Category Archives: Programming

A common pattern seen in Delphi code is the “code inside an event handler” syndrome. Lines and lines of code are placed inside an event handler. Not enough, these event handlers are often called directly from other places in the … Continue reading →

Some weeks after I got my Delphi 1 I had some contract work for a CAD/CAM system at a company located in my home town. After discussing a specific problem with their chief programmer (he was on C++) for the … Continue reading →

Last weekend I spoke at the Delphi Tage in Heidelberg about DataSnap In The Cloud and I promised to provide the referenced data for download. So here it is: DataSnap in the Cloud (PDF) The slides from the presentation. I omitted … Continue reading →

Did you notice that there is a free trial of SQL Azure? Well, I stepped into it – just to gain experience.

You have unit tests, don’t you? Or at least you run some tests to make sure your recent changes broke something? These regression tests are vital to any serious software development. What would your customers say when they get a … Continue reading →

In the ancient days of Windows XP and Delphi 7 I used to provide a preview of the proprietary file content inside the file open dialog of one of my applications. This was accomplished by deriving from TOpenDialog, just like … Continue reading →

Back from Delphi Developer Days (Kudos to Marco and Cary) and after cleaning up the mess in my inbox I would like to share some thought I had during one of the sessions named “Delphi: Today and Tomorrow”. Some of … Continue reading →

In Delphi’s TThread class there is Synchronize to call a method in the context of the GUI thread. This is necessary in case, for example, you want to update a progressbar or a status label in a form, because the … Continue reading →

The interface approach introduced in Part 2 of this series and extended in Part 3 did cover most of our needs. But there is nothing that can’t be done better with the right tools.

In Part 2 of this series we learned about a more flexible implementation of the Visitor Pattern than the traditional approach. But we can do better.