This blog is about coding Delphi. It’s articles on how to write clean Delphi code, how to handle your legacy code, how to avoid common Delphi tracks and how to do it in a manageable, effective and robust way. Furthermore, there will be tips and tricks how to help your Delphi development team to…
Think of refactoring as the equivalent of washing your hands after using the restroom. It’s just something you always do as a matter of common decency.
I first came across the saying How you do anything is how you do everything, in the sense that you should afford the same diligence and care to every part of your life or work as you would the things that you especially care for and value, in one of Gregg Hurwitz The Nowhere…
Yesterday I gave a talk on Clean Coding for colleagues at the bank. It’s been a while since I’ve held any kind of talk to anyone, so I was a little bit nervous. That nervousness quickly turned to adrenalin and, I hope, positive energy for the crowd. 40 or so developers and stakeholders. I…
I had a problem with typecasting the other day and had the workings of typecasting explained to me on Facebook. Consider this code: var MyFrame : TAbstractFrame; begin MyFrame := GetSomeFrame() as TAbstractFrame; MyFrame := TAbstractFame( GetSomeFrame() ); end; GetSomeFrame returns a frame of TFrame. So I typecast that result into TAbstractFrame (for whatever…
I like using the Indy components when working with all sorts of internet things, but unfortunately documentation is scarce at best. So I spend hours on hours trying to find some hint as how to do things. Just lately I needed to get SSL working with my REST server for a specific service I…
I’m currently working on a bit of legacy code. Good code, to be sure, with a rather low technical debt due to the care and hard work by previous programmers. But of course, there are things that stick out. An hour or so ago, I started to refactor an old method that was populating…
Using frame inheritance, possibly in combination with the frame factory pattern (although that is out of scope for this post) can considerably help you limit dependencies, reduce the number of forms and separate concerns of your application. What’s the difference between forms and frames? Many Delphi programmers use nested forms to structure their applications,…
Quite a few years ago I landed a Delphi assignment to, among other things, develop a media injector application for a Swedish television broadcaster. It would be part of a much larger system, and its responsibility was to move different clips of mp4 files from one place to another according to a time schedule…
Which code is more readable? implementation uses // Delphi units SysUtils, Windows, Classes, // Libraries Lib.Utils, Lib.Settings, Lib.JSON, MainFormU, // Main form unit Settings; // Settings unit procedure TForm.OnButton1Click( ASender: TObject ); var Humpty: THumptyDumpty; begin // Set up a humpty dumpty class and execute it, passing it the personal id, name and what…
