This is actually the segment I’ve gotten the most requests for me to upload. Unfortunately I am a bit obsessive compulsive about doing them in order. . . . This is the part of the What’s Cooking in the Delphi Labs where I presented on the Cirrus Aspect Oriented programming framework for Delphi Prism.
Jim McKeeth
Cirrus Aspect Oriented programming framework for Delphi Prism.
Delphi Live! 2009
May 2009
Part 7 of 8
[YouTube]
[Part 6] – [Part 8] (Coming soon!)
David I. Showing Delphi Prism running in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
(Be sure to click HQ)
David Intersimone, Vice President of Developer Relations
Embarcadero Technologies
Showing Delphi Prism running in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Delphi Live! 2009
May 2009
Part 6 of 8
CodeRage III was a huge success last week. I attended a few sessions in addition to my own, and for the most part, everything ran smoothly. There was one room change, and LiveMeeting disabled audio from time to time, but once you learned how to re-enable it then it wasn’t that big of deal.
I understand Christine and Anders were working really hard behind the scenes to keep it all running smoothly though. At one point Christine’s microphone was unmuted in Room 1 and it was very obvious she was rather annoyed with some of the technical challenges live meeting was presenting.
Delphi Robot Rage was a success, despite LiveMeeting having issues with my video. Seems their codec is optimized for window screens, not 3D game video. Jamie Ingilby took first place with his Delphinium bot, but all the bots performed really well.
In the closing keynote Embarcadero’s Wayne Williams opened up with some pretty dry financials. Basically covering where the economy is headed and that Embarcadero is still investing with 40% on R&D. Additionally he answered the question he keeps getting about when, how and why they are going to kill Delphi. He said they are not. They like Delphi, in fact, before being a CEO got in the way Wayne was a Delphi developer.
I think the most exciting part of Wayne’s talk was the slide marked “The Future” which listed some of the company wide research initiatives underway. It specifically listed Mac, Linux, Cloud, Application Virtualization, FireBird, Touch, 64bit, SMP and Multi-core. When I asked about a Delphi for Mac and Linux they said that today, with Delphi Prism and Mono you could reach Mac and Linux, but in their labs they were working on native support, and that they had a significant head start.
You might recall in my podcast with Nick where there was a question about Linux support again he said that Commodore was going to have a pluggable compiler so one IDE could compile to two different platforms, so it seemed possible that other compilers could be added to support other platforms.
It was great to see Firebird in a positive light again. It certainly looks like it is going to start receiving proper support from Delphi. That is something to look forward to for sure.
There was also an open discussion of subscription model to buy Embarcadero’s tools under. A number of people were really excited about that. Wayne also said there is more focus on the Turbo’s, with the recently announced TurboRuby, and new entry level products planned for mid next year!
Overall, Wayne’s keynote was a huge hit with the chat room. It certainly seems like Delphi is in good hands and headed the right direction.
Nick is busy at work on updated .NET and Delphi native roadmaps, and we can expect to see those soon. He mentioned via Twitter that 64-bit was going to take a bit longer than expected. I would suggest that this doesn’t mean Commodore will be late, but maybe that they won’t include as many other features in it as they had originally planned.
Marco Cantu released his new Delphi 2009 Handbook. He was off to some great early sales during the conference. The PDF version of his book is available to all registered Delphi 2009 users. Marco licensed it so they can distribute it however they please, but Marco figures these are really more advertising then a threat to his sales. I would agree with him. You really can’t beat having a physical book on hand.
Anders has already started posting the replays. If you missed the session on Compact Framework development with Delphi Prism be sure to check that one out. David Clegg shows how to use the visual WinForms designers to develop for the Compact Framework. Also Craig Stuntz’s session on Functional Programming with Delphi was a real eye opener.
Delphi Prism is officially released now, and command-line compiler is a free download. When I was finishing up my Robot Rage session my Prism license expired. Turns out I was still running the beta. I fought with the license for a bit, and finally just decided to use a text editor and the command line compiler. It worked great. So having this command-line compiler freely available is a great benefit. It can be used for open source development, hobbyists, and also be installed on a web server to deploy your .pas files to the server with your ASP.NET solution.
Olaf Monien has a video on how to enable “Sync Editing” with Delphi Prism. It makes use of the free DXCore from DevExpress. (Sorry for spelling and pronouncing your name wrong.)
Well that is it for this week and our CodeRage wrap-up. I hope you all enjoyed CodeRage as much as I did. Join me next week when I will have marc hoffman back on to discuss the future of the Oxygene compiler and some of the other exciting things that RemObjects is up to.
I am actually sitting outside a closed coffee shop using their free wifi in hopes I will be able to upload this. I am on a family vacation and I didn’t think about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to easily get online whenever I needed to.
You may have noticed a change in format where I am using a lot of content I recorded from PDC. Well that is because I am busy putting together session for CodeRage III that is coming up next week. This looks to be a great conference. The trick with Virtual conferences is actually taking the time to be committed to attending. When you are still at work or whatever it is just too easy to get busy doing other things. So do yourself a favor and schedule time to attend at least a couple of sessions where you are 100% in attendance with no other distractions. You will be glad you did.
For more information on CodeRage III check out www.TheCodeRage.com. It runs from Monday December 1st from 5 AM to 8 PM through Friday December 5th, so chances are you can find a time that works with your schedule.
Speaking of CodeRage, one of my sessions is the Revenge of Delphi Robot Rage. This is a session where you can create a bot to compete in a 3D arena against other bots that were also created with Delphi. The winner gets bragging rights and a valuable development related prize. This year the arena is Unreal Tournament III, but you don’t need to buy the game to compete. You only need Delphi Prism. Now Delphi Prism isn’t out yet, but this was the first open Beta, and a lot of people were able to get in on the beta, or pick up a beta CD at PDC. If you weren’t able to do that, then you can still download the RemObjects Oxygene trail and use that. If none of those work for you, then maybe you can get creative and find another way.
For more information visit www.delphi.org/robot-rage/ where you can download the SDK. The only requirement is you submit source that can be compiled in either Delphi 2009 or Delphi Prism. You have until midnight Pacific time on December 3rd to submit your robot. That way I will have time to have them face off and record the battle.
For the podcast this week I have what I believe is a real treat. After I finished recording Episode 12 with Nick, marc and Allen at PDC we all started discussing technology, specifically where it was headed and where it had been. This is a real candid conversation, and I happened to record it as well. Keep in mind everyone here was just talking as themselves, and not speaking for the companies they work for, so there are no official statements or anything like that. Just four guys having a nice conversation. We started out talking about how long the 64-bit architecture would be enough before we needed to jump to whatever is next . . .
