TOPIC

An interesting challenge was presented on multiple Delphi forums recently that grabbed my interest: read in a billion rows of data, collate and sort them, and print the summaries using only pure Object Pascal. The challenge started in January by an engineer’s blog post and has been expanded to Java, Go, and even SQL! For Delphi and Free Pascal, there’s an open source project and there’s an active discussion on Discord.

The input file, which contains a billion rows as the challenge name implies, is too large to host on Github, so a small program is provided to generate the file on your own system. Then, the idea is to write your program and submit it as a pull-request to the Git repository and compare your results with others for learning–and of course bragging rights for the fastest implementation!

I’m working on my submission and I thought it would be fun to discuss various approaches and even come up with our own during the meeting.

The challenge (for Object Pascal) lasts until May, so if you want to take ideas from this meeting and submit your own entry, we’d love to hear about it at a future meeting!

PRESENTER

David Cornelius develops software with Delphi, both at his full-time job and in his own business. He also builds websites and dabbles with Linux.

DATE/TIME

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 6:00 - 8:00 PM

LOCATION

Round Table Pizza in Lake Oswego
16444 SW Boones Ferry RD
Lake Oswego, OR 97035
503-636-3350