Sugary Goodness in “Nougat”

[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] Continuing the theme of recent – and upcoming – posts about new (and not so new) syntax in modern (and not so modern) variations on the Pascal language, I just have to comment on what I regard as yet another stunningly good job that the guys at RemObjects have done in their “Nougat” flavoured Oxygene.  Specifically in relation to how they have implemented the named method parts syntax in Objective-C.

Porting the Objective-C CFFTPSample to XE2: Part 1

[Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes] On the NZ DUG email list (yes, we still have those here) a question was recently posted asking for help with getting some FTP code working on OSX, using XE2. This coincided nicely with my reaching a point in my Objective-C learning where this sort of exercise was of interest to me also, so I decided to try porting the CFFTPSample from the Apple Developer reference materials as a learning exercise.

Poll: FireMonkey or “Platform Native” ?

[Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes] We have had almost a year of monkeying with fire now – enough time I think for people to have formed a view as to whether it is truly a viable multi-platform framework for the future, or just a convenient cross-platform solution with limited, genuine utility. At the same time, we have had OS X and some iOS support for the same period, with the prospect of more platforms being made available to us Delphi developers in the future. So, looking ahead, do we see FireMonkey as providing a solid foundation for a cross-platform future, or would we prefer to see tighter, closer “native” support for MULTIPLE-platforms (both currently supported and envisaged/promised) ? I know what I think: As much as I’d prefer to use ObjectPascal, I quickly decided that using Delphi + FireMonkey for OS X / iOS was like trying to ice-skate uphill. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the disconnect between me, my code and the environment I was writing for was going to be a source of nothing but constant pain and frustration, and so decided to learn Objective-C and Xcode instead. I anticipate this will be only worse when it comes to Android, so Read More…