Delphigeist

I've decided to move my blog to Blogspot the new address of delphigeist blog is delphigeist.blogspot.com.

Someone named Jarn asked me what feauters would make me upgrade from Delphi 7... Here are a couple, you could post aswell.

Code Completion:

When you type a identifier name that doesn't exist, maybe you forgot to declare you should have this options

Loops:

C++/C#/Java/Other languages benefit have a nice feauter in for loops like so

void myFreakyLoop(){
  for (int index = 0; index<=MaxValue; index++){
    // do the samba //
  }
}

You can write index+=2, so it won't increment index by 1 but by 2 or whatever value you want.

An equivalent in Delphi should be

procedure NewKindOfLoop;
var
  index: Integer;
begin
  for index := 0 to 1000 step 2 do
    // nada //
end;

Looks better ey?

Inlined variables(who, what, where, why...?):

This should be available but in order to keep code readable not like other programming languages i.e. C++ we can live without it. Delphi IDE is very rich, but developers need more feauters that let them focus on the job not on the(where was that option), IDE must be intuitive and options like code completion that I've mentioned above should have been implemented in Delphi 7 aswell(I know you have CTRL+J, but you use CTRL+SPACE alot and it should know what you want or give you options).

For example, how does generics help me, seriously now i can't really see it increasing my productivity one bit, here are some links to learn about generics(i won't post any of this ever)

• Felix Colibri has a nice article here
• Dr. Bob here
• You really want to check out this article about generics if your interested in them.

I really hope Delphi developers open eyes and ask for more, because Delphi 7 was a really good release, developers who used it for a long time don't really want to change it just for generics or other price of crap wich doesn't increase you productivity but slows it down!

Delphi Package Installer is a cool tool, if your in a hurry but need to install some packages into the IDE.
Delphi PI steps:

• Start DelphiPI
• Select the folder where both package file (*.dpk) and source files (*.pas) reside.
  If the directory structure is like:
  SuperLibrary\packages SuperLibrary\source
  then just select SuperLibrary folder.
• Specify a pattern that matches for your delphi installation. If you don't want to use a pattern just leave it as *.dpk and unselect the packages that are not suitable for your delphi installation.
• Click Compile. Packages will be compiled and installed.

Screenshots




Download Delphi Package Installer sourcecode or binary.

Here's a little application wich shows your Delphi verison, serial number and authorization key until version 7 if i'm not mistaking.

You can get the sourcecode + bin from this link.