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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/18/22 in all areas

  1. David Schwartz

    Delphi beta testing a "premium" privilege?

    Back in the 90's I used to love beta-testing stuff. I'd get free licenses for my efforts. Companies gradually stopped doing that. They made beta testing seem like they were doing certain users a favor by giving them an early look at the code. I tried that for a little while and never felt like anybody cared about anything I reported. It seemed like what we got as "beta" code was a copy of what was sent to manufacturing because nothing I found and reported was ever fixed. With Delphi, it got to the point where I not only stopped wasting my time looking at betas, I won't use any of the .0 releases until at least one patch has been issued. The vast majority of projects I've worked on were often at least one release behind, simply because there was usually nothing added from one major release to the next that added any value that exceeded the risk of having stable code get screwed-up. Last place I was at, there was a guy there for 7 years whose main job was rebuilding everything in the latest updates, doing a tiny bit of refactoring, and running tests for months to determine if it was "safe" to upgrade to the latest Delphi Release. Another group worked with C# and they were constantly upgrading, mostly because of improvements in core parts of the language and support environment. It always seemed to get more upgrades in one release as Delphi got in the past dozen. Of course, they had a whole team of guys working on their code, which was only a fraction of the size of our code base, and much buggier. I've applied for the Delphi betas only to be able to read the "What's New" docs. It became increasingly hard to get any of that data as they started tying it to the license level (price) you had purchased. But working for companies with a dozen or two licences (mainly just Pro), we'd get a conference call with one of the techs who'd go through the entire set of slides discussing new features, and they'd bust their humps to get us the early docs, beta code, and loved it when we'd send them feedback. We got the same treatment as when I was an MVP, but we were just regular customers with a bunch of licenses. And as an MVP, I put in dozens of hours of my time and didn't even get a complimentary license for my efforts. I had to pay for it out-of-pocket just like everybody else once the one-year license I was given to use while promoting Delphi for Embt expired. Now their licensing is so aligned with their financial needs that they look more like a car company than a software company. The past few major releases add more and more stuff that's targeted at enterprise needs and continue to ignore core things that have been ignored for a decade now. I don't know why I should keep paying a license fee for something that continues to keep adding stuff I'll never use while core things that newer languages and platforms keep refining and expanding upon.
  2. Saw this today: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/premium-update-subscription-customers-invited-to-join-rad-studio-malawi-beta/ Can someone explain the rationale for putting beta versions of Delphi behind a "premium" subscription, instead of just opening it up to any subscribers who are willing to beta test Delphi? Seems like Delphi needs to find a way to get more testers, not put testing behind a paywall. But maybe I am missing something.
  3. Poesie? Well, that explains a lot.
  4. William23668

    contacts sample application does not want to run on device

    the sample work fine from this link !! ...thanks as usual
  5. I paid support for one reason only. Hopefully I'll get a patch that fixes the underlying LSP issues At their rate of repairs for two years to be sure
  6. Dave Nottage

    contacts sample application does not want to run on device

    This demo starts/works OK on my Pixel 6 Pro, which has Android 13. I'm using Delphi 11.2 with Patch 1 installed. https://github.com/Embarcadero/RADStudio11Demos/tree/main/Object Pascal/Multi-Device Samples/Device Sensors and Services/Address Book/Contacts
  7. David Champion

    Delphi beta testing a "premium" privilege?

    It's an optimisation of marketing language to sell the 'value' that is already there. Now, if Embarcadero were to involve the subscribers in the evolution of the product range and invest more money I would get involved in beta testing. And this is the wrong way round, the beta testers should be given additional time added to their subscriptions for the effort involved. Where is the ongoing public consultation with the developer/customers? Where is the open discussion about the Delphi language? Where is the open discussion about the IDE and tooling?
  8. Uwe Raabe

    How to select image size from VirtualImageList

    The TVirtualImageList can only hold images of one size, which it retrieves from a TImageCollection. That works even if the requested size is not available in the collection. In that case one image is scaled to the requested size. To have multiple sizes simultaneously you need separate TVirtualImageList instances. If you need only one size, just set the TVirtualImageList to that size.
  9. I passed the basic certification test without much trouble. I looked over the stuff in the "Master" exam and didn't even bother with it since I don't use most of the stuff that's there. Honestly, I think it's meaningless. Nobody has ever asked about it. I don't know why your family would care. Write a little program that they can relate to, they'll find it far more interesting and ask you to make changes, and you can do that and they'll be impressed. Explain that this is the exact same process programmers follow everywhere. Certification is a kind of "static knowledge" valid at the time you take the test. Stuff you don't use fades away over time. Offer to write some simple things for friends -- not games, but something they'd find useful. Something the certification tests cannot examine is how well you listen, ask questions to clarify, implement what you think was asked (based on written notes they read and approved), then demonstrate what you did while listening generously as they explain everything you "misunderstood". It's a dance of sorts, and you don't want to step on their toes while they flounder around. Belive it or not, this is an INCREDIBLY VALUABLE SKILL that will often be worth more than your programming chops. People have an idea in their head, and no matter how much effort they put into getting it out, maybe written on paper or on a text document or something else, it's rarely very complete. When you begin programming it up, you'll start to find all sorts of things they left out. When you ask them, some will stop and think and give you more details, while others will wave it off and say, "Do whatever you think is best". In my experience, this is the hardest part of building software -- not the "programming" but translating a vague idea trapped inside somebody's head into something that comes close to what they were actually thinking. It will NEVER be EXACTLY RIGHT ... our goal is to get "close enough" so the person or committee will sign-off on it. And sometimes they won't, just because. So you need to learn to document everything so you can show them that you did everything they asked and they approved your work at each step. Certification doesn't mean squat if you can't create and deliver something that someone wants or finds useful. I think that Delphi Cert is the only one I have, and I only took it b/c it was offered for free with one of the Delphi upgrades I got. Whoopee. But I've solved problems at different places I've worked that their whole team of "certified" people couldn't figure out. And boy does that piss people off! Sometimes you just can't win for losing. But that's life.
  10. Sherlock

    Regex help please..

    Given the complexity and the tendency of developers to always suggest some totally different approach , here is my completely different suggestion. You seem to have the need to validate an e-mail address before storing it. How about sending a test mail before doing that. That way you get to birds with one stone: Verify the address, and get the permission to use it... a must have in Europe.
  11. Dave Nottage

    How Fetch SMS on Android and ios

    Check this link: https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=256233 This is a link to the demo I created: https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?messageID=899142 Edit: Just realised you want it for 10.3.3. That old demo might still work, though. If not, I'll help modify it Edit 2: Also now realised you want existing messages. Probably better to use the conversations class: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Telephony.Sms.Conversations. If the code on FMX Express does not work, please indicate what errors you're having. It may be that you just need to request the READ_SMS permission.
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