Prestwood IT Newsletter Feb 2010 Issue - Delphi Edition
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February 2010 - Delphi Edition (766 of 4,998 subscribers receive this group's content.)
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Year 12 Issue 2
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Your full service technology partner!
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Expert guidance from working professionals!
IT Water-Cooler for Power-Users topic:
Windows GREP - Great Tool by Wes Peterson
You know (or think) the file is out there. You have a pretty good idea about one or two things that are (or ought) to be in it. Find it fast with Windows GREP.
Role-Based Tech Talk topic:
Crash, Bomb, Hang, and Deadlock by Scott Wehrly
This article explores and defines the following terms: crash, bomb, hang, deadlock, exception, fatal error, and blue screen of death.
Off Shoring topic:
Off-shoring: You CAN fight back! by Wes Peterson
Are you fed up with calling a company and finding yourself speaking to somebody in a foreign country?
I am, and I've just learned of an effective way to fight back, help return jobs to America, and keep them here.
The best part? We don't have to wait for government to do a thing.
OOP topic (classic post):
A 10 Minute Your First Delphi Class Quick Start by Mike Prestwood
Beginners example of creating and using a class. Early versions of Delphi use the standard OO private, protected, and public visibility specifiers plus add published for RTTI info. Later versions of Delphi add strict private and strict protected for a true OO implementation.
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Monthly Delphi Lesson
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OOP Topic:
Code Snippet of the Month
Delphi uses a special property keyword to both get and set the values of properties. The read and write keywords are used to get and set the value of the property directly or through an accessor method. For a read-only property, leave out the write portion of the declaration.
You can give properties any visibility you wish (private, protected, etc). It is common in Delphi to start member fields with "F" ("FName" in our example) and drop the "F" with properties that manage member fields ("Name" in our example).
TCyborg = class(TObject)
private
FCName: String;
public
property CyborgName: String read FCName write FCName;
end;
OOP Topic:
The Strict specifier tightens up the scope for private and protected. With Strict Private, members within a class are visible ONLY within the class declared and Strict Protected are visible only within the class declared and descendent classes. Without strict, private and protected members can also be seen by all classes declared in the same unit (friendly classes). The Strict specifier was introduced with Delphi for .Net preview in Delphi 7 in an update to the .Net compiler preview and with Win32 in Delphi 2005 to fully comply with the .NET CLS. Delphi's traditional private specifier maps to the CLR's assembly visibility and the protected specifier maps to the CLR's assembly or family visibility.
Delphi for Win32 Topic:
Resource Link of the Month: Book: Delphi 2007 Handbook
Marco Cantu's previous Delphi Books have long been a staple in my personal library, and I expect this new one will live up to Cantu's fine reputation.
Marco's Delphi 5 books were watersheds in my Delphi career, and I'm eager for my copy of this new one to arrive.
Delphi for Win32 Topic:
Question: Can I call a DotNet DLL from my Delphi Win32 application? For example, with Delphi 7 or Delphi 2010?
Answer: It's not easy because the .NET RTL resides in a different process. You can wrap up the DotNet DLL into an ActiveX control and call it or have both your app and the DotNet DLL write to the registry, a file, etc. By the way, you CAN wrap up a Win32 DLL in a DotNet DLL and call it from DotNet.
Using Data Topic:
Tip of the Month
Before adding many new entries to a TStringList, set its Sorted property to false. Add all your entries. Finally, set the Sorted property back to True (if desired).
Sorting is expensive, in terms of macnine cycles. By leaving the Sorted property set to True, you force the TStingList to re-sort itself after each entry. This can significantly slow things down.
This applies to TStrings, as well, and all components that have a TStrings property, like TListBox, etc.
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