[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes] Embarcadero clearly don’t want or need new customers. Their product activation system is not only a nuisance, but an active barrier to new customers, rendered unable even to access trial versions of their products.
[Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes] NEWSFLASH: I believe I have found a use for class helpers in the wild! This, even though I have long held the view that class helpers should not be viewed as a general purpose utility. They were designed for a very specific purpose and the authors of the technology themselves tell us how they are intended to be used. Using them in other ways is asking for trouble: they can break your – or others – code, they hide details of an implementation in A Bad Way™ and you are likely to run into limitations because what you want to use them for doesn’t tally with what they are intended to be used for. But, somewhat to my surprise, I have recently found what I consider to be a legitimate use for them. Less surprisingly, it actually fits with their intended use.
[Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minutes] I normally do not indulge in blog posts that merely link to other blog posts or articles, but I shall make an exception for the latest installment in the Homerian Epic: Sons of Kahn from Verity Stob. As ever, the Sons of Kahn theme provides much humour and hilarity, tinged imho with the faintest of bitterness stemming from the truth it conveys.
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] Make the alternative look worse than it really is. In fact, go one better – don’t make it look worse, just describe it as being worse. Some may consider it unfair to pick on one specific post, but I am increasingly disappointed with how the SVN integration in the new RAD Studio XE is being hailed as some great new addition to the IDE and don’t think it’s fair to paint it in such flattering shades without doing a fair comparison.
[Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minutes] A quick post to let everyone know that Allen Bauer kindly answered my direct question in the Embarcadero forums asking for clarification of what “64-bit implementation” means in the XE “Pulsar” slide of the new Delphi roadmap.
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] It’s tempting (not to mention completely understandable) to selectively choose the positive comments and not at all surprising that there are no negative comments to be found among the list quoted. But you should be careful to avoid potentially embarrassing credibility gaps.
[Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes] News is starting to come out about the upcoming release of Delphi, RAD Studio XE. So what can we expect?
[Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes] Answer: When it is merely the container for an interface. After a long series of observation and opinion pieces, I thought it about time I posted something a little more technical, so here we go.
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] Simon Kissel – of CrossKylix fame and Alternative Roadmap infamy – apparently recently re-appeared in the Delphi forums. I say apparently because Embarcadero or TeamB have seemingly been doing their best to maintain his status as a non-person. Can this be A Good Thing™? I don’t think so.
[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] I hadn’t posted on this news before as I expected there to be a veritable deluge of opinion flooding the Delphi blog-o-sphere and didn’t see any point adding to that noise, but there has been a curious silence on the matter, so here is my two-penneth after all. Nick Hodges is no longer employed by Embarcadero.
