Malcolm Groves - Keep Calm and Use the Debugger
“Seriously!?!! This bozo thinks he’s going to teach me to use the Debugger? I’ve been using these tools since the beta of Turbo Pascal on CP/M, I think I know what I’m doing!”
Well, maybe you do. But in my experience, Many people use the same handful of debugging features they’ve used since they first started: Breakpoints, Step Into/Over, maybe a Watch or two. Add in enough swearing and Stack Overflow searches, and most problems throw in the towel, right?
However, it’s very possible that the necessary tool to help to you solve the problem faster, and with less swearing, is right there in the IDE already. The Delphi and C++ Builder Debuggers have a wide range of features, and in many cases people either aren’t aware of them, or don’t know quite when to use them.
So that’s what we’re going to focus on in this session. We’re going to dive deep into the Debugger features and options that maybe you haven’t used, and see how to practically use them to identify and solve problems in your code.
If you’ve every wondered what to use a Data Breakpoint for, or whether the CPU view is of any use to you if you don’t know Assembler, or what use that weird address is in the Access Violation dialog, then this is the session for you.
No 3rd party products needed, only things shipped in the box. Also, I’m assuming you already have a basic knowledge of the Debugger and that you already know how to swear. I won’t be teaching those things in the session.
Ray Konopka - Leveraging High DPI in VCL Applications
High DPI and 4K monitors are here to stay, and that’s been an ongoing saga for many developers.
Recent releases of Delphi have provided greater support for High DPI. Most notably VCL Styles architecture was significantly extended in Delphi 10.4 Sydney to support High DPI and 4K monitors. Combined with new project options and specialized image list controls, VCL Applications are now able to leverage High DPI better than ever before. This session will show you how.
Alister Christie - Turning spaghetti into … lasagna sheets?
We all do it – open a new unit and type away. Days/weeks/years later we have a long mess on unmaintainable code.
OK, maybe not you! But you have inherited it, and now you have to fix it, improve it, and maintain it.
Alister will tackle the joys of improving your code with refactoring. Warning: There’s a lot more to it than just RMC “refactor”.
This is a great topic for beginners and intermediates, and there may well be some gems for advanced programmers.
And a bonus - Alister Christie shows a project he worked on converting to High DPI as well as various other IDE tips.
Stefan Glienke - Putting a Spring in your coding step
Spring4D is an open source library with “under the hood” resources. At Delphicon 2020, Stefan’s talk was “Taking Delphi Development TO the Next Level“. It’s not as witty as “putting a spring in your coding step”, but it really does cover what Spring4D can do for you.
Stefan is the author of Spring4D, and this is your chance to find out the why, what and how of Spring4D.
Spring4D has been in the toolbox of many developers for more than a decade, providing useful building blocks you can use in your applications.
You will learn about multicast events, smart pointers, nullables and more. You probably already know about generic lists, dictionaries and other collection types from the RTL. Spring4D goes way beyond that and offers a rich set of collection types to enhance your software.
