Dimensional Data

Hello. This article is part of a series where we speak with professional software developers, ask them what it’s like to write code for a living, and perhaps gain a few insights into the software development industry along the way. Our guest today is a Delphi MVP and author David Cornelius. David describes himself as “a programmer through-and-through”. He runs a small software development business from his home office and seems to have his priorities right when he says “I love family, music, strategy board games, and the great outdoors”. Living, as he does, half-way between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Mountains David says means he is offered a wide variety of places to explore—either on a motorcycle or by hiking from a campground. Hi David, thank you for talking to me today Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Ian!! 😁 David, in his “auditioning for James Bond” pose Which Embarcadero product(s) do you use a) the most b) regularly? a & b: Delphi XE, 10.4, 11. Every day. How and/or why did you become a developer? When I was in grade school, my favorite subject was math. I got a programmable TI (Texas Instruments) calculator and would compete with my grandfather on the most complex calculations we could come up with in its limited 32 steps. The small high school I attended had a TRS-80 with a cassette “drive” for storage but I got impatient waiting for it to load/save and with its many retries and errors so lost interest. But later, when the school set up its first computer lab with three Apple IIs, I spent all available time teaching myself AppleSoft BASIC. When I got to the end of the tutorial book and realized a friend of mine was writing games that could not have been done in BASIC alone, I knew there was so much more to learn—I was hooked on programming by that point! Majoring in Computer Science in college was the obvious next step and the rest, as they say, is history. Do you think you will ever stop being a developer? If so, what would be next? No—I have too many ideas to ever stop, even if I sell my house and travel the country in an RV, I’d still be programming part of the time. What made you start using Delphi/C++ Builder? College exposed me to several different programming languages. I studied assembly on three different processors, enjoyed the structure of FORTRAN, got bored with COBOL and dropped the class, looked at some niche languages like SNOBOL, and taught myself C using Mark William’s Let’s C. But the most useful class was one that taught general programming concepts using an inexpensive tool that allowed us to edit, compile, and debug all in one IDE, a new concept in the mid-80s. It was Turbo Pascal. Later at my first long-term programming job, I was given the opportunity to start a brand-new application and I could choose whatever programming tool I wanted. I went with Turbo Pascal, then at version 4, because I already knew how to use it, I could drop to assembly if I needed to (which I actually did occasionally), and it was starting to get popular—it was the logical place to start. As the application grew over the […]

An Application Programmable Interface or API allows two applications to interact with each other using the API as a bridge or intermediary. If you are not familiar with how to integrate an API then you may be spending a lot of time unnecessarily writing a lot of code from scratch. In other words you may be working too hard! Are you wasting time by writing a lot of code from scratch? This is the main reason you need to start considering integrating APIs into your software. So, we will talk about how to avoid reinventing the wheel every time you design an application. It’s not just the time expended coding things that could have been handled by the API; writing lots of additional code also means you open yourself up to the possibility that you inadvertently introduce errors – bugs – or unintended behavior. Your new code doesn’t benefit from the ‘wisdom of crowds’ which APIs can bring. A professional API from a specialist source often has many thousands of users/consumers who have used the API before and that means any problems and kinks have probably been caught and rectified before you even begin. Letting someone else do the work is always the hard work is always the smart choice, isn’t it? Is it hard to use an API? When I got my first programming internship 4 years ago, in my first whole month, I spent my time integrating different APIs into the web app. I found integrating hard, but after integrating one API, it all become so easy and fun. All I had to do was pay attention to the documentation of the APIs. Using RAD Studio Delphi we also get some additional help to supercharge our skills. RAD Studio has tools such as the REST Debugger and the marvelously powerful REST components do all the hard work for us and help promulgate low code from us and maximum power from our apps. By the end of this tutorial, you will learn how to employ these kinds of useful yet easy to use tools to easily and quickly integrate one of the market-leading APIs into your cross-platform Delphi application. This is the best-kept secret about Delphi that users of other computer languages often overlook – the “RAD” in RAD Studio stands for “rapid application development” and it’s not some kind of tricksy marketing trope; RAD Studio brings your apps from ideas into reality as fast as possible with that legendary rock-solid Delphi application stability means they keep on working too long after many competing technologies have fallen out of fashion or simply become obsolete due to their reliance on runtime support which atrophies over time. What does this article teach me about using APIs in my desktop and mobile apps? I hope that this tutorial will help you start your API Integrator career. We will cover: Explore various APIs and see what they can do for our desktop and mobile applications Look and at how to integrate APIs for use in our own apps Code a demo cross-platform app using Delphi that integrates API The only thing you need is a copy of RAD Studio and basic knowledge of the Delphi programming language! Are you using automation to connect to an API? We have dozens of tutorials on building a […]

Hello. This article is part of a series where we speak with professional software developers, ask them what it’s like to write code for a living, and perhaps gain a few insights into the software development industry along the way. Our guest today is a Delphi and C++ Builder developer who has an amazingly impressive set of pictures of him smiling nonchalantly on the slopes of some absolutely stunning volcanoes at various locations dotted around the world. Stephane Jordi, also known as Steve, is a Swiss geophysicist who made the move from computer geek to computing applied to real-life needs. He specialized in monitoring solutions, first for volcanic activities, then for nuclear power plant seismic surveillance, and enjoys porting all tools to most known platforms. Hi Steve thanks so much for taking the time out to speak with us today – I think you just came off a long flight? Yes after this I am off to bed. I woke up 26 hours ago and am jetlagged 🙂 Which Embarcadero product(s) do you use a) the most b) regularly? I would say Delphi for my current cross-platform developments and C++Builder for scientific software. Since I’m involved in data acquisition, I need very low level access to digital boards and things like that. C++ is more inclined to do so as it is compatible with a very wide 3rd party tools environment. How and/or why did you become a developer? A little bit by chance. Back in 1980 (started very early), I bought a handheld calculator in New York and discovered overnight on the flight back to Switzerland that it was programmable. I had no clue what that meant. The idea that you could let it record and play back sequences of instructions was like magic. It was an HP-33C with 49 lines (keystrokes) that could be recorded. Then my High School was offering optional classes like cooking, theatre and also computing. That world was still very closed and not accessible. Believe it or not, but I came to software development using punch cards doing Fortran IV on big mainframes. I got hooked. Steve has incredible photos which look like they were designed to be desktop wallpapers Do you think you will ever stop being a developer? If so, what would be next? No. Impossible. Once you get this into your DNA, you just want more. I love everything that comes with development: understand a problem or a need, break it into small pieces, imagine what and how they would perform operations, write the code, swear a lot, and eventually see that it works. The road from complexity to delivery is marvelous. What made you start using Delphi/C++ Builder? I was hired for summer job by a company that had only TurboC v2 at the time. That’s how I discovered the C language and the Borland product line, from Prolog to C and Pascal. Then Delphi was released and I really did enjoy the RAD aspect of it. I did know Pascal so it was an easy jump. Then I used all flavors of Turbo C/C++, Borland C++ and then C++Builder which was a natural evolution to follow Delphi. I used Turbo C++ 3 to write my first volcano monitoring software in… Guatemala. I designed the full GUI framework under DOS […]

Practically every developer, even a newcomer in programming, can create and destroy objects correctly. A classic construction that is used in the majority of programs looks the following way: MyObject:= TMyClass.Create(); try {some code…} finally MyObject.Free; end; MyObject:= TMyClass.Create(); try   {some code…} finally   MyObject.Free; end; Yet, some time ago, there were a lot of discussions where to place object creation: before an exception handler or within the try-finally-end construction. Of course, now, it is not difficult to find an answer to this question. An example of well-written code can be found on many online resources, such as StackOverflow, in books and in official documentation. But do you really understand why it is so and what can happen if you use the wrong variant? It is possible that you will have to answer this question during a technical interview. If you do not know the correct answer, just keep reading this article! What is the best way to debug a Delphi code problem? You can get debug messages in various ways, but one of the most convenient is to use the CodeSite logging system. You can install the ‘lite’ version from GetIt Package Manager using this link: https://getitnow.embarcadero.com/?q=codesite&product=rad-studio&sub=all&sortby=date&categories=-1 What is the wrong way to use an object? As an example, let’s create a class. TMyClass = class private function getSelfPointer: Pointer; public constructor Create(beRaized: Boolean = False); procedure Free; overload; end; implementation {$R *.dfm} { TMyClass } constructor TMyClass.Create(beRaized: Boolean); begin if beRaized then raise Exception.Create(‘Error Message’); end; procedure TMyClass.Free; begin // inherited; CodeSite.Send( ‘Destroy object’); {$IFNDEF AUTOREFCOUNT} if Self nil then begin CodeSite.Send( ‘ Destroyed object address:’, IntToHex(Integer(Pointer(self)))); Destroy; end; {$ENDIF} end; function TMyClass.getSelfPointer: Pointer; begin Result := Pointer(Self); end; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 TMyClass = class private   function getSelfPointer: Pointer; public   constructor Create(beRaized: Boolean = False);   procedure Free; overload; end;   implementation   {$R *.dfm}   { TMyClass } constructor TMyClass.Create(beRaized: Boolean); begin   if beRaized then     raise Exception.Create(‘Error Message’); end;   procedure TMyClass.Free; begin   // inherited;   CodeSite.Send( ‘Destroy object’); {$IFNDEF AUTOREFCOUNT}   if Self > nil then   begin     CodeSite.Send( ‘ Destroyed object address:’, IntToHex(Integer(Pointer(self))));     Destroy;   end; {$ENDIF} end;     function TMyClass.getSelfPointer: Pointer; begin   Result := Pointer(Self); end; In our class we will redefine the Free method only for having a look at the address of the object that we want to destroy. We will copy the code that will destroy the object from the Free method of the TObject class. The only unique method will be getSelfPointer that returns the Pointer to the Object.The class constructor as a parameter will have a logical meaning. If it equals True, an exception will be generated and an object won’t be created.Now, let’s take two global variables of the TMyClass type. var fMain: TfMain; MyObject, MyObject2: TMyClass; var   fMain: TfMain;     MyObject,   MyObject2: TMyClass; How do we get an error in a Delphi constructor? Then let’s place two buttons on the form and define click handlers for them. procedure TfMain.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); begin MyObject:= TMyClass.Create(); try CodeSite.Send(‘Actual MyObject address: ‘, IntToHex(Integer(MyObject.getSelfPointer ), 8)); finally MyObject.Free; end; MyObject2:= TMyClass.Create(); try CodeSite.Send(‘MyObject2 was created. Actual MyObject2 address: ‘, IntToHex(Integer(MyObject2.getSelfPointer ), 8)); // […]

I’ve built a C++Builder app that pulls development related news and posts from more than 50 developer focused RSS news feeds. From time to time, I’ll highlight some of the articles that piqued my interest. Beautiful C++: 30 Core Guidelines for Writing Clean, Safe, and Fast Code–Kate GregoryIncludes explanations of 30 guidelines along with plenty of examples, the occasional diagram, and stories that put them into context. Bjarne Stroustrup and Herb Sutter, who edit the ISO C++ Core Guidelines GitHub site , reviewed the book, and gave helpful comments on the text, and wrote a foreword and an afterword. All Hail Bug Reports: How We Reduced the Analysis Time of the User’s Project From 80 to 4 HoursBug reports are great If a bug report is adequately handled from both sides, it means that both the user and the software developer are interested in solving the problem. If both sides achieve the desired result, it’s a win-win situation. Podcasts for New Software DevelopersIf you want to be a good software developer you have to be constantly learning. One of the best ways to learn is through listening to good podcasts. This post contains a list of some of the best podcasts new software developers can learn from. Fuzz in Your Language, Fuzzer, or ArchitectureThe developers at ForAllSecure have compiled a catalog of fuzz targets intended for Mayhem that’s written and compiled using several different languages (and architectures) like C/C++, Python, Go, Rust, Java, and many others! Top 11 Time Wastes as a DevOps EngineerIn a world where everything is changing rapidly, productivity and speed through efficient time management is probably what every company is looking for today. This article lists the known time losses that every DevOps engineer should avoid in order to free up time and spend it more effectively. AMD reveals 50 security flaws in its EPYC processors and its Windows 10 graphics driver; Intel discloses 25 vulnerabilities in its products including CPUsAMD has revealed 50 new CVE-listed bugs this week, 23 of them rated of “high” concern, meaning they’re rated at between 7.0 and 8.9 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Intel has also revealed product vulnerabilities – 25 of them. Chipzilla issues its own IDs for flaws, and groups multiple CVEs beneath them. 11 Tutorials For Working With Ethereum From DelphiThis blog post looks at some of the most popular and effective tutorials that can help you adapt to a quick hands-on for working with Ethereum from Delphi.