ChilkatCrypt — this is what powers some of our crypto
MS Crypto — this is the Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG)
DISQLite — Some of 1Password’s features – such as Watchtower, for example – are utilizing SQLite. Because 1Password 4 is in Delphi 2007, we use DISQLite for that (today, it would be using FireDAC for that)
dxgettext — this is used to localize 1Password. It works nicely with Crowdin, a localization project management platform
At one point there was some attempts made to make a list of devices that were supported either completely or partially, but new devices were coming to quick to track. This lead to the misconception that FireMonkey apps only run on a very small subset of Android devices.
Since that time there have been a number of improvements to the compiler and the FireMonkey framework. Also the landscape of Android devices continues to evolve and change. Yet I still run into people who believe that FireMonkey still only runs on a small subset of devices. I thought I would provide an update and set the record straight.
Tegra 2 and NEON
Shortly before Android support was added, the Tegra 2 processor was in use. It was ARMv7 and Cortex-A, but lacked the NEON SIMD extension. So what is NEON? NEON is a SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) instruction set. When it was introduced it was an option that some ARMv7 processors included to improve performance. Since it was optional, the Tegra 2 excluded it.
It seems kind of uncertain to have some processors with some features, and others missing them, especially if you require them for your application to run. This isn’t some crazy thing that only happened with Android and ARM. Back in the time of the Intel 486 CPU (right before things went Pentium) some systems had an optional 487 math co-processor. This co-processor introduced some additional x87 instructions that accelerated some floating point operations. Some programs would be faster on a machine with x87 support, and others required it. When the Pentium came out, it incorporated the x87 instructions into most of the CPUs (there are always exceptions).
The Pentium didn’t end up being the “One CPU to rule them all” though. Along came MMX Instructions. MMX is a is a single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instruction set that was optional for some CPUs (where have I heard that before?) Some programs were faster on an MMX enabled CPU, and others required it to run at all. After a few years, most all CPUs, even those made by AMD included MMX instructions. It didn’t end there. New CPU instruction sets are introduced all the time, but it is rare that they get the same publicity that MMX or the x87 set did.
What does all of this have to do with NEON, besides perspective? Well, Neon is now part of the ARM standard. The new ARM chips in modern Android devices include Neon. They don’t even both listing it as a feature because it is assumed. The R&D team bet on NEON and they won. Since the compiler takes advantage of Neon instructions it is faster than it would be if they hedged their bets and ignored Neon.
Enter the GPU
Much like the x87 was a separate processor that augmented the system performance, there are many other processors in your computer, specifically around audio and graphics. The big thing about the GPU is that it not only beefed up the existing graphics co-processors, but it took on the 3D and texture operations and ran them through a massively parallel architecture. The original GPU that I had was actually a separate board in addition to my graphics card. Today they are mostly integrated.
On Android they typically go with a System on a Chip (SOC) that includes the CPU, GPU and a number of the other electronics.
The Rise and Fall of Intel Atom
ARM is an open standard CPU manufactured by many different chip makers, often times under their own brand. A few manufactures include Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung and even Apple (for their mobile devices). Intel wanted a piece of the mobile processor action, but instead of just implementing ARM they introduced the Atom processor. It still used the x86 instruction set of the desktop CPUs, but was designed to be more energy efficient. They put them in Windows tablets and Android devices.
This introduced another division in the Android landscape. There were two different processor architectures. Since most Android apps were written with Java and ran in a virtual machine, it wasn’t a huge deal. Except for games. Most games use native code for performance reasons, so that required either the game to include both ARM and Atom code and libraries, or the game just wouldn’t work on Atom.
Enter libHoudini. Intel realized that mobile gaming was a big part of Android, and the fact that you couldn’t play a lot of popular games on Atom devices wasn’t good. So they created libHoudini, a proprietary ARM translation layer that translates ARM instructions into x86 instructions for the Atom processor.
libHoudini was around for a while, but around Jelly Bean or KitKat it became standard on Atom based Android devices. This resulted in ARM native apps just working on Atom devices.
Embarcadero was actually in discussions with Intel. There was talk of making an Atom targeted compiler for Android, but work was also done to improve compatibility with libHoudini. Atom was never officially supported (mostly because the market share was too small) so the Android app packager includes a check to say it didn’t work with Atom processors. But you can remove that checker and your app will probably run great on most Atom devices.
Unlike Apple, new version updates don’t tend to roll out as fast on Android devices. This means you typically encounter a few different versions of Android running in the wild. It isn’t all that bad though. In my opinion, Ice Cream Sandwich (API 15) was really when Android came into its own. It was Honeycomb (API 14) that finally gave tablets some serious love, and ICS merged those new features back to phones. Anything before ICS is really legacy at this point (at least in my opinion). Android tracks the popularity of Android versions on their Developer Dashboard.
As of May 2, 2016
Ice Cream Sandwich and older only account for a total of 4.3% of Android devices. While there are feature differences between the top 3, nothing is too revolutionary as to make the others obsolete yet.
A Thousand Flowers
Unlike iOS, where Apple is the only company to make devices that run it, Android is EVERYWHERE! I guess I’m kind of a collector of Android devices. I owned the first Android powered watch by WIMM and even created a 6 sided dice app for it. Now that Delphi supports Android I love testing it on different Android devices. Here is a list of my findings
Android Wear – I’ve tested 4 or 5 different Android wear devices, including the Moto 360, and they all worked flawlessly with FireMonkey.
Google Glass – Again, worked out of the box with FireMonkey. We even later added official support. Unfortunately Google is reimagining Glass right now, but I suspect when then new version comes out it will work great.
Epson Moverio BT-200 – Similar to Google Glass, but has two independent translucent lenses so it can do 3D. Runs Android Jelly Bean and works with FireMonkey right out of the box. There is a BT-300 coming soon.
Ouya – This was the Android gaming console that was going to change the world. It ended up under delivering, and then not evolving fast enough. It does however run FireMonkey just fine, and I know a few developers who used it for creative projects.
Amazon FireTV and Fire TV Stick – Designed to work with your TV and running Amazon’s own version of Android. Again worked like a charm with FireMonkey.
Amazon Fire Phone – I think this is a pretty cool device, a shame it didn’t catch on. Also runs FireMonkey apps fine.
Amazon Kindle Tablets – I’ve not tested these, but I know people who have. Again it runs a different flavor of Android. From what I hear some people had to update their OS to get it to work with FireMonkey, but it did work.
BlackBerry Phone – Yeah, I went there, and so did FireMonkey. It worked too, although there are some idiosyncrasies about the OS that show up when you invoke the share sheet. I originally tested it on the BlackBerry OS, which supports Android apps, but now they’ve gone full Android.
Windows Phone 10 – My Windows Phone wouldn’t install the right preview of Windows 10, but Marco had better luck than I and got FireMonkey apps running on Windows 10 Phone under the Astoria bridge. Then Microsoft discontinued it. Windows Phone never had much market share, and continues to dwindle.
Huge collection of tablets and phones, including one with an Atom processor – they all worked (except that one old Tegra 2 tablet that ran Gingerbread).
Since Android is everywhere I’d wager that there is no Android app that actually runs on every single Android device out there, I don’t care what you wrote it with. Now if someone wants to prove me wrong, that is fine, I suspect different Android devices will be released faster than we can test them.
Conclusion
Let’s run through those requirements again and see how big of an impact they really represent.
ARM Cortex-A series CPU – Atom was never big, and is on its way out. Most everything else is ARM Cortex-A (or newer / compatible).
ARMv7 Instructions – ARMv6 is either really old, or used in a micro device like a beacon or some other IoT device. Not in any Android devices. Oh, and ARMv8 is the big thing now. It is 64-bit and runs FireMonkey apps fine.
NEON Technology – Like I said, it is part of the standard now, so unless you have an old Tegra 2 tablet (I still have one) then nothing to worry about.
GPU – All of the GPU compatibility and performance issues I know of have been fixed, and GPUs are standard on Android devices (at least ones with a screen).
Specific versions of Android – Only 2.3% of devices have an unsupported version of Android.
So while FireMonkey apps may not run on every single Android device in existence, most apps don’t and no app needs to. FireMonkey apps to run on the vast majority of them, and that is what matters.
I was chatting with someone today who was less familiar with Delphi. He asked what is it about Delphi that makes so many people continue to love it. I thought I would share my answer and see what everyone else thinks.
Developer productivity – When Delphi was first introduced it was going head to head with Visual Basic in getting things done fast, and most of the time Delphi was faster for getting things done, and the rest of the time it was still really fast. That continues today. I’ve done presentations for people and they blown away with how fast I can do things with Delphi.
Fast native apps – When it comes to app performance Delphi was way faster than VB and is competitive with Visual C++ and any other compiler out there. This is because it builds native apps that run fast.
Database access – One of the original goal of Delphi was first class database connectivity. That is something Delphi continues to deliver. BDE was ahead of its time, but FireDAC is a whole new breed. And the great thing is there are so many 3rd party data access libraries to choose from, to give you just the right set of features you need.
Platform API access – I remember the first time I needed to access some Windows messages and a Windows API that wasn’t exposed through the RTL. I kind of expected it to be a lot of work. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy and natural it was to add that to my program. I love that Delphi lets you work at the nice high productive level, and then reach down to “touch the metal” and access the APIs.
Visual form designers – I’ll admit it, Delphi has spoiled me. I’ve checked out a number of other programming tools, and it is rare to find one that works as good. The ability to design your user interface and preview what it will look like so easily is so useful.
Reliable applications – I’ve heard stories about when they demonstrated Delphi’s ability to handle exceptions and people were falling out of their chairs. I don’t know what it is about Delphi, it might just be that the developers who use it are amazing, but I am frequently impressed with how reliable programs are that are developed with Delphi.
Good strong community – All the Tech Partners, MVPs, authors, trainers, and developers make the Delphi community amazing. It is always great to see all the amazing projects everyone is working on. So many people willing to help and just be fantastic. It is a great community to be part of.
I made this graphic a while ago to explain why developing with Delphi was so awesome. I call it the three levels of development. The idea is each level builds on the one beneath it. The higher levels provide great productivity benefits.
The great thing about Delphi is it lets you easily move between these levels. You can do so much in code, even at design time, but it doesn’t keep you at that high level. When you need it you can move down to a lower level, even to the point of writing inline assembly code on Win32.
Most other development tools are stuck at just one level, or with just bits and pieces of the other levels. Delphi gives you all 3 working together. This is really amazing, especially for a cross platform development tool.
What did I miss? What else is in Delphi’s DNA? What is the one thing that makes Delphi the tool of choice for you?
Update: A few more characteristics of Delphi’s DNA from the comments
Readability and Maintainability – This is really important since most programs spend way more time being maintained than in the initial writing. Code that is easier to read is easier to maintain. This is aided by the fact Delphi is easy to read and has a strong type system.
Backward Compatibility – This is something Delphi really spoils us with. Even when there are breaking changes they are typically minor and easy to work around when compared to other development technologies.
Speed – Delphi has this in spades: Speed of development, speed of compilation, and speed of execution. Sure, you may be able to find some situations where something is faster in one area, but over all Delphi is very well rounded in the speed department.
Alister Christie of New Zealand is our MVP of the Week. Alister is the master of Delphi video trainings with his site at LearnDelphi.tv. He has over 100 free videos, and then over 30 more hours of premium videos. A great resource for people new to Delphi development, or anyone who wants to take their skill to the next level.
When I was in New Zealand I got a chance to sit down with Alister and Damien Bootsma for a short interview.
Alister has a lot of great content on his YouTube channel, including more interviews and technical trainings. Here are a few of his recent CodeRage sessions for you to check out too.
Flexible and Supercharged Key Hashing with TDictionary
TDictionary in Delphi is an extremely useful container, however the default method by which your ‘keys’ get hashed might be undesirable. Being able to alter this can give you far greater flexibility when taking advantage of the Generic Dictionary collection.
Common Delphi Coding Anti-Patterns
During this session you’ll either be thinking “I do that” (and hopefully you’ll stop) or “I remember doing that” (while cringing at the memory). There are certain coding patterns that all Delphi programmers seem to use at some stage – some of them sub-optimal, some weird, and some just plain wrong. Collectively I’ve called them Anti-Patterns, and in this session you’ll get to see some of my favorites (or, anti-favorites).
Escaping the Try..Finally..Free Nest
We all want to do the right thing with memory management and make sure we tidy up after ourselves. However as our code gets buried in successive layers of object allocation, try, finally, free “nests” it all becomes a bit onerous and, well, resembling a pterodactyl nest. In this session, we look at a technique to flatten out your code so that it will look less attractive as habitation for a friendly pterosaur, and as a side benefit, improve readability. Along the way we use interfaces, generics and anonymous methods to build our over-engineered object de-allocation artifice.
Become Your Own Art Department
Finding suitable and consistent images for buttons, menus and splash screens can be a difficult task – why not make your own?
Alister is a brilliant developer and great instructor. He always does great work. We are very pleased to have him as our MVP of the week.
I’ve been using LassPass, EverNote, Google Authenticator, Authy and Chrome’s identity management previously, but wasn’t completely happy with that. After looking at 1Password I am switching. It is really fantastic, and includes all the features I need.
Who will win next month? Maybe your cool app. Enter today!
This week we are spotlighting our MVP Nirav Kaku from Mumbai, India. I had the opportunity to meet Nirav while I was visiting Mumbai and he showed me around India and took me to dinner.
Nirav runs a software development company in India where he employes 6 other Delphi developers. They provide a software as a service system to the high end corporate taxi service. It includes both mobile and web based aspects, all developed with Delphi (with a little HTML, JavaScript and PHP mixed in). It currently services a fleet of 1000 taxis and their drivers. For the back end they use both DataSnap and the Delphi MVC framework. Here are a couple of his developers I met while I was visiting.
As an MVP and profession software developer he spends a lot of time researching technology and development topics, and then holds one day training sessions where he shares some of what he’s learned.
This week we are spotlighting the work of Bertie Buitendag, our MVP from South Africa. He is a lecturer at Tshwane University of Technology. He was instrumental in the school system adopting Delphi for early education. He also worked to develop the curriculum for teaching computer programming in basic education.
If you check out his blog, he regularly blogs about educational events in South Africa where students and faculty learn more about Delphi. If you check out his YouTube Channel you can see some of the videos he’s put together covering different topics on Delphi.
I feel like I’ve known Nick Hodges as long as I’ve been using Delphi. He is as much a part of the Delphi community as anyone else, especially with the distinction of writing the first 3rd party component for Delphi: TSmiley. I believe Nick was also an original member of TeamB, moderating the forums, and wherever there is a conversation about Delphi, you will probably find him there.
In 2004 Nick won the Spirit of Delphi Award, a very prestigious honor in the Delphi community. I was at BorCon that year, but I knew Nick previously from the TDAG mailing list I frequented. I even snagged a photo of Nick receiving the award, but the camera on my Sony PDA didn’t do it justice (I’ve since lost both).
In 2006 Nick joined DevCo (as it was then called) as the Delphi product manager. This was during that transition period between Borland and Embarcadero. The company was DevCo for a short period of time, then became CodeGear. Nick later went on to run R&D at Embarcadero.
While at Embarcadero Nick hosted his own podcast The Delphi Hour. You can still find an archive of the episodes on the Delphi Wiki. Nick is also a top contributor there, a great resource about the Delphi community.
After leaving Embarcadero (around 2012) he was famously in a commercial for the Gateway Ticketing (where he was their product manager) that was a satire of the Intel commercial with Ajay Bhatt. Unfortunately I can’t find a copy of the commercial anywhere. It was amazing. Imagine it just like the original Ajay Bhatt commercial, but with Nick Hodges, and then at the end everyone is chasing him down the street.
Nick was my guest for the 2nd episode of my Podcast, back in 2008, and returned a few more times as a fairly regular guest. I just listened to that 2nd episode again, and I had a lot of fun with sound effects. Need to do some more of that in the future.
Recently Nick has released two fantastic books on Delphi development. One great thing about these books is they aren’t just about the fundamentals of Delphi development, like so many other books out there. Instead they are about how to take your development to the next level. Great books for all Delphi developers out there. I believe Nick might be working on a new book, but no word for sure.
Nick is regularly presenting in person and online. He recently returned from presenting at the DAPUG meeting in Denmark.
You can catch some of Nick’s online presentations too . . .
I’m sure even with all that I’ve covered in this blog post, I’ve just scratched the surface of Nick’s contributions to the Delphi community. Thanks Nick for all you do!
Stay tuned for another podcast with Nick in the near future.
This week’s MVP spotlight is on Dr. Yilmaz Yörü from Eskisehir-Turkey. He graduated from the department of Mechanical Engineering of Eskisehir Osmangazi University in 1997. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the same department/university. Some of his interests are Programming, Thermodynamics (Exergy), Fluid Mechanics and Artificial Intelligence. He also likes graphical design and high-end innovations.
In 10.1 Berlin the ActiveX project types are missing from the New Items Window under Delphi. They are there for C++Builder, but not for Delphi.
This only happens if you use the shiney new Feature Installer that was introduced with 10.1 Berlin. So if you use the old offline ISO installer then it shows up fine.
[Update: This was just fixed in the installer. So if you download and install after today everything will work great!]
Turns out though, it is only a simple registry issue. Instead of explaining the details behind why, here is the quick and easy work around.
Close RAD Studio or Delphi 10.1 Berlin.
Open RegEdit
Browse to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Embarcadero\BDS\18.0\Known IDE Packages\Delphi”
Find the entry named “$(BDS)\Bin\delphicompro240.bpl” and change the value from “__(Untitled)” to “(Untitled)”. Here is a before screenshot:
And here is an after screenshot (notice the missing double underscore)
Then restart your RAD Studio or Delphi 10.1 IDE and bask in all the ActiveX glory that you have restored!
Now you can create a new ActiveX Library or Type Library with your favorite programming language.
Interesting story, long ago a friend of mine worked for a software development company that used Visual Basic. He was in the “skunkworks” division that used Delphi to create all the ActiveX components that the Visual Basic developers used. There were 2 Delphi developers and about 50 VB developers. Whenever there was something that couldn’t be done in VB (which happened a lot) then they would make a new ActiveX in Delphi for them.
My friend showed him that they could actually out produce the VB developers with Delphi, but his boss was convinced that they were a VB development firm, and didn’t want to switch to the superior development tool. Unfortunately VB has died off, and all of those developers lost their jobs. My friend is glad he stuck with Delphi.
Stefan van As of 1Password fame sent me a more exhaustive list of the libraries and tools used in 1Password. I thought I would share it with everyone. He also recently started blogging about security, software development and Delphi.
Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) — this is what powers 1Password inside Internet Explorer.
When it comes to 
ARM is an open standard CPU manufactured by many different chip makers, often times under their own brand. A few manufactures include Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung and even Apple (for their mobile devices). 
Intel wanted a piece of the mobile processor action, but instead of just implementing ARM they introduced the Atom processor. It still used the x86 instruction set of the desktop CPUs, but was designed to be more energy efficient. They put them in Windows tablets and Android devices.
Enter libHoudini. Intel realized that mobile gaming was a big part of Android, and the fact that you couldn’t play a lot of popular games on Atom devices wasn’t good. So they created libHoudini, a proprietary ARM translation layer that translates ARM instructions into x86 instructions for the Atom processor.
This week we are spotlighting our MVP 
I feel like I’ve known 
In 2004 Nick won the Spirit of Delphi Award, a very prestigious honor in the Delphi community. I was at BorCon that year, but I knew Nick previously from the 
This week’s MVP spotlight is on Dr. Yilmaz Yörü from Eskisehir-Turkey. He graduated from the department of Mechanical Engineering of Eskisehir Osmangazi University in 1997. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the same department/university. Some of his interests are Programming, Thermodynamics (Exergy), Fluid Mechanics and Artificial Intelligence. He also likes graphical design and high-end innovations.
