This post is somewhat of a conterpoint to Why we didn’t convert to .Net. And perhaps we never will… I would have writen a post earlier, but I have spent most of the last week writing a tender proposal. The tender was for a claims management application with 70 users scattered across the country. My proposal was for a web application, using asp.net mvc and writen in c#.
My main objection to the WoW post is not his (or her) conclusion, but the subtext that .net has nothing to offer. Delphi programmers (or at least the vocal ones hanging out in non-technical) seem to have a strong view on what "real' programming is, and .net fails on several points (not native code, garbage collected, large installation footprint) for these guys. My view is that "real" programming is solving problems, and using the best tools for the job. In some cases that is delphi, but increasingly for me it is c#.
I haven't suddenly jumped ship, I reevaluated our (Catalyst's) needs earlier this year. Two things came out of that; most of our futher development will be in web apps, and .net is a better fit for us.
My and Catalyst's needs are not univeral. I don't pretend that my reason for moving apply to everybody. None the less, here are my reasons for moving:
Performance:
When it comes to performance, my most important benchmark is developer time. As a (mostly) solo developer, I don't have enough time to do all the things that I want. Anything that improves my productivity is good. I find c# faster to develop in.
From an runtime speed, it's hard to find good benchmarks. My feeling is that Delphi is faster, but not enough to make a noticable difference in my kind of apps. .net is let down by the winforms implimentation which (the last time I used it) had painfully slow drawing. The rest of it is plenty fast enough.
Language features:
Garbage collection and Linq. You ever love them or hate them. I love them. Delphi has mostly caught up with the other big ticket items but not these.
The standard library is another .net plus. It may have an enormous footprint but it's certainly extensive.
Staffing:
I work in a small city. Finding delphi developers here is nearly impossible. I only know of dev company using delphi and, for historical reasons, I can't use them.
.net developers is a different story. I could throw a stone out the window and hit one (seriously, they're just across the road).
Finally
I am not abandoning delphi completely, I have a number of delphi apps to maintain so I will be using it for a while yet. .net is not a silve bullet either. For web apps I find .net better, but for desktop apps it's pretty much even.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
D2010 suppport in tiOPF
tiOPF is a Object Persistence Framework. That is, it is a framework based around saving your objects to, and loading them from, databases and/or flat files.
Delphi 2010 support has now been added to the latest repository version.
No release has been made as of yet, so you need to to retrieve it from the subversion repository. See here for instructions.
Notes
Links
Delphi 2010 support has now been added to the latest repository version.
No release has been made as of yet, so you need to to retrieve it from the subversion repository. See here for instructions.
Notes
- Running unit tests requires copying the xdom.pas unit from Delphi 2009as this is no longer supplied
- There are a large number of failures with BDE paradox tests. I haven't investigated this yetas no-one uses paradox any more
- tiVirtualTree and related components have been removed from the gui controls as they don't work under D2009/D2010.
- Unicode is still not supported :(
Links
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
C# for the iPhone: Monotouch released
Novell's MonoTouch product has been released. MonoTouch is mono for the iPhone.
This allows compiling .net applications to native code and deploying to the iPhone.
There are akready 200 apps in the app store using Mono via Unity so the underlying technology is fairly well tested. MonoTouch adds Cocoa support and integration into MonoDevelop.
MonoTouch has 2 main issues for some users, the $399US price point, and the logo.
The price has disappointed a number of beta testers and the logo is the second worst I have seen recently (worst is the Toastmasters goatse).
This allows compiling .net applications to native code and deploying to the iPhone.
There are akready 200 apps in the app store using Mono via Unity so the underlying technology is fairly well tested. MonoTouch adds Cocoa support and integration into MonoDevelop.
MonoTouch has 2 main issues for some users, the $399US price point, and the logo.
The price has disappointed a number of beta testers and the logo is the second worst I have seen recently (worst is the Toastmasters goatse).
Friday, August 28, 2009
When you install Delphi 2010, put it in a virtual machine
I recently compared the performance of virtual machines with the real hardware. The figures were suprisingly good.
Shortly after that, disaster struck. My laptop wouldn't turn on. It took Dell 2 weeks to fix, replacing the motherboard and the video card.
If I had delphi installed directly, I would have had 2 weeks of very limited productivity. As it was, I ripped the hard drive out, stuck it in a usb caddy and continued working on another machine. I was back up to speed the next day.
Edit: It didn't take a full day to get productive again, I did other work until it became apparent that it would be a while before my computer was fixed. It only took about 30 minutes to transfer the data over and get going.
If it had been a hard drive problem, I would have restored the latest vm backup off a dvd, pulled the latest changes from the version control or the source backup and been back up to speed with limited data loss.
I get a new laptop next month. Installing delphi is going to be as easy as installing vmware and copying the vm files over. 30 minutes work, most of which is surfing the internet waiting for the files to copy. The last time I actually had to install Delphi, it took hours.
There are other advantages as well, my development backups fit on a single dual layer dvd, I get to run and test on multiple OSs and disaster recovery plan is much shorter.
So make Delphi 2010 your starting point. Download Virtual Box, VMWare Workstation ($$$) or Virtual PC and use that for development. If you are running Windows 7, you could look into Windows XP Mode and use that.
Shortly after that, disaster struck. My laptop wouldn't turn on. It took Dell 2 weeks to fix, replacing the motherboard and the video card.
If I had delphi installed directly, I would have had 2 weeks of very limited productivity. As it was, I ripped the hard drive out, stuck it in a usb caddy and continued working on another machine. I was back up to speed the next day.
Edit: It didn't take a full day to get productive again, I did other work until it became apparent that it would be a while before my computer was fixed. It only took about 30 minutes to transfer the data over and get going.
If it had been a hard drive problem, I would have restored the latest vm backup off a dvd, pulled the latest changes from the version control or the source backup and been back up to speed with limited data loss.
I get a new laptop next month. Installing delphi is going to be as easy as installing vmware and copying the vm files over. 30 minutes work, most of which is surfing the internet waiting for the files to copy. The last time I actually had to install Delphi, it took hours.
There are other advantages as well, my development backups fit on a single dual layer dvd, I get to run and test on multiple OSs and disaster recovery plan is much shorter.
So make Delphi 2010 your starting point. Download Virtual Box, VMWare Workstation ($$$) or Virtual PC and use that for development. If you are running Windows 7, you could look into Windows XP Mode and use that.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Changing Excel query connection strings
We use Excel and database queries extensively for reporting purposes. It's quick and easy to set-up, and provides reports that our clients can manipulate.
However I have recently run into a rather painful excel quirk with ODBC connections: Excel stores the database connection string internally. Even if you change the ODBC connection on the computer, excel still uses the original connection from when the query was created.
This bit us when moving the reports to a different machine. Despite having the same ODBC connection set up, excel wouldn't refresh the query and gave the error "[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]SQL Server does not exist or access denied."
Aside
A similar problem can happen if you update the database from sql server 2000 to sql server 2005 or 2008. In that case you may get the error "[Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]User 'DOMAIN\username' does not have permission to run DBCC TRACEON." In that case, you need to alter the connection string to change "APP=Microsoft® Query" to something else. Apparently MS hard coded a check for "Microsoft® Query" in sql server which then runs DBCC TRACEON for no apparent reason. I suggest "APP=WTFWYT"
Changing one query
(from here)
"Open the worksheet and place the cursor on a cell within the cell range of
the query. Press Alt-F11 to open the VBEditor. Press Ctrl-G to open the
Intermediate window. Type the command: ? ActiveCell.QueryTable.Connection.
The embedded connection string will be echoed back to the screen. Put double
quotes around the string and update the connection information with the new
server info. Move the cursor to the beginning of the connection string and
insert the following in front of the string:
ActiveCell.QueryTable.Connection =
"
Changing multiple queries in a spreadsheet
(modified from here)
You need to create the following macro (change connection string to suit, see above) and run it in each spreadsheet requiring change. (See the steps below). Once the macro has run successfully, delete it before saving the spreadsheet.
Sub ChangeConnections()
Dim sh As Worksheet, qy As QueryTable
For Each ws In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
For Each qy In ws.QueryTables
qy.Connection = "..."
On Error Resume Next
qy.Refresh
If Err.Number <> 0 Then MsgBox "Problem refreshing QueryTable: " & Err.Description
Next qy
Next ws
End Sub
Getting the new connection string
The easiest way to find the new connections string is to create a new query and do the ?ActiveCell.QueryTable.Connection trick.
However I have recently run into a rather painful excel quirk with ODBC connections: Excel stores the database connection string internally. Even if you change the ODBC connection on the computer, excel still uses the original connection from when the query was created.
This bit us when moving the reports to a different machine. Despite having the same ODBC connection set up, excel wouldn't refresh the query and gave the error "[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]SQL Server does not exist or access denied."
Aside
A similar problem can happen if you update the database from sql server 2000 to sql server 2005 or 2008. In that case you may get the error "[Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]User 'DOMAIN\username' does not have permission to run DBCC TRACEON." In that case, you need to alter the connection string to change "APP=Microsoft® Query" to something else. Apparently MS hard coded a check for "Microsoft® Query" in sql server which then runs DBCC TRACEON for no apparent reason. I suggest "APP=WTFWYT"
Changing one query
(from here)
"Open the worksheet and place the cursor on a cell within the cell range of
the query. Press Alt-F11 to open the VBEditor. Press Ctrl-G to open the
Intermediate window. Type the command: ? ActiveCell.QueryTable.Connection.
The embedded connection string will be echoed back to the screen. Put double
quotes around the string and update the connection information with the new
server info. Move the cursor to the beginning of the connection string and
insert the following in front of the string:
ActiveCell.QueryTable.Connection =
"
Changing multiple queries in a spreadsheet
(modified from here)
You need to create the following macro (change connection string to suit, see above) and run it in each spreadsheet requiring change. (See the steps below). Once the macro has run successfully, delete it before saving the spreadsheet.
Sub ChangeConnections()
Dim sh As Worksheet, qy As QueryTable
For Each ws In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
For Each qy In ws.QueryTables
qy.Connection = "..."
On Error Resume Next
qy.Refresh
If Err.Number <> 0 Then MsgBox "Problem refreshing QueryTable: " & Err.Description
Next qy
Next ws
End Sub
Getting the new connection string
The easiest way to find the new connections string is to create a new query and do the ?ActiveCell.QueryTable.Connection trick.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Windows Performance Index - VMware workstation v Virtual Box
Virtual Box 3 has been released. I haven't used previous versions of VB, but it has a good rep. Version 3 now supports 3d acceleration. I have been wanting to use Aero and Glass in my virtual machines so that I could develop Vista specific applications so I gave it a try.
First the bad news, VB doesn't support enough 3d features to run Aero (neither does VMware). I did discover a work around though, connect to your virtual machine using Remote Desktop Connection from a Vista machine, turn all graphics options to high and volia.
While I had VB installed, I did a quick and dirty comparision with VMware workstation using Windows Performance Index. Take these results with a grain of salt, I didn't spend much time playing with the setup and tweaking. I couldn't get dual core to work on VB, it just blue-screened, and I didn't have the time to spend sorting it out.
Windows Performance Index
The memory figures are surprising, I am not sure if the VB figures of 5.9 are real or just a sign of something wrong somewhere. Draw your own conclusions on that.
VB is slower in hard drive, but otherwise up with the play processor wise. Getting dual core working would probably give similar processor figures to VMware dual core.
I was impressed with how well VMware matches up to the host system. While VB doesn't seem to be quite there yet, it is still doing pretty well, and you can't beat the price.
First the bad news, VB doesn't support enough 3d features to run Aero (neither does VMware). I did discover a work around though, connect to your virtual machine using Remote Desktop Connection from a Vista machine, turn all graphics options to high and volia.
While I had VB installed, I did a quick and dirty comparision with VMware workstation using Windows Performance Index. Take these results with a grain of salt, I didn't spend much time playing with the setup and tweaking. I couldn't get dual core to work on VB, it just blue-screened, and I didn't have the time to spend sorting it out.
Windows Performance Index
| Host | VMware Single proc | VMware Dual proc | Virtual Box Single Proc | |
| Processor | 5.4 | 4.4 | 5.2 | 4.4 |
| Memory | 5.1 | 4.9 | 5.2 | 5.9 |
| Primary Hard disk | 5.4 | 5.3 | 5.4 | 4.7 |
The memory figures are surprising, I am not sure if the VB figures of 5.9 are real or just a sign of something wrong somewhere. Draw your own conclusions on that.
VB is slower in hard drive, but otherwise up with the play processor wise. Getting dual core working would probably give similar processor figures to VMware dual core.
I was impressed with how well VMware matches up to the host system. While VB doesn't seem to be quite there yet, it is still doing pretty well, and you can't beat the price.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
iPhone programming might be getting a whole lot easier
The mono project has announced MonoTouch. MonoTouch is Mono for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Applications writen with MonoTouch work and non-jailbroken phones, and can be submitted to the app store.
See Miguel's blog for additional details. According to the comments, a beta should be released in August.
Time to start brushing up my C# skills.
See Miguel's blog for additional details. According to the comments, a beta should be released in August.
Time to start brushing up my C# skills.
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