As was mentioned in this week’s Podcast, CodeRage III is coming.
Anders is currently looking for speakers.
As Anders mentioned, this is not to replace a face-to-face conference, but is only until a physical conference is scheduled. I planning on submitting a few sessions. I’ll see you all in the chat rooms!
Back in Episode 7 I neglected to publish the links to the favorite blogs of Scooter Software‘s Craig Peterson. Here they are for anyone who didn’t find them. Most of these are favorites of mine too:
I am sure Craig also frequents the Beyond Compare forums too, which have their own RSS feed.
If you still have not taken advantage of that 25% discount code on Beyond Compare 3, please listen to Episode 7 again, and get the code, or just upgrade without the code. Seriously, Beyond Compare is one of my favorite tools, and it is Jeff Atwood’s too.
Hopefully you all just got an email from Michael Swindell with the subject line “Product Update: Delphi and C++Builder Changes.” The email address it comes from is “CodeGear from Embarcadero” <e-update@email.codegear.com>. If not, then check your spam folders and furiously refresh your in-box until it shows up.
The email is a request to update your contact information (which seems like an odd request since they obviously have my email address), although I think it is just a matter of getting us to agree to a privacy policy / terms of use with the new company. I’m happy to maintain contact with CodeGear & Embarcadero, but the carrot they offer in return is a free PDF copy of Marco Cantu‘s yet to be released Delphi 2009 Handbook.
They will email the download link later. I can hardly wait. Now I just need to get an autographed hard copy. I’ll be sure to pack a copy when I go to the physical Delphi conference CodeGear is planning.
As a new podcast creator audio quality is a big deal to me. In this last podcast I tried a few things differently to get better audio quality. In my opinion it is a lot better, but the voice levels are uneven now – with me a lot quieter now. The odd thing is my headphones I use when editing actually made it sound like they were equal. Now when I am listening to it at my headphones at work it is obvious that they are unequal. I wouldn’t have expected the two pairs of headphones to be that different.
I am curious how it sounds to everyone else? Is it better? Are the voices equal volume for you? Do you care?
A very short introduction to Generic Collections in Delphi 2009. Create a TList of Integers and show adding and removing items from it. Showing some of the differences in types, gotchas and errors you might get.
Generics, or parametrized types, are a type that works with another type that is defined later. Collections are a great example of using them. You create a generic TList, and then when you use it you declare what type it will contain. Then it will be strongly typed to that specific type, both in adding items and removing them.
Delphi Generics work with all types in Delphi: native types (Integer, string, etc.), Records, Objects and Interfaces.
This is screen cast episode 2, shot with Camtasia and hosted on Vimeo. I had to shoot it at 1280×720 so they will offer it in HD and not downscale it. Let me know how it works for everyone.
As was pointed out in the comments, the download link only works after you sign into Vimeo. If that doesn’t work for people let me know and I will come up with a different solution.
New Poll for your voting pleasure. Please let me know your favorite podcast format of the ones I have provided so far. I plan on mixing it up with a couple different formats, but it would be nice to know the preferred format.
Favorite Format
Total Voters: 62
Loading ...BTW, there is another screen cast coming . . . .
MikeG reported that he wasn’t able to get the Explore Tool in Delphi to work in XP. I tried it on XP today and it worked fine. It might be that something was missed. Here is a nice reference of the important bits from that screen cast:
Go to Tools / Configure Tools / Add
The Title can be anything you want. The program is Explorer (the .exe is optional) and the parameters must be /select, $edname (be sure you remember the comma!)
That should do it for you to open an explorer window with the currently edited file selected.
Update: More explorer parameters.
There is a thread on Stack Overflow listing the hidden features of Delphi. Worth checking out. If you don’t see the features you know of then be sure to add them.
Additionally I added a side bar on the left that lists the 10 most recent Stack Overflow questions related to Delphi.
There is a new programming community site on the internet today. It has been in beta for a while, but today it is open to the public. The site is Stack Overflow and it is the brain child of Jeff Attwood and Joel Spolsky. If you are software developer who reads blogs then you have most likely heard of them and read their work.
Think of Stack Overflow as a combination of a Wiki with a Forum. There is a little bit of Digg / Reddit thrown in and a touch of a blog. Here is Jeff’s Venn diagram to explain it:
So that little asterisk in the middle. Everything is tagged, so you can filter for only the Delphi questions. It is pretty active and sometimes it is good to see how the other side lives. There is a pretty good community forming already.
I am trying to keep an eye on the Delphi questions, there are currently 37 of them, but I occasionally check out other topics too. It doesn’t replace CodeGear’s forums (which now have an accept answer feature) but I like the fact it is much more focused to being on the topic of a question and an answer and less on a discussion.
So far I have seen some past guests on our podcast there including both Nick Hodges and Barry Kelly. When will I see you out there? Put a link in the comments. I’ll be sure to vote up most Delphi questions and good answers too.
Don’t want to use the ESD to install? Nick posted that the ISO was available, but the link wasn’t immediately obvious as it pointed to the ESD. Just swap out .esd_trial.zip to .iso on the FTP or HTTP url and the ISO will download.
For some reason the FTP links fail on Chrome. Maybe Chrome doesn’t do FTP. The HTTP links do not work from here (which is why I unlinked them) because it checks your referrer. Just copy and paste it and it will work.
The ISO is 1,944.67 MB, so you will be downloading for a while. The advantage of the ESD is it only downloads the languages and the prerequisites you need. Much smaller download overall.
When you connect to the FTP server you get the following:
WARNING: This is a restricted access system. If you do not have explicit
permission to access this system, please disconnect immediately!
But I am assuming that Nick’s comment that it is available for anyone is explicit permission. I may be wrong.
Check out A first impression review of the Delphi 2009 trial. Not all roses, but positive overall.