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Totally agree on the lure of RAD UI design and how it causes newbies to write code that is both relying on states in the UI as well as in their business model, instead of the UI reflecting states from the internal model and delivering changes to that model. As far as possible, I try to write my code without a UI, and I try to make the interfacing between the internal business logic and the UI as simple as possible, with the UI as far as possible being oblivious about why its values and settings are what they are. I often have separate reusable classes as glue between the UI and the biz objects, so that they remain isolated. The debugger is not fine when you venture past 32-bit single UI thread. The 64-bit Delphi debugger leaves so much to be desired, that it is better to do the debugging in a 32-bit version of the app. Multi-threaded debugging - combined with anonymous methods - often causes also the 32-bit debugger to stop working - such as not resuming after a break, or no longer breaking where it was supposed to. Debugging code that runs multiple identical threads is a challenge as there is no simple way to specify that you only want to debug a specific thread instance.

The code editor works for me. I still use the Wordstar keyboard shortcuts as I did in the beginning of the 80s, programming in CP/M and then the MS-DOS environment. I turn off code completion, since that slows down typing and disrupts my intention more that it helps. My fingers do the typing, while I can concentrate on the code. The form designer is ok for layout. But there is one big shortcoming with how it lures a novice programmer to make a mess of separating the GUI from business logic. I wish a more sophisticated default scheme would be introduced to handle that. The error insight function is best turned off as well, since it introduces more doubts than it really helps. Comparing code is easy with the Beyond Compare plugin. The integration with different types of code repositories could be better. The debugger is fine and with the use of FastMM memory leaks are easy to find and remove. The biggest concern for me is not the state of the IDE. Every new version introduces errors in the compilers and the RTL. Using a new version in a 24/7 application is out of the question. I wish all Embarcaderos efforts could focus on bringing out quality compilers comparable with industry standard C++ compilers and a RTL that can be trusted.

I wrote about autocompletion for TEdits before here and here. Back then I was using the SHAutoComplete API function in the Shlwapi.dll because I am a lazy basterd™. That hasn’t changed really but I also love fiddling with stuff, so some years ago, I actually added directory and general string completion to dzlib (and apparently didn’t blog about it), this time using the IAutoComplete2 interface as described in this answer on StackOverflow, which I mentioned before. Today I revisited that code and and added file and directory completion to it, in a way that also allows filtering the files with a given file mask. So the user can easily enter directories and eventually select a file: Read on in the blog post ... https://blog.dummzeuch.de/2019/04/28/autocompletion-for-tedits-revisited/

And then there are the small tools, that are (planned to be) used only for a special problem and then probably never again. It's OK, if you tightly couple UI and business logic if it makes writing them faster (true RAD). Unfortunately some of these tend to live longer than expected and functionality tends to be added later, which would require a redesign. But of course that never happens, because "it works as it is" and the new functionality is "just a very simple addition".

I may exaggerate the problem, but there is a lot of abuse of the Flat UI as the new mantra of UI design. Windows 10 is packed with crappy flat UI, and so are a lot of web UIs too. F.x. I really miss proper use of ellipsis in menus and on buttons. I really miss the use of actual buttons - i.e. something that clearly appears as clickable. IMO - Applications are running on an OS-specific platform and should adhere to the OS behavior - so that when I change my OS skin, the application will follow, and clickable elements look the same everywhere. It is called consistency and helps with guiding the user. The ideal UI is "invisible" - and that does not mean that the button element is not visible, but that the behavior is so natural, you don't have to think about it. The UI should not get in the way of what you are using it for but lead and guide you through it so that you only need to think about what you are doing, and not about how you are doing it. For me, the best kind of skinning is the type that is able to visually adapt to the OS UI settings. My least favorite skinning is elements that visually distract from the flow of a UI, or that interfere with the "normal" UI metaphor for a platform. The great thing about DelphiStyles is that if the developer using it does it right - I can select a style that is pretty close to the standard OS style.

No idea, Cortana is one of the first things I disable when I install Windows. As far as I'm concerned, Cortana is the devilish twin of Clippy.

Most of the time you write code. But sometimes you do need a form designer, and if you don't have it, things get very, very tedious. If you want to code FMX, this gets even worse. I may be biased, because I have been using it since Delphi 1 was released, but IMO, the code editor is fine. I have used many many other editors, on different platforms (DOS, OS/2, Windows, macOS, Linux), but I don't think they are much better. Especially the Delphi editor is the best to search code, to search implementation and everything else that only can be done with a dedicated editor. Other editors may have some niceties, but in my experience, they don't weigh up against the many conveniences a dedicated editor provides. I don't care about themes or languages like python or JavaScript in the Delphi editor. And the dedicated debugger in the Delphi IDE beats all others.

Revolutionary idea: If Embarcadero wanted to invest a large amount of dev effort (which translates mostly but not only into spending money) into Delphi, they could put that effort into fixing bugs in the existing IDE. Since the number of bugs seems to be growing rather than dwindling, what does that tell you about their priorities?

I guess you are a bit naive in your assumption of what it takes to get from something like VSCode to a fully featured IDE like RAD Studio or Visual Studio... Because otherwise why is there still that thing called Visual Studio that MS is putting significant resources into it if they could slap a few extensions onto VSCode?

Indeed - and DelphiStyles has shown to be a competent and reliable partner for that. Highly recommended!

If you use FixInsight on a build server (e.g. Jenkins) and import the FixInsight log files into the Jenkins warnings-ng plugin, you get a SonarQube like experience, plus the quick tests in the IDE. I'm happy with this combination.

We sure do, because this makes me cringe. Too much clutter. That said - I also hate the currently popular naked "flat UI" design philosophy which takes away most UI guidance and makes you guess if something is a link, a button, or just text - and you have to hover and/or click in the right places to find out.

The disadvantage of C/C++ for-loops is that the end condition is always evaluated, unlike Pascal's, where it is only evaluated on entry. OTOH, this can be an advantage too. The syntax (init; end condition; looping) is nice, but they should not have called it "for".