Category: podcast

We are LIVE! from the Embarcadero Austin Office today at 1:30 PM CDT

Starting shortly. See you online!

A live conversation with TMS Software’s Bruno Fierens, Wagner Landgraf, & Holger Flick about some of the latest technology to come out of TMS Software.

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Earlier this week Craig and I had a conversation the Cool App winners

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On Monday this week David, Craig, and Jim discuss some of their favorite programming books, both focusing on Delphi and C++ specific ones, and general programming topics.

Slides

Craig and Jim discussed Single Board Computers (SBC) and Delphi in this Live Episode of The Podcast at Delphi.org

If you are wanting to target these boards from Delphi remember if it is an ARM processor you will want to run Android, and if it is an x86 then you will want to run Windows or Linux. Here are some links to some of the single board computers we discussed:

• MinnowBoard by NetGate is an x86 based SBC that includes configurations with Dual Ethernet, which is great for creating network appliances. It includes support for both Linux and Windows. I’ve yet to test it, but I expect it will work fine.
• Udoo x86 is another x86 based SBC (thus the name – but be aware they have non-x86 boards with different names) it supports both Windows and Linux operating systems, and your Delphi apps will run swimmingly under both operating systems. There are 4 different variations of the x86 with different configurations. It includes both a Intel Braswell SOC as the main OS CPU that runs Linux and Windows, and also an Intel Curie Microcontroller that is Arduino compatible. There are GPIO pins for both boards, and the Curie pins are compatible with most Arduino shields. You have a dedicated serial connection between the two so you can create an Arduino app with Visuino that runs on the Curie, talking to various sensors and it will run independently of your Delphi app running on the Braswell.
• LattePanda is a Windows 10 specific SBC and comes with Windows 10 preinstalled. There are two different hardware configurations, and you can choose for it to have Windows 10 activated or use your own license. It also includes a separate Arduino compatible ATmega32u4 microprocessor, again with the dedicated serial connection between the two processors and GPIO pins for both processos. I was able to get Linux installed, but I wouldn’t recommend it as it was a lot of effort and the WiFi wasn’t compatible. You could technically install Delphi IDE on both the LattePanda and Udoo x86, but more likely you would want to use a dedicated development computer and then use the remote debugger/platform assist server on the SBC. They have a new LattePanda Alpha they recently launched on Kickstarter which significantly upgraded stats.
• BeagleBone Black is an older ARM SBC that has its own Android distro. This works better than trying to shoehorn Android onto the Raspberry Pi – while you can get it installed, the BeagleBone Black’s Android distro is much more reliable. It has the GPIO pins like a Raspberry Pi. It is a little older and but might still be a good solution for your projects.
• Orange Pi is another Raspberry Pi type ARM device that is cheaper and designed to run Android. They have a lot of different models to choose from, and just released a new one at CES. I’ve ordered a few to test, but they should run Delphi Android apps great. I have a spreadsheet of all the different Orange Pi boards and some basic specs for easy comparison. No guarantees it is 100% correct though.

We have a whole new streaming solution that should fix all the issues we were having, so expect better audio quality this time. Join Craig, David and myself for the latest on Delphi, C++Builder and software development in general.

[YouTube]

You can watch live right here:

During this episode we discussed:

• We set up our own RTMP instance on Linode to bounce the 3 streams off of for the podcast. I used Craig’s Brolly script to setup the server, and followed this guide. I used my local machine that I was streaming from to composite as well, which may have been stressing out the poor MacBook. I’ll try adding another computer to the mix next time, possibly an Amazon Workspace instance like we did for CodeRage.
• The Delphi powered game Blast-Off launched yesterday on Steam. It is a lot of fun and looks beautiful.
  
• Speaking of beautiful games created with Delphi, check out some of the latest videos by Zudomon showing off the game he is developing in Delphi. You can support it on Patreon or follow along on the Facebook developer page.
• The team over at Grijjy has an open source Cross Platform Cloud Logger available git the GetIt packet manager or on GitHub. The Broker and LogViewer run on Windows, but the client logging code works on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. It has a lot of great features and is very useful.
• There is an art and a science to writing good questions. Eric S. Raymond started it with his How to Ask Questions the Smart Way back in 2004. I created a blog post Jon Skeet of Stack Overflow fame also made a blog post about Writing the Perfect Question, which he shorted into a checklist on Stack Overflow Meta. I’ve got a blog post on the subject as well. Following these steps are also good troubleshooting too.
  
• We also discussed some DevOps best practices
  • You need a literal backup of all the machines
  • Keep all your code in source control
  • Be sure you also have an offsite backup
  • You need to be able to rebuild your development machine quickly
    • This includes bringing up a new developer
    • Same process is used to set up a dedicated build machine
  • If you use a database, you don’t have a database unless you have a script to rebuild it, and it is in source control
    • A script or some other system to manage the schema and lookup tables
    • Versionable
  • Use Virtual Machines to manage development environments
    You should have a dedicated build server – this proves your process to build a development machine works
  • Might as well setup CI too
• When discussion version control hosting consider the following:
  • GitHub has free open source repositories with free collaborators, but you can pay for private repositories
  • BitBucket has free private repositories, and Jira integration, but you pay for collaborators
  • SourceForge just launched a huge new update
  • GitLab is an exciting new alternative that also allows free self hosting