Delphi has moved up to position 7 on the April TIOBE Programming Community Index; two positions higher than C# and only one position below VB.
Big congrats to Renay and Tommie on the arrival of Baby Noah. 8.1 oz, 21.5 inches…and he is cute to boot.
Melanie and I are in Memphis this week awaiting the arrival of my new nephew. Yep, my baby sis if having a baby of her own.
Unfortunately none of the Starbucks in Memphis have T-Mobile HotSpot access to the Internet so I might be slow to respond to e-mails.
Break out the sunblock, put on the geek t-shirt, and enjoy some fun in the sun. It’s not a day on the beach. It’s a day on the slopes enjoying some spring time snowboarding.
Melanie and I wrapped up our ski/snowboard season this weekend in Killington. The snow was great, a little heavy, but fast. We worked our legs to death. And the grilled burgers and tasty beers on the deck at Bear Mountain deck really hit the spot. We finished the season wanting more. I’m already excited about my next day on the slopes in November.
I’ve had a series of unfortunate events occur over the last week, from items taken from my checked bag when returning from Mexico to being a victim of identity thief resulting in thousands of dollars in illegal credit card charges to a hard drive crash earlier today that caused me to be down all day. But my luck is turning around with the arrival of my copy of Delphi 2005, which FedEx dropped off earlier this evening.
I wasted no time installing Delphi on my laptop…after getting the machine up and running again of course. Given the buzz last month about the future of VB, I decided it would be fun to open an old Delphi project and see if it would compile.
I found the source code for a time tracking application I wrote back in 1998. I copied the source to a sandbox directory and opened the project in Delphi 2005. Delphi needed to do was upgrade the project file so it prompted me for the target platform, Win32 or .NET. I selected Win32 because after all that was the target platform for the app back in ‘98.
As I expected /and hoped/, the application compiled and ran without a problem. And the original source code remained unchanged. I should mention the application does not use any 3rd party controls or library. It’s a basic application written in Delphi using out-of-the-box VCLs only.
I decided I wanted to push the envelope so to speak and compile this application written in 1998 for the .NET platform. I copied the original source to a new directory and opened the project file. Once again Delphi prompted me to select the target platform. This time I selected .NET. I compiled the application and it ran. Yep, Delphi source code written in 1998 compiled and ran as a managed code application in 2005. And without having to change a single line of code!
Try that with the simplest of VB applications and you will not have the same results.
Check out these games developed in Delphi for the PGD - Dog Fight Competition 2005.
I am happy to announce that I have been elected President of the ICCA NYC METRO Chapter. I will be working with an excellent group of business professionals who make up the rest of the Chapter Board of Directors. Together we will continue to grow the Chapter and find ways to provide greater value to our members as started by the previous Board of Directors.
While this opportunity will present a new set of challenges for me, I’m excited by the fact I will be pushed beyond my comfort zone in certain areas which will help me improve my own soft skills. Thank you to the members who voted for me and to those who expressed their confidence in my abilities to be effective in this new role.
My mom and sister got me good today with an April Fools joke. I had forgotten that it was April Fools Day and totally fell for the joke.
My sister is pregnant and is expected to deliver within the next couple of weeks. I received an e-mail from my mom with the subject line “We’re on our Way!!!” The e-mail said, “Renay’s going to the hospital. I think this might be it!!!!!”
Believing this to be true, Melanie and I jumped into action. I was on the phone calling Mom and Renay to confirm. Melanie was checking flights to Memphis. And we were already thinking about what we needed to pack. 2 minutes later after reaching Renay on her mobile, I heard the infamous phrase “April Fools!”
There’s a nice thread on Joel on Software discussing Delphi, reasons why it hasn’t really caught on yet, and why it is a great development language. It’s a long thread but interesting.
On a related note, Steve Trefethen of Borland has posted some resources on converting from VB to Delphi.