Delphi – Page 2 – SwitchBL8’s gebazel

ASP.NET: Delphi2005 vs VS.NET

Apr 012005

I was browsing some websites this afternoon, and read somewhere (I think on the DailyWTF forums) that Java and C# syntax are almost the same. So this evening I thought: why not give it a try and create a simple C# web-application. So here I go…

1) Start Delphi2005
2) File->New->C# web application
3) Give it a name etc.
4) Look at the canvas: it says “Form is in gridbaglayout. If you want to …. blablabla”.
5) Now drop a button on the form
6) Move the button
7) Try to move it again
8) Don’t get annoyed: it’s not possible.
9) Close all and exit Delphi2005

Now do the same, except change the first into:

1) Start VS.NET
.
.
.
7) Hey, the button has moved
8) Be surprised, but…
9) Continue coding

If that’s not a WTF, than what is? Perhaps this is: running the (not so good looking) page/application (just some inputfields and buttons doing nothing) for the second time gave me the annoying “can’t connect to the asp workerprocess” error. VS.NET has no trouble running the pages time after time.

View what I did here. Please comment if this is a known bug that I did not know about (quite possible) or if you know that I did something utterly stupid (extremely possible).

Inno Setup for OMO

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Mar 192005

Because I need to “deploy” O.M.O. to the laptop, and the program includes a data-directory with the NexusDB database, I thought: why not give Inno Setup a try?
I downloaded version 5.0.8, installed and ran it. Opening example1 made me wonder: it can’t be that simple? I changed some of the text to represent my application name etc, and press the “run” button. It worked. In about 5 minutes, including the time to download (well, that was about 3 seconds) the program itself and the source (yep, Inno Setup is Open Source). Thanks, Jordan!

Project O.M.O. – working

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Mar 172005

My little project to create a program to practice conversions is done. Well, it generates random conversions, does the checking, gives you a new conversion when your answer was correct. What is still left to do:

Stop after maximum number of questions (user specifies number)
Create a timed mode, where you play against the clock
Redo the GUI (too much space now)
Maintain some “score”
Record the scores, with a username
Conversions are “from” -> “to”, but create logic for the other way around (less records in database).

The conversions are stored in a NexusDB V2 database (beta 7) and that works like a charm. I hadn’t worked with NexusDB properly yet, but V2 is clean and straightforward. Definitely worth checking out if you need a small database that can grow to a real C/S solution.

NexusDB V2 beta 7

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Mar 162005

Wowsers. I was going to download beta 6 of NexusDB V2 to use it as the database for O.M.O. (Oefenen met Omrekeningen, Dutch for “Practice with Conversions”) and got errors about files not existing on the NexusDB-server. I checked their newsgroup, to find they just released beta 7. Here are the links:

NexusDB V2 – beta 7 for:

Delphi 2005
Delphi 7
Delphi 6
Delphi 5
C++Builder 6
nxServer.zip
nxEnterpriseManager.zip

Since it’s a beta: don’t use it in production. But O.M.O. is just an internal thingy for the moment, so I guess that’s okay.

O.M.O.

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Mar 152005

Today (well, actually yesterday) I started programming on a little application to practice calculations like:

0,1 m = … cm
100 cm3 = … dm3

The basic checking routine is there, now I need to create some sort of database that stores “unit1”, “unit2” and the “factor”, e.q. “m”, “cm”, “100”. I could make it very flexible by storing the factors for m(illi), c(enti), d(eci), M(ega), G(iga), but that would also mean some sort of stringmanipulation. The way I choose is flexible enough without loosing its simplicity. Also, I can now have “dozen”, “pieces”, “12” as a record.

ImageGrabber – threading

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Mar 142005

Not much progress on the ImageGrabber. I created the framework for the threading in a seperate unit, but the actual threading is not implemented. The code for the functions/procedures in the Thread-unit are already in the mainunit, so that’s just a matter of copy&paste.

But I’m tired (hey, I just had a Sunday!) and I’m off to bed now.

Delphi2005 – update 2

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Mar 122005

Borland sure is in touch with it’s customers: Delphi2005 update 2 is released, a little over a month after update 1 (25-1 and 9-3). But we delivered you D2005 fast, and we give you the updates even faster, so you’re happy now, aren’t you, dear customer?

Testrun ImageGrabber

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Mar 102005

A gallery of 360 images, a total of 37.1MBytes, downloaded in 23.5 minutes. That’s about 1,6MByte/min, and a little under 4 seconds/image. I think that’s not too bad considering the sites providing these galleries are very busy.

Owning vs Right To Use

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Mar 072005

This is another Delphi Architect vs MSDN Universal post. It was brought to my attention (mainly by this post) that MSDN Universal only gives you the right to use the software (for a period of time) and that you don’t own VS.NET and the other products.

Currently, I own Delphi 6 Enterprise. I bought the full product, and even with the Borcon price-reduction, it still had a hefty price tag. Now I find myself that I need to upgrade, because I own the software, and I am not entitled to use the latest and greatest. To be able to develop .NET with a Borland product, I need to buy something new. The upgrade is about $2300 (FP is $3500).

The full product of VS.NET Enterprise Architect costs about $2500. Apart from Object Pascal, it will give me the same .NET development environment that Delphi2005 gives me. It will give me a stable environment (Delphi2005 is slow and unstable on my system, and it gives me an unfinished feeling). It will give me Compact Framework. If we only want to address Win32, .NET has no meaning at all. So the development environment should have this flexibility. Delphi2005 does not have it.

So if I want to OWN the software, Microsoft gives me more bang for the buck.

Most developers have some sort of MSDN subscription. To test your software, you need multiple OS’s (Windows versions) for instance. Or several Office versions in the same Windows version. Or different browser versions. I bought VMWare Workstation just for that purpose. I can’t have 10 machines (moneywise and physical space wise) running different combinations of OS/Browser/Office just because I develop for the Windows.

If you have the choice: buying Delphi2005 with no support (that’s an optional product), with no CF, and with an unfinished IDE. Or buying MSDN Universal, that gives you VS.NET Ent Architect, All-Office and All-Windows and support what would you choose? Heck, working with Delphi6 is like putting on my gloves I had for years. Developing in Delphi2005 is hell. I can develop the same in VS.NET quicker and without less hassle, even without knowing C# that well, than I would in Delphi2005 in Pascal. It’s a shame.

I haven’t bought anything yet, but if a nice client (good hourrate and not too shortterm) comes along and Delphi did not change by then, I know what I will buy.

Thanks for listening.

TRaReEdit = class(TEdit) – part 2

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Mar 042005

My TRaReEdit now has an OnPaste and an AfterPaste event. To check that they fire at different moments, you could put a ShowMessage in both of them, showing the Text-property in a ShowMessage.

With that in place, I can create the procedure to split the image-URL into base-URL, base-filename, starting picture number and image-type (not handled yet, but needs to be in place to handle different filetypes, like .png, .tiff, etc).

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