Delphi 2007 for Win32 Field Test

CodeGear is great.

Back when Borland tried to sell off the developer tools group of their company, I received a few emails from people who know I use Delphi warning me that I need to switch to something else. I wasn’t too worried then, and I am not worried at all about it now. Borland couldn’t find a buyer, so they spun off the tools group into CodeGear, and CodeGear is different.

For the past month I’ve been beta testing the next release of Delphi — Delphi 2007 for Win32. Though I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to participate in the beta testing, CodeGear has given me permission to talk about it now.

Delphi 2007 for Win32 is great — it’s exactly what I was hoping for in the next Delphi. I don’t have a lot to add that hasn’t already been blogged about by others, but I do want to give my kudos to Nick Hodges and the rest of the CodeGear team. They listened! Lots of us were screaming at Borland that their focus needed to be changed to get a Windows Vista development tool out sooner rather than later — rather than focusing on .Net first. And so they are. Delphi 2007 for Win32 is just what I need, as a Windows application developer who is not yet interested in .Net. This is Delphi’s strength, and I am glad to see CodeGear getting this taken cared of first.

Understanding why Windows doesn’t make sense.

And why it actually does, eventually.

About 10 years ago I got a call from my mom.

Mom: “Brandon, I need your help. Your brother played a trick on me and now I can’t do anything on my computer.”

Me: “What do you mean you can’t do anything?”

Mom: “The place where the programs go is gone.”

I thought for a moment. She meant the task bar.

Me: “Is there a thin line at the bottom of the screen?”

Mom: (Checks) “Yes.”

Me: “Put your mouse pointer over that line. Click and pull it up.”

Mom: “Thank you! I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to do any work.”

My Mom isn’t dumb when it comes to computers. She is an expert using a word processor and designing documents. She can type a million words per minute, and back before Windows became useful, she used Wordperfect for DOS and had a portrait-oriented monitor and people paid her good money to type in and format documents and she knew five thousand different keyboard shortcuts for doing anything without a mouse.

But when she was new to Windows 95, she was a victim of “mouse twitching” – she accidentally hid the task bar in Windows 95 just by moving the mouse the wrong way with the button held down. Suddenly, her computer was completely useless and she had to make a long distance call to Hawaii to ask someone who might know how to fix it what to do. All because somebody thought it would be cool to let a user hide away their task bar just by clicking on it and dragging it down a few pixels.

The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows, by Raymond Chen, chronicles these sorts of usability discoveries during the many years of Windows development at Microsoft. He also talks about why Windows is designed the way it is, from the inside-out. If you’re a developer, like me, who has to design software that people interact with, and frequently curse oddities in the Windows API, this book is something you should read. He explains why you have to click Start to turn off your computer, what a dumb idea it was to ask a user if they want to keep a “newer file” when installing a driver (even I never knew how to answer that one)… stuff like that. It belongs on your shelf next to Joel on Software.

Global Hot Air: The Absurdity of Anthropogenic Climate Change

It seems laughable that in this stretch of record-low temperatures and ice accumulation that the media is bombarding us with global warming fear mongering. But alas, the crisp weather hasn’t seemed to reach the socialists behind the latest “international” report claiming that the United States is destroying the world with SUVs.

The only question I have is if Anthropogenic Global Warming will become a footnote in history like the Global Cooling theory or eugenics BEFORE these anti-capitalists get their laws and treaties passed.

Some links for your perusal:

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

“As Lindzen said many years ago: “the consensus was reached before the research had even begun.” Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.”

The Real Deal?

“Dr. Shariv’s digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence — only speculation — that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change– the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming — is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC’s own findings, man’s role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth.”

Climate Change’s Carnival Atmosphere

“Moreover, NASA’s own data indicate that there appears to be no significant change in temperature trend since the early 20th century. No doubt this is why Hansen and his co-authors admit in their study that the time period they considered for their temperature analysis (1990-2006) is “relatively short,” rendering it “difficult to establish the reasons” for this warming.”

The Supreme Court, free speech, and McCain

The US Supreme Court is going to hear a campaign finance case. The McCain-Feingold law is one of the most free-speech-infringing pieces of legislation ever to come out of Congress, telling Americans what they can and can’t say about politicians during election periods. A weak Republican congress, and a president who forgot his veto pen, all assumed the “bad parts” would be struck down by the Supreme Court. That didn’t happen in 2003, but maybe this time it will. Let’s hope so.

And, if you’re a Republican voting in a primary, remember that McCain doesn’t think Americans should have the right to pool their resources during election time to support politicians and issues, and oppose politicians and issues, without restrictive guidelines that he sets.