I'm a long time Delphi user and have taken advantage of the Object Repository quite a bit. It's really handy to take a unit or project that might be useful somewhere else but in a slightly different form and add it to the repository. Later, when you need to use that bit of code, you can select it from the repository right from within Delphi and it will make a copy of that code in your new project.

I've been spending a lot of my spare time with RemObjects products (mostly Oxygene and Hydra) over the last several months and haven't kept up my blog on those subjects like I intended. But another distraction is taking an increasing interest as more of a fun hobby than a dire need that will make me money.

I recently watched most of a dotnetConf, a virtual conference on .NET hosted by Microsoft. All the sessions were recorded and there's a lot of good and relevant content.

I was programming Win32 apps in Delphi while listening and I felt myself yearning for the cool technologies they were discussing. Yeah, Delphi has grown up a bit, but it's no longer the leader, it's following and getting further and further behind the rest of the development community.

Several months ago, I posted a question about developer tools and felt I was at crossroads of sorts. The choice to move away from what is familiar is never easy, but I felt stronger about taking a hard look at the future of how I would approach software than I had in the past.

When I was in college heading for a degree in Computer Science, I wondered why I needed History or Psychology or English or Art. Hadn't I had enough of that in high school? Why couldn't I just take fun stuff like Assembly Language or Advanced Data Structures? My parents tried to tell me about well-rounded education, how important professional communication is, and the benefits of knowing about the world around me, but it was hard for me to put much more than the minimal effort required to get the grades in those "non-essential" classes.

I've used Pascal-based compilers for a long time. Similar to many others like me, I started with Turbo Pascal 3 in the 80s, embraced object-oriented extensions in Borland Pascal, attempted to understand OWL but quickly moved to Delphi when it was released, and now churn out blazing database applications on the latest Windows operating systems using internet technologies, advanced reporting tools, and multiple third-party component sets. Sure, I've dabbled in other languages such as C/C++, Visual Basic, .NET with C#, and some scripting languages, but Delphi has been the bulk of my experience for the past 17 years or so.

My blog about HTML5 Builder has been elementary and positive so far. But I've had problems--I just haven't mentioned them yet. Well, it's time to do that before going further. I'm using the product on two different machines and am having two different experiences.

While still working with a PHP web server application, let's create a simple component, install it, and modify the Hello World app to use it.

The first application I'll create will be similar to sample ones I had tried in RadPHP. They were simple PHP tutorials and they worked--somewhat. I had some issues, but don't remember whether it was getting all the right libraries in the right place or whether it worked from some locations or browsers or what. In any case, I'm hoping HTML5 Builder will make the process a little smoother.

It's been a year since my last blog entry and while I've been busy writing Windows applications with Delphi, I've kept an eye on web technologies. I've done some PHP in the past and had purchased RadPHP XE but didn't upgrade to the XE2 version because there were practically no new features and the documentation, which was pitiful, was not improved one bit--in fact it was still labeled XE!