Archive for August 2014

Dear everyone: Please stop using $IFDEF VERXXX

I just checked out the source to a new project.  Not going to name names because what I’m discussing is a pretty universal problem.  This project had dependencies on several common Delphi open-source libraries, and it had a well-designed DPROJ file that got all the paths right and everything.  I opened it in XE6 and went to build… and promptly tripped over some stupid compiler error involving ANSI vs Unicode chars… and by this point, anyone who’s ever done this probably knows exactly where this is going. Continue reading ‘Dear everyone: Please stop using $IFDEF VERXXX’ »

Finally some language-level improvements?

It would not be unfair to characterize the last few Delphi releases as All Mobile, All The Time.  And as cool as that is for mobile developers, those of us still working in VCL land have sort of felt like we’re getting the short end of the stick.  The last time anything significant was added to the core language itself was extended RTTI in Delphi 2010 (plus extended RTTI support for array properties XE2.)  So I have to admit, I was excited when my boss sent this Google+ post around to the developers this morning. Continue reading ‘Finally some language-level improvements?’ »

So what was up with the forums?

Looks like the Embarcadero forums are back up now.  I know they’ve been down for a while, but has it really been more than a month?forum

Static Typing Still Matters

I ran across a very interesting story yesterday.  Apparently genetic researchers are having some real trouble with their spreadsheets: important data is being wrongly interpreted by Excel as specific data formats and ends up getting mangled irreversibly, leading to data corruption.  For example, the gene identifier “2310009E13” got converted to the floating point value “2.31E+13,” and the tumor suppressor DEC1 [Deleted in Esophageal Cancer 1] was being converted to ‘1-DEC.’ Continue reading ‘Static Typing Still Matters’ »