corneliusdavid

Interesting. Thanks for letting us all know what happened.

I was going to say, look in your "public documents" folder under Embarcadero\Studio\FireDAC (e.g. C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\FireDAC) to see if there are backups of the connection definitions. But then I re-read your question and you said the .ini file is unchanged. I guess I'd look in the Windows registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\FireDAC and make sure those paths and filenames look proper.

@JohnLM Cool website--interesting graphs!

Many people post their code solutions on Github to share and discuss with others; some include everything, even the input files and the instructions for the puzzle. This was a reminder on the Reddit site (where a lot of solutions are posted) not to include the instructions and input data. There are several different sets of input files and they generate different numbers; you're not supposed to share the input file generated for your unique login to AoC. When you submit a correct answer to the first puzzle for a particular day, you get revealed a second puzzle for that day (there are only two per day). You don't see it until you correctly answer the first part--and the second one is always some twist to the first puzzle and uses the same input file. If you don't see any of them, then you haven't submitted any correct answers. You don't have to be at the website at a particular time but they aren't revealed ahead of the day for the puzzle.

I've been going slow, too (busy). I was stuck on Day 04 for quite awhile, thought I had it late last night and submitted an answer--but it was too low. I finally decided to look at some of the other answers on Reddit and found I had been making it way too hard on myself--nearly every other answer (no matter the language) approached it in a similar way and much simpler than my attempt. I haven't had time yet to redo my program (nor the heart to throw away all that work--even though it's wrong). One thing I read on Reddit was a big note that reminded people that if you post your answer anywhere online, DO NOT post your input file! There are different input files for different users on Advent of Code and your input should not be shared with anyone else--solutions should work regardless of the input file and will have different answers. Also, don't post the puzzle text input (I need to go remove the texts from my repositories).

Oh, yeah, you mentioned this in the first post and I just skipped right over that--you're right, it'll be something specific about these two datasource components. So, then what is different about these datasources from all the rest? Are they hooked to a different type of dataset or have any other properties set uniquely? Does changing the creation order in the DFM have any effect?

Another one is HelpScribble, a tool I've used for over a decade.

I think I have seen this but it's been a while, like maybe in an older version of Delphi? In what version is this happening? It may be that while Delphi is loading the DFM, it can't find the source for the component so it thinks it's an invalid or old property and removes it--somewhat like loading a form that has been descended from a custom base form but the base form is not part of the project. You do mention descendants, so maybe include all the ancestor frames in the project if they aren't already?

There are two puzzles each day, the second is not revealed until you submit a correct answer for the first. Yes, this works for these simple cases but what if the first number is higher than the second (making you think it's decreasing), but all the rest of the numbers after that are increasing? Well, it's an invalid row and you throw it out, right? What if there was a modification to that rule where in some cases you wouldn't throw that row out? It would change how you need determine increasing/decreasing.

The tricky part is to figure out whether the levels are increasing or decreasing for a particular line--this determination has a real twist in part 2. Have fun!

Yeah, it trains you to modularize your solution to accommodate changes to the requirements, a real-world occurrence that programmers must continually face.

It's Flow Control Highlighting. It indicates that execution flow leaves the block or function at that point. In this case, it's not terribly useful as the "return" statement is at the end of the function but if you had a switch statement with several cases and some of them returned from the function, those flow-control markers would give a visual cue about where the code goes. You control this in Tools > Options > Editor > Color > Structural Highlighting.

That was a very fun and informative video! Thanks for posting!

Ah yes--I often forget to add those. Thanks for the reminder--done.

I've solved the first few days of puzzles, written as D12 console apps. My answers are on Github. I'm skipping some that I'm either not sure how to tackle or will take too much time away from my daily tasks--like Day 4, not really sure how to search a matrix of characters for patterns in every direction.