Delphi has come a long ways since it was first released in 1995. It now compiles 32-bit or 64-bit, still creates console or Windows applications but now also can create Android and iOS apps if you have the FireMonkey library and cross-platform tools, you can create Android and iOS apps.

As an independent software developer, I make my living writing scripts and applications for others. In order to maximize my opportunities, I need to be a master of many environments. Since much of my career has involved Windows applications, I am spending quite a bit of effort in other areas.

Having worked in Delphi for many years, I've seen the development tool and it's RTL evolve significantly, yet remain resilient in backwards compatibility. Early on, to prevent your application from running multiple times, there were generally two different approaches:

1. Search for the name of your app's main form by name, or
2. Search for a "mutex" created by your app.

Why is it that when companies have a good thing, they have to go mess it up by changing its design? I've seen this in many different industries but since change happens so much more quickly in software, I seem to be annoyed much more often with changes in user interface.

Programmers can be grouped into two broad categories: 1) Career Developers, and 2) Passionate Technologists. Career Developers will pick a language and a job and be very good at what they do, produce excellent work for their employer, and live happily ever after.

A friend of mine runs a business selling a Windows application for a niche market. Of course he has a web site with lots of information and a way to download a trial of his software and then pay and register it. Since he's a technical person, likes writing code, likes to keep overhead low, and his needs are fairly simple, he wrote the registration program himself. He's most fluent in Delphi so it was natural to write the registration program in Delphi--an old, but very functional Delphi 2007.

Some of my blog entries are just to remind myself how to do things later--and on several occasions they've been useful in that regard. I hope they are also useful to others that may encounter similar struggles. This is another one of those articles which I will likely refer back to at some point.

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.