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Developer Stories: Frits F.M. de Mul On ALGOL, Neutron Physics & His Montcarl App Suite

Delphi

Frits F.M. de Mul started programming with ALGOL in 1965. He submitted his showcase entry (Montcarl Application Suite) for the Delphi 26th Showcase Challenge and we had a talk with him about his many years of programming experience. Take a look at his website for more information about the applications and software. When did you start using RAD Studio Delphi and have long have you been using it? I started with ALGOL, DELPHI’s predecessor, during my M.Sc.-project in 1965/66 on neutron physics, where I got a lot of measurement data. The University’s first computer was a Telefunken TR4 mainframe, to be fed with paper tape an (later) punch cards.  This was one of the very first computers in the country, and I had account nr. 10. For my Ph.D.-work in early 70’s I shifted to FORTRAN, which was more convenient (faster) at that time, although functions and procedures were hard to handle, and the output was cumbersome. No plotters were present in those days. In late 70’s I switched to Pascal, later Turbo Pascal, on writing a lot of (stand-alone) programs; part of those are mentioned on my site (see above). And now, with DELPHI, since I am retired, I also use TMS Web Core for web applications. What was it like building software before you had RAD Studio Delphi? ALGOL and FORTRAN were limited in possibilities and cumbersome to handle. First, I had to use punched taper tape and later punch cards. When you had to made corrections, it was possible to manually make extra holes, and even repair holes, but you had to learn and use the 8-bit codes for all characters. Then the tapes or cards had to be delivered manually to the computer building, and a few days later you got your results (provided you did not make punch-typing or syntactic errors). But frequently the computer got stalled…. Nevertheless, all that punchwork made excellent confetti! How did RAD Studio Delphi help you create your showcase application? Viewing the history, DELPHI – as successor to TURBO PASCAL – offered lots of improvements; most important of course was it built-in logic and Object Programming. Since I always make Computational-Physics programs, DELPHI offers many possibilities. I tried to use PYTHON, but I found Delphi much more attractive, due to its simple but adequate logical structure and lack of superfluidal options. For instance, the PYTHON world has gone much too far in incorporating a lot of options for arrays. These look nice at first sight, but normally programmers will use a limited set of convenient options only, and the rest is discarded. With DELPHI you can easily make all those options offered by other platforms yourself, in case you need those. What made RAD Studio Delphi stand out from other options? As mentioned above, DELPHI remains THE most logical language, with great backward compatibility. There are many built-in options, but no superfluidal ones. Its syntax has a complete WYSIWYG structure. This is a great advantage compared with C++ or PYTHON, which at first sight look handy, but you have to learn what is behind a lot of statements. Therefore my wish to developers: keep it simple and staightforward! What made you happiest about working with RAD Studio Delphi? The most happy – I think – is working with Forms, and […]

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Managing Delphi Expressions via a Bindings List component

Delphi

After looking to binding expressions and how they can link to components, let’s move to the component aimed for managing binding expressions. In recent blog posts I covered Delphi’s RTL core expression engine and components binding. Now we can make an additional step and look into a key component for the entire bindings architecture, called BindingsList. A binding list is a collection of different types of bindings expressions, managed in the designers. In other words, the expressions and component bindings I defined in source code in the last blog post, can be fully defined in the designers (and wizards) of the BindingsList component. Just drop a component of this type to a form plus a few visual components (in my example two edits, a spin edit and a progress bar — see image below). The BindingsList component has a designer which allows to define a collection of bindings. Each binding can be picked using one of the many available options (way too many to explore in this article and primarily focused on data source and data field bindings). The two basic options I’m going to use here are TBindExpression and TBindExprItems. After you select one of those bindings, let’s say a TBindExpression, you need to interact with two different design surfaces to work on the expression: on one side you can configure the expression properties in the Object Inspector, like the SourceComponent and the ControlComponent (the term use to refer to the target control) and the related expressions; on the other by double clicking on the expression in the BindingList editor you can open us a special expression designer, which in turn has additional items editors and viewers: In the image above, you can see that I connected the expression to a source and target control, but I still haven’t defined an expression. This can be as simple as a single property name or a more complex combination of values and expressions and can be configured in the Object Inspector expressions properties for the binding or on the special designer displayed above. The designer also offers the option to evaluate and inspect different expressions. Going back to the expressions, we can simply use Value and Position for the Spin Edit and the Progress Bar, respectively. Notice the binding expression has a direction (by default, source to control) that can be reversed or can also be bi-directional. I’ve used a bidirectional expression for the two edit boxes, so that typing in any of them copies the content to the other. In this second example, I’ve used a TBindExprItems binding (but a regular expression would have been enough). This is a more complex binding, in which you specify source and control (as above) but define a collection of clear and format expressions, which can involve multiple properties of the controls. In this example, the mapping is Text to Text (bidirectional) as you can see below: With all of this, the only Delphi code that’s needed in the application is a call to re-evaluate the bindings when the value of the source changes. This is easily done by handling the OnChange events of the various controls and triggering a general update of the bindings for the current control (the Sender): TBindings.Notify(Sender, ”); TBindings.Notify(Sender, ”); This is the very simple application in action: Now you might be wondering where all of this configuration settings end up… but […]

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Websockets WebRTC In Real-Time – Do You Know How To Do It?

Delphi

Web is basically operational using HTTP requests and responses. In this mechanism, the client always initiates the connection. There is a timeout period after which the server discards the connection. Once discarded, the client must initiate a new connection. This is OK with normal web applications but for real time communication this is not enough. A system called HTTP long polling was developed to try and overcome this problem. With this implementation, the server keeps the connection open until new data arrives. This is used in GMail chat. But in this case, server resources are blocked through the connection. What are WebSockets? Websockets solve the above problem by allowing the server and client to send messages at any time. With Websockets the communication begins a HTTP request and then upgrades to connection to Websockets using the TCP protocol connection for communication. What is WebRTC? Unlike Websockets, WebRTC doesn’t relay data through a server. It sends data between browsers or devices. It supports sending and receiving video, audio and generic data. It’s a real-time communication method. It’s a part of the HTML5 specification which is supported by most modern web-browsers. How do I find easy to use WebRTC components for Delphi? ESEGECE offers an easy to use component set for Websockets and all of its other protocols including WebRTC. You can get these components from this link: https://www.esegece.com/websockets/download How do I setup a WebRTC server using SGC components? You can easily setup a WebRTC server using these components. Step 1: Add a new “TsgcWebSocketServer” component and open bindings. Add new binding and set the server IP and the port (For Eg: IP: 127.0.0.1 / Port: 80). Step 2: Add a new “TsgcWSPServer_WebRTC” and set the server as the “TsgcWebSocketServer” component we added earlier. Step 3: Activate the “TsgcWebSocketServer” server component and you have a WebRTC server. Now you can open your web-browser, then open the server IP, and there you should find your WebRTC client. Where can I find Delphi Websockets demos? The ESEGECE Delphi WebSockets Components come with many demo applications for different protocols including the WebRTC. Inside the demo folder you can find the “WebRTC_Protocol” the which is a WebRTC implemented video chat demo application. Also you can access their web demos from this link: https://www.esegece.com:2053/webrtc The fun isn’t all reserved for Delphi developers – ESEGECE Websocket components are also available for RAD Studio C++ Builder. Why not download a copy of RAD Studio and try the websocket demos for yourself?

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Identify Objects And Faces With Machine Learning AI And Javascript

Sencha

Here we go with one more post about the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) using object and facial recognition! Today we are going to implement a really awesome application that can Identify objects and faces through your webcam. The application will teach the machine to save aspects of an object or face to and then tell you what or who it sees on camera. That’s incredible! We will be working based on this Google lab post using TensorFlow.js. and, of course, applying  Ext JS best practice as usual. How can I get Getting Started with Sencha CMD? If you still don’t have Sencha CMD, you can download it for free here. Once you have it installed you can make sure you have it properly installed and configured by running this command on terminal/shell: If it returns the sencha cmd version, you are good to go. Here are more details on how to install, configure and use Sencha CMD, but this article will show all the important details. How can I create the Sencha application? The first thing you want to do is create your project structure. Sencha CMD can do this for you easily–all you need to do is run this command. If you have any questions, take a look at the bullet points below. They explain what everything in the command does and what you will need to change to personalize your application. sencha -sdk /Users/fabio/sencha-sdks/ext-7.4.0/ generate app modern TeachableMachine ./teachable-machine-extjs /Users/fabio/sencha-sdks/ext-7.4.0/ is where your Ext JS folder is. TeachableMachine is the name of our application and the namespace for our classes. ./teachable-machine-extjs is the path for our project structure and the necessary files. modern is the toolkit for our application. Make sure when you run this command there is no error on the output. If there is no error, and everything runs correctly, you have successfully created your project structure. To be sure, however, let’s run our application with the initial structure. To do this, first navigate to your project folder: $ cd teachable-machine-extjs/ Then, run the command to open the server on a specific port: The output of this command will return the URL where your app is available. In this case, it is running on  http://localhost:1841/. When you open it on your browser you will see a screen like this: How can I clean up the Sencha project? Once you have your basic project running, you can clean it up by removing the files and components that you don’t need. Use the command shown below to delete your unwanted files. While deleting, keep another terminal open and have the Sencha app running because it will update the application automatically: $ rm app/model/* app/store/* app/view/main/List.* With that done, let’s clean up our classes in app/view/main. Make sure your three classes look like this: Main.js: /** * This class is the main view for the application. It is specified in app.js as the * “mainView” property. That setting causes an instance of this class to be created and * added to the Viewport container. */ Ext.define(‘TeachableMachine.view.main.Main’, { extend: ‘Ext.Panel’, xtype: ‘app-main’, controller: ‘main’, viewModel: ‘main’ }); MainController.js: /** * This class is the controller for the main view for the application. It is specified as * the “controller” of the Main view class. */ Ext.define(‘TeachableMachine.view.main.MainController’, { extend: […]

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Pandemic Legacy: Remote Work and Digital Transformation

Kiuwan

Published June 3, 2021 WRITTEN BY MICHAEL SOLOMON Michael G. Solomon, PhD, CISSP, PMP, CISM, PenTest+, is a security, privacy, blockchain, and data science author, consultant, educator and speaker who specializes in leading organizations toward achieving and maintaining compliant and secure IT environments. The COVID-19 pandemic drove many companies to rapidly expand their support for remote work. This change was not simply to appease a changing workforce; it was simply to survive. When most of the workforce was suddenly told to stay home, many organizations had to either adapt or cease to exist. The increased reliance on transforming previously manual or hybrid procedures to purely digital ones required updated (or completely new) applications, supporting software and infrastructure. Digital transformation was no longer an aspirational goal — it became a survival necessity.  Let’s look at some fundamental changes the pandemic forced on companies and consumers, and how those changes affect all aspects of doing business today, including software development organizations developing secure application security in a decentralized world. Digital transformation plans were accelerated Prior to 2020, face-to-face interactions were not only the norm, but also the preferred way to communicate and carry out business. While a growing number of younger workers and consumers who preferred digital interaction were encouraging digital communication to gain popularity, total adoption was a long way off.  Digital transformation (DT) is the common term used to represent the process of replacing manual business processes or services with digital processes. The push for DT was underway in 2020, but only as it aligned with long-term strategy. A few existing companies and many startups relied on digital processes, but most companies approached DT conservatively. After all, the requirement to produce revenue today trumped the desire to innovate for the future. Once the pandemic hit, companies of all types suddenly had to carry on unhindered without face-to-face interactions. Some companies were built on the concept of offices full of workers. Others depended on the ability to serve a steady flow of physical customers. Regardless of the business model, the disruption of face-to-face interaction required solutions where technology could provide the connection. One of the first shifts was to simulate the business meeting, customer interactions or even the classroom. Zoom went from a video conferencing tool to a generic term for an online meeting. The term can even be used as a verb, as in “I’ll Zoom you.” COVID-19 shifted DT from a long-term strategic goal to a survival requirement. Although all companies could not simply “go digital,” many could. Restaurants, airlines, hotels and a long list of other service-oriented companies had to undergo radical transformations. Other types of companies, such as insurance companies, software development organizations and banks, could continue operations, but had to find a different way. Reliance on face-to-face interactions had to defer to digital transactions. Customer service was required to rise to the occasion and provide an acceptable level of service using remote workers and digital connections. Some companies, like Amazon, were up to the challenge. After all, they were already relying on a decentralized model for much of their business process. They encountered challenges at their warehouses that relied on many human workers, but the rest of their organization had already embraced digitization and automation. Other organizations were not as fortunate and had to accelerate their digital […]

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Impressive Basketball Chalk Visualization: Powered By Delphi

Delphi

Embarcadero’s users understand the scalability and stability of C++ and Delphi programming, and depend on the decades of innovation those languages bring to development. Ninety of the Fortune 100 and an active community of more than three million users worldwide have relied on Embarcadero’s award-winning products over the past 30 years. Icons by Icons8.com. © 2020 EMBARCADERO INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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JSON backstage pass for TMS WebCore developers

TMS Software

2. First things first In the previous section we used the terms JSON and JavaScript object. But what is it exactly and what are the differences? In JavaScript, a variable can contain a simple value as well as an object or an array. // JavaScript let i = 5; let s = ‘some text’; let o = { a = ‘text’, b = i } In this example the variable o contains a JavaScript object with the two attributes a and b where a contains a text and b contains a number. In TMS WEB Core there is a type JSVALUE for the value of a variable from the JavaScript world. Whenever we want to access the value of a JavaScript variable, we can use the JSVALUE type for it. // WEBCore function sampleJavascriptVariable : JSVALUE; assembler; asm let i = 5; return i; end; procedure AccessJsvalue; var javascriptvalue: JSVALUE; i: integer; begin javascriptvalue := sampleJavascriptVariable; // value will now contain the JavaScript VALUE (hence JSVALUE) 5 i := integer(javascriptvalue); // we needed to typecast javascriptvalue to integer because the compiler // doesn’t know the type of the value actually stored in that variable end; So whenever we want to access JavaScript values directly from TMS WEB Core, we need a typecast to tell the compiler which type the value in the variable with the type JSVALUE contains. This is already cumbersome with simple types and also error-prone and it gets even more complex when we want to access JavaScript objects. Let’s summarize: A JavaScript object is an object in the JavaScript world that is stored in an internal representation in a JavaScript variable. To store such a JavaScript object in an Object Pascal variable in TMS WEB Core, the object pascal type JSVALUE is available. And what has all this to do with JSON ? JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a string that represents a JavaScript object. A JavaScript object can be converted to JSON and a JSON string can be converted to a JavaScript object. More information about the syntax definition of JSON can be found here: https://www.json.org/json-en.html. Whenever we talk about JSON, we mean a string from an Object Pascal point of view. Whenever we talk about a JavaScript object we mean a JSVALUE from an Object Pascal point of view. // WEBCore var json: String; javascriptobject: JSValue; begin json := ‘{ “x” : 5, “y” : 7 }’; javascriptobject := TJSJSON.parse(json); end; In this example the JSON variable contains a JSON representation (data type String) of an object with the members x and y, both containing numbers. This string is parsed into a JavaScript object using the static method TJSJSON.parse() and stored in the variable javascriptobject. Note: All sample sources use only the units that are already automatically included in the uses list of a standard TMS WEB Core web project. So you can try and reproduce everything directly in TMS WEB Core when you include the source texts in the unit1.pas of a newly created project. To keep the example source code short, only necessary code is shown, in real world code you would need to add some exception handling here and there… All well and good, now we have a JavaScript object in an Object Pascal JSVALUE variable in TMS WEB Core. But how […]

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Keep up with the latest developments!

TMS Software

Everything evolves so incredibly fast in the software world! So our team is also trying really hard to keep up with the latest developments. And to give our customers access to all our latest developments we have created our no-nonsense subscription TMS ALL-ACCESS! Because we want our customers to be able to use all our products with no restrictions or limitations. And when we say ALL we really mean ALL our products we offer now and also all new products we’ll release in the year of the subscription. Moreover, our all-access users are the first to receive the previews and betas of our non-released products! Here is a small overview of the new products we added in 2021: January 2021: TMS VCL UI Pack v10.4: Powerful, extensive & flexible component suite for native Excel report & file generation & manipulation for VCL & FireMonkey TMS FNC Cloud Pack v1.3: Seamless access to cloud services from Windows, cross-platform and the web TMS WEB Core v1.6: Framework for creating modern web applications February 2021: March 2021:  April 2021:  May 2021:  Get full access with:  Easy plan: All current and new products for 1 price! Easy renewal: Yearly renewal only for 495 EUR! Easy install: all products accessible via TMS Subscription Manager tool Easy support: Full online support center access to all areas Easy up-to-date: Early access to product betas Easy learning: Access to TMS WEB Academy Act now: So what are you waiting for? Find out more about our products included in TMS ALL-ACCESS. NOTE: Contact sales for special upgrading pricing for existing customers of other products.

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Is .NET Really Dead? What Is The Best Alternative?

Delphi

.NET is one of the most popular frameworks for building powerful desktop and web applications. But it hasn’t received any new update since 2019. Is the framework REALLY dead? Should you look for alternative solutions for developing applications in 2021? In this post, you will find all the details. What is .NET framework? .NET is a full-stack platform for building and running server-side applications on Windows. It is compatible with different languages, including C#, F#, and Visual Basic. You can use it to create desktop, web, mobile, and IoT applications. Is .NET framework really dead? Back in 2019, Microsoft announced that the .NET 4.8 would be the last release of .NET framework. Also, the company declared that the successor of .NET Core 3.0 would be known as .NET 5.0. In other words, .NET Core would replace the .NET framework. Eventually, .NET 5.0 was rolled out in November 2020. With .NET 5.0, Microsoft aims to transform the .NET and .NET Core into a new cross-platform framework. However, there are some drawbacks. The developers have been using ASP.NET Web Forms for years to build dynamic web UIs. It is no longer supported on .NET 5.0. Instead, you will have to use Blazor. Even Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), the traditional communication framework for Windows, is deprecated. So, you will be forced to use alternative solutions, like gRPC or CoreWCF. Overall, Microsoft is unifying .NET and .NET Core frameworks by making drastic changes. So, you can no longer use the key features like the way you do with the original full-stack platform. In this sense, the .NET framework is dead. Microsoft’s controversial move on .NET framework had infuriated a large number of developers around the world. They feel that there is a significant gap between release and stability in the products of the software development giant. One of the Y Combinator users, known as @TheRealDunkirk, vividly described the issue: My problem with these kinds of Microsoft technology evangelism articles/videos is that it always seems like Microsoft has juuuust gotten their new hotness to work, and is telling the world that it’s awesome, and ready for production. Then you go to implement it, and as soon as you leave the perfect world of their demo, it all falls apart, and THEN you find out the docs were written for the beta version, and no longer apply, so you’re left guessing at the right invocation signature for the method you need. What is the best alternative to .NET framework? There are different alternatives to .NET framework, including Node.js, Django and Laravel. However, the best one is Delphi. Unlike .NET framework, it is providing new releases and support for more than 26 years continuously. Why Delphi is the best alternative to .NET framework? Safe Future: Delphi has been evolving since 1995. It is being updated constantly. There is no possibility of seeing it abandoned anytime soon. .NET Compatibility: Delphi supports a compiler and a base class for .NET framework. So, you can build native .NET applications with the same class library and IDE. High Performance: Delphi is super-fast. Similar to .NET framework, it is well suited for graphics and math-intensive application development. GUI Designing Made Easy:  Delphi supports a powerful GUI designer, which makes the process of creating amazing interfaces pretty straightforward Well Documented: Delphi supports comprehensive […]

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Developer Stories: Bruce McKibben And The Excellent Macaos

Delphi

Bruce McKibben has begun programming in 1997. His software (Macaos Enterprise) was one of the showcase entries for the Delphi 26th Showcase Challenge and we interviewed him to get more of his insights on working with Delphi. Go to the Macaos Enterprise website and learn more about the software. When did you start using RAD Studio/Delphi and have long have you been using it? The original MACAOS application, the predecessor to Macaos Enterprise, was begun with Delphi 3 in 1997. I have been involved in the project since 2002, Delphi 6. The system uses a middle-tier built in Kylix/RemObjects, for which a RAD Server replacement is under development. What was it like building software before you had RAD Studio Delphi? Personally, I have developed or maintained software using more than a dozen different languages (over a span of 40+ years). With the exception of Delphi and Visual Basic, they were all mostly suitable for console or batch type processing. Delphi brings nearly unlimited processing functionality and flexible, modern UI design together in an intuitive development environment. Prior to using Delphi, I didn’t have the tools to think in terms of building apps with the user experience in focus. How did RAD Studio Delphi help you create your showcase application? Macaos Enterprise is the fourth generation of this functionality. The second generation version basically hit the wall, and we nearly concluded that Delphi was not up to doing the job. (The third generation was built as a Delphi UI wrapper around an MSVC++ motor, which we later abandoned.) That led to a total rebuild of our internal data structures and our graphics engine — making use of newer technologies that had come into the toolset by then. Looking forward, it appears that Delphi provides more than we are likely to need for the forseeable future. The long-awaited release of the Delphi Linux compiler has allowed us to finally start developing a replacement for our stable, but aging, middle-tier which was developed with Kylix 3. What made RAD Studio Delphi stand out from other options? There are several things. Pascal is a much more readable – and thereby self-commenting – language than C-based languages. The Delphi forms designer paradigm is a very efficient UI-design methodology. The availability of 3rd-party components is a huge plus. The somewhat recent addition of mobile platforms opens up new possibilities which we have yet to fully explore. What made you happiest about working with RAD Studio Delphi? I think perhaps it is the event driven program model which makes it easy to expand the application incrementally. I like that I can try out things without needing to build everything before I can run it. What have you been able to achieve through using RAD Studio Delphi to create your showcase application? Our goal has been to make it easy to get an electronics development project from development to production. There are powerful electronics design (CAD) tools out there, and manufacturers have powerful editors and CAM tools at their end. But there is a gap between these two which we aim to fill with intuitive, task-oriented functionality. Our system is widely used in Scandinavia (the home markets of our manufacturing partners), but we believe that other markets can also benefit from these tools. What are some future plans for […]

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