Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Welcome to Delphi Code Monkey

My name is Warren, and I'm a Delphi Geek. In this blog, I intend to write about writing applications for Windows, and eventually about writing cross-platform applications.

I might do a few deep-dives into some Win32 internals, and I might write a bit about my philosophy of writing applications.

I started using Turbo Pascal 5 in high school, and I have been using Delphi since version 1.0, and I've made the 16 bit to 32 bit transition, and the Ansi to Unicode conversion (Delphi 2009), and I hope that when the 64 bit version of Delphi arrives, I'll navigate the 32 bit to 64 bit transition as well. And since it seems inevitable that Delphi will be going cross-platform some day, I wouldn't be surprised if I start writing about Cross-Platform stuff.

I work all day in Windows, and I know Windows inside out, but I actually like the Mac and Linux platforms better. I've done a fair amount of Python, C, and C++ on Linux, and I've started learning Objective-C on Mac, so I might write a bit about things other than Delphi, but I will always try to include a Delphi angle in everything I write. Delphi developers should learn Python, C#, C++, and other languages. That way when people criticize us because we're just using Delphi because we're too stupid, or too lazy to learn anything new, since we started in the 1980s in TurboPascal, we can politely point out that we use lots of other languages too. If you don't, then you deserve to be critiqued as a one-note-Johnny.

I also plan to discuss my favorite coding aphorisms, sayings, practices, and techniques. Let's start with a great one:

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.


I think the meaning is obvious. But just in case it isn't, consider a person who only knows one programming language, and only knows certain parts of that tool, its language, and its libraries and components. When you don't know something, you limit your ability to solve problems creatively, reliably, and properly.

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