes, you can now host not just the games as normal picture files, but also roms and whatever you like.

And the beauty of it – who the hell is going to find them? You can host them on Github, Google drive, Dropbox or right your blog — if you don’t have the encryption key the file is useless.

Snap, crackle and pop!

RSS Filesystem

You know RSS feeds right? If you sign up for a blog you automatically get a RSS feed. It’s basically just a list of your recent posts – perhaps with an extract from each article, a thumbnail picture and links to each post. RSS have been around for a decade or more. It’s a great way to keep track of news.

The second hack is that using the data-to-image-encoder you can store a whole read-only filesystem as a normal RSS feed. Always think outside the box!

Let’s say you have a game collection for your Amiga right? Lets say 200 games. Wouldnt it be nice to have all those games online? Just readily available regardless of where you may be? Without “you know who” sending you a nasty email?

Well, just encode your game as described above, include the data-picture in your WordPress post, and do that for each of your games. Since you can encrypt these images they will be worthless to others. But for you its a neat way of hosting all your games online for free (like WordPress or Blogger) and play them via Amibian or the patched UAE4Arm (ops, did I share that, sorry dirk *grin*) and you’re home free.

You know what’s really cool? For this part Amibian doesnt even need a server. So you can just save the Amibian.js html page on your phone and that’s all you need.

Drink up me hearties yo ho!

Smart Puppy: Smart pascal meets linux!

One of my absolute favorite operating-systems in the whole world has to be Puppy Linux. I discovered it just a few days ago and I have fallen completely in love with this thing. I can vaguely remember giving it a testdrive a few years back, but I didn’t know much about Linux in general so I didn’t understand what I it represented.

So if you are looking for a friendly, small, fast and easy to use Linux system – then Puppy is about as friendly as it gets. The Facebook user group with the same name is a warm and friendly place to be. Much like Delphi developer the Admin(s) take pride in keeping things orderly – and people who hang out there engage, care and help each other out.

Before you run out and download Puppy, which I hope you do later – please understand that Puppy is very different from Linux in general. You could almost say that it’s a whole alternative to mainstream Linux as we know it.

But, once you know about the differences then you are in for a treat! I will explain them in the article, so please be patient and take the time to digest.

Puppies hate fluff

One of the reasons I never converted wholesale to Linux (and yes I did try) – is that the average Linux distro is unbearable and unnecessary cryptic. For some reason Linux architects suffer from a terrible affliction, namely a shortage of characters. This sickness means that Linux don’t have enough characters for everyone, so programmers must use a maximum of five letters when naming their software. If coders ignore this shortage and blatantly name something directly or intuitively – then Richard Stallman and Lady Gaga will order a “drive-by pony tail cut” on the dude. And a Linux administrator without his pont-tail is finished (the nerd equivalent of flipping burgers at McDonalds).

Puppy Linux does contain it’s fair share of the classical Linux software (that goes without saying). But, the man behind this wonderful Linux flavour is also a level-headed, clever and resourceful man (or woman) – so he has thankfully broken with what can only be described as archaic thinking.

Puppy Linux is not exactly software impaired

So even with my minimal Linux experience I was able to navigate around the filesystem, locate documents (which here is called “Documents” and “My Documents” even). There is a whole bunch of these tiny differences, small things that makes all the difference. From the way he (or she) has named things – to where things are stored and placed.

And it’s so small! The basic install is less than 300 megabytes in size (!) Yes you read that right. The generic Puppy Linux installation with desktop and a few popular applications is less than 300 megabytes.

In my case I can have a fully loaded development studio, featuring GCC, FPC (freepascal), Lazarus IDE, CodeBlocks IDE, KDevelop IDE, Anjunta developer studio – and last but never least Smart Mobile Studio on a 2 gigabyte USB stick (!) I don’t think you can even get USB sticks that small any more (?) The smallest I got is 32 gigabyte and the largest is 256 gigabyte.

But before we go on with the wonders of Puppy Linux – lets look at what Linux did wrong. Why is Linux even to this day considered hard to use? Or to put it another way: what has Windows and OS X done right to be considered easier to use yet capable of the same (and often more) ?

Naming, what Linux did wrong

One of the tenants of professional programming, is to ensure that classes, members and functions have meaningful names. There was a time when you would get away with single character class, variable and method names — but that wont fly in 2017. Your Q&A department would have you for breakfast if you checked in code like that. Classes, name-spacing and packages should be descriptive. End of story.

The reason this has become an almost sacred law, should be obvious: it may not be you that maintains the software 5, 10 or 15 years down the road. A piece of code should always be written in such a way that it can be understood and thus maintained by others within a reasonable time-frame (which also means plenty of comments and good documentation). This is not a matter of preference, but of time and money. And when you pay out salaries these factors are one and the same.

So naming elements of software in 2017 has a lot of criteria attached to it. The most obvious so far being:

• Always name things clearly because that
  • ensures ease of use
  • simplifies maintenance
  • removes doubt as to “what is what”
  • less user-mistakes
• The less mistakes, either in understanding something or using something, the less money a business throws out the window. Money that could be spent paying you to make something cool instead (or fix bugs that are critical).
• The less user-mistakes caused by customers, the more your service department can focus on quality of service. When a company starts it usually have outstanding support, but as it grows their service-desk slowly become robots.
• The easier and more intuitive a system is, the more users it will attract. If people can pick something up and just naturally figure out how things work, then statistics show that they most likely will continue using it through thick and thin.

Right. With these rules in mind – what happens if you take them but apply them to Linux instead? Not Linux code or libraries or stuff like that, but Linux the user-experience from top to bottom?

And don’t get me wrong, I think Linux is awesome so this is not an attack on Linux; I’m simply pointing out factors that could help make Linux even better.

I mean, just look at the Linux filesystem. Again you have this absurd shortage of characters. Why would anyone abbreviate the word “user[s]” into “usr” ? It make noh sense.  Same with “lib”, would it have killed you to call it “libraries”? And so it continues with “dev” – because calling it “devices” would cause the space-time-continuum to break.

Shell shocked

The shell (or command-line under Windows) and it’s commands is really the thing that annoys me the most. There is a fine line between use and abuse, and the level of abbreviation here is beyond whimsical and harmless – and well into the realm of silly and absurd

Who in their right mind would name a command “ps”? What could it possibly mean? The first thing that comes to mind is “print spool”. If you come from any other platform than Linux (and perhaps Unix, I don’t know) you would never imagine that “ps” actually means “list all running processes and their states”.

“ps” lists the running processes and their states

Above: running “ps” from the shell lists the running processes. Would it have killed the coders to just call it, oh perhaps, “listprocesses” or “showrunningprograms”?

The “ps” command is just one in a long, long list of commands that really should be brought into the twenty-first century. The benefits should be obvious. It should not be necessary for a 43-year-old man to blog about this, because it’s been a problem for the better part of three decades.

• Kids and teenagers is the bread and butter for all operating systems. The faster a kid of teenager can do something with a system, the more loyal that individual will be to the platform in the future.
• Linux needs developers and users from other platforms. When someone who has been a successful developer for almost 30 years find a system cryptic and hard to use, how much harder will it be for a non-technical user?
• Standards are important. The location of files, libraries and settings should be uniform. As of writing Linux seem to have 3 different standards (again, I am no expert): systemd, initd and “systemx”. The latter is just a name I made up, because no-one really knows what it’s called. We are now in the realm of PlayStation, ChromeOS, WebOS and systems that build on the Linux – but deviate the moment the drivers have loaded.

Again, I’m not writing this in a negative mindset. I have been using Ubuntu for a while as an alternative to Windows and OS X. But this has been a purely user-centric experience. I have not done any programming except random bits of Freepascal and node.js experiements. I have enjoyed Ubuntu purely as a user. Writing documents, checking email, browsing the web, IRC, reading news groups – ordinary stuff.

So I am very positive to Linux, but I have yet to find “my” flavour of it. A Linux distro I feel at home with and that appeals to my way of working.

Until today that is..

Enter puppy Linux

Puppy is a flavour of Linux that just demolishes some of Linux’s most holiest of concepts. Everyone will tell you never to run as root, always have the root account in peace – and keep it under lock and key just in case someone gets into your second account right?

Well not Puppy. Here you are expected to run as root and you can, if you for some reason must, jump out into a secondary user which is fake. So indeed – puppy Linux is a single user Linux system. It’s the rebel, the scoundrel and rouge of the Linux world – the distro that couldn’t care less what the other guys are doing.

Fancy a spot of coding? GCC is a SFS module away ..

Secondly, and this is very cool, Puppy is highly modular. No I’m not talking about packages, all Linux distros have that in some form or another. No I’m talking about something called SFS files, short for squashed file-system.

To make a long story short, Puppy allows you to mount compressed files as disks and they become a part of the system. It’s a bit like the virtual-drive API on windows (if you have ever coded against that?). You may have noticed in Windows how you can double-click on a .ISO file and suddenly the file is mounted in the file-explorer and stays mounted until you manually dis-mount the damn thing?

Well, SFS is that but also much more. Because when you mount the SFS file whatever applications it contains registers on the start-menu, adds itself to the global path and essentially becomes one with the whole system. This took me a while to wrap my head around this (good features always comes with a price, so i keept waiting for the negative. But there were none!). The people I talked to about this were not coders, so they had some very colorful explanations to how it all worked. But once I realized SFS was just a zip-file (or tarball or whatever) with a fixed structure (including mount script and dis-mount script) I got the picture.

Size and speed matters

Before I started using a PC back in the early 90’s I was a huge Amiga fan. I still am (as you no doubt have noticed). One of the first things I found, or first difference between Amiga computing and PC computing that hit me – was how wasteful PC’s were. I remember I was shocked when I saw how much space and cpu power the average programmer just wasted — because on the Amiga everyone strived to be as resourceful and efficient as possible.

We would spend days optimizing even the smallest parts of our applications just to ensure that it ran at top speed and produced as little bloat as possible. This was just baked into us, it was the way of the force and as common as your grandfather’s work ethics. Quality and achievement went hand in hand.

CodeBlocks is an excellent IDE 🙂

When you fire up Puppy Linux you are instantly reminded that there are people to this day that cares about size and speed. And that maybe, just maybe, consumerism has tricked you into throwing away perfectly usable technology year after year. Machines that actually had more than enough CPU power for the tasks you wanted, but was slowed down by bloated operating-systems, poor programming and lazy code generators.

Puppy Linux is the fastest bloody Linux you will ever run. The only operatingsystem I have tried that runs faster, is Aros compiled for Arm (a distro called Aeros, a reverse engineered edition of Amiga OS). But as far as x86 and the Linux kernel goes — Puppy Linux is the bomb.

I know I’m repeating myself here but: less than 300 megabytes for a fully loaded Linux distro with text processor, browser, devkit, music player, video player and all the “typical” applications you would use for daily tasks? And it truly is the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy without question.

Amiga coders and the cult of joy

When I started to snoop around the Puppy environment and community, I started to notice a couple of “tell-tell” signs. Tiny, subtle things that only an Amiga coder would pick up on. Enough to give you a hunch, a gut feeling – but not enough to blatantly say it out loud. “Amiga guys did this” i would whisper to myself. And it’s not really such a big surprise to find that coders now in their 40s that used to be Amiga coders.

In 30 years time there will be company owners and CEO’s that grew up with Playstation and have fond memories of that. But they wont recognize each-other by their craftmanship – that is the difference.

The cult of joy lives on, albeit in new forms

The Amiga was special because it was not just a games machine. It was also a complete rewrite of what constituted the power operatingsystem of its time: Unix. In other words they copied the best stuff from Unix (which by the way had the same absurd filesystem as Linux still has) but cleaned it up. First thing to be cleaned was (drumroll) the filesystem. But that’s another story all together.

When I entered the Puppy Linux forum I naturally mentioned that I was a complete total Linux novice, and that my favorite machine before x86 was an Amiga. And what do you think happened? Let’s just say that more than a few greeted me with open arms. These were the Amiga users that went to Linux when Commodore went under all those years ago. And they had been active in shaping Linux ever since (!)

So yeah, had a great time on their forums – and it was like running into your long-lost cousin or something. Like if you havent seen a family member in 30 years and suddenly you meet them face to face.

Tired of 30 gigabyte operatingsystems?

Puppy Linux is not for everyone. It’s the kind of system you either love or hate. I have yet to find someone on a middle-ground regarding puppy. Either you love it, or you hate it. Or if you prefer: either you use it and are thrilled about it, or you never install it.

It has a lot of good things going for it:

• It is built to be one of the smallest, working desktop environment you can get
• It is built according to “the old ways”, where speed, efficiency and size matter
• It runs fine on older hardware (my test machine is an 8 year old laptop) and makes stuff you would otherwise throw away become valuable again.
• It is storage abstracted, meaning you can have all your personal stuff inside a single SFS archive (easier to back up), while the operatingsystem remains on a USB stick.
• You don’t have to permanently install it (again, boot from a USB stick).
• It is single user by default, which is perfect for IOT projects and devices!
• It supports ARM, so you can now enjoy this awesome thing on Raspberry PI 3 !
• Its Linux so it has all the benefits of a rich driver database
• Latest Puppy is binary compatible with Ubuntu (whatever that means)
• There are 3 different desktops for it (to my knowledge), so if you don’t like the default client just install something else
• It is the perfect rescue USB stick. At less than 300 Mb you can fit it on any old USB stick you have around the house. I think the smallest you can buy now is 4 GB
• It has a warm, helpful, friendly and international group of users

Oh and it’s free!

As a final note: I installed Wine, the system that makes it possible to run Windows software on Linux (not an emulator, more of a api-call middle-ware /slash/ dispatcher). I was quite surprised to see it run Smart Mobile Studio on the first try!

So fancy a bit of hacking this weekend? Why not give puppy a go?

Check it out here: http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%20Latest%20Release.htm

Smart Pascal + WebOS = true

If you own a television (and who doesn’t) chances are you own an LG model. The LG brand has been on the market since before recorded history (or so it feels) and have been a major player for decades.

What is little known though, is that LG also owns and finance a unique operating system. This is not uncommon these days, most NAS and cloud vendors have their own system (there are roughly 20 cloud based systems on the market that I know of). The only way to make a Smart TV (sigh) is to add a computer to it. And if you buy a television today chances are it contains a small embedded board running some custom-made operating system designed to do just that.

Every vendor has their own system, and those that don’t usually end up forking Android and adapt that to their needs.

Luna WebOS

LG’s system is called WebOS. This may sound like yet another html eye candy front end, but hear me out because this OS is not what it seems.

Except for some font issues (see disk label) Smart loaded fine under WebOS

Remember Palm OS? If you are between 35 and 45 you should remember that before Apple utterly demolished the mobile-phone market with their iPhone, one of the most popular brands was Palm. Their core product being “Palm Pilot”, a kind of digital filo-fax (personal organizer) and mobile phone rolled into one.

WebOS is based on what used to be called Palm-OS, but it has been completely revamped, given a sexy new user interface (looks a lot like android to be honest!) and brought into the present age. And best of all: its 100% free! It runs on a plethora of systems, from x86 to Raspberry PI to Mips. It is used in televisions, terminals and set-top-boxes around the world – and is quite popular amongst engineers.

Check it out their new portal here; there is also plenty of links to pre-built images if you look around there: https://pivotce.com/

JavaScript application stack

One of the coolest features in my view, is that their applications are primarily made by JavaScript. The OS itself is native of course, but they have discovered that JavaScript and HTML5 is an excellent way to build applications. Applications that is easy to control, sandboxed and safe yet incredibly powerful and capable.

Smart Desktop booting Quake 3 in Luna OS

Well, today I sent them an Email requesting their SDK. I know they use Enyo.js as their primary and suggested framework – but that is no problem for Smart Mobile Studio. A better question is: can Luna handle our codebase?

When I loaded up Quake 3 in pure Asm.JS the TV crashed with a spectacular access violation. So they are probably not used to the level of hardcore coding Smart developers represent. But yeah, Quake III is about as advanced as it gets – and it pushes any browser to the outer limits of what is possible.

Once I get the SDK, docs and a few examples – I will begin adding support for it as quickly as possible. Which means you get a new project type especially for the platform + API units (typically stored under $RTL\Apis folder).

Why is this cool?

Because with support for Luna / WebOS, you as a Delphi or Smart developer can offer your services to companies that use WebOS or Luna (the open source version) in their devices. The list of companies is substantial – and they are well established companies. And as you have no doubt noticed, hardware engineers doesn’t always make the best software engineers. So this opens up plenty of opportunities for a good object pascal / Smart developer.

Luna has an Android like quality over it – except its more smooth to use

Remember – other developers will use vanilla JavaScript. You have the onslaught of the VJL and the might of our libraries at your disposal. You can produce in days what others use weeks on achieving.

These are exciting days! I’ll keep you posted on our progress!