Oregon Delphi User Group

This month’s focus will be on using AI as a professional developer and what we might want to do with a newly acquired domain, pnwdelphi.org.

No specific agenda tonight except to check out the new location and discuss recent advances in software development (or not).

Homer Jones will show the code for a custom FTP server, the client application that uses it, and the installation script to get this all set up for the end user.

Delphi 12.3 was released last week. Even though it’s a “dot release” with many bug fixes it also has an important new feature: 64-bit IDE! Finally, right?

In October of 2023, the concepts of building RAD Server modules were introduced with the promise of a more advanced topic “soon”. Well, next month, we will finally dive into the deep end but this month a refresh of that introductory topic will be shared along with a quick database demo that produces a JSON list of customers. Additionally, a quick show-and-tell of an Android app written with the popular JavaScript framework, React Native will demonstrate how the JSON data produced is used.

Let’s talk about plans and tech trends for this new year.

For the last 10 years, a set of programming challenges has been produced on a daily basis from the beginning of December until Christmas. It is called Advent of Code, a name derived from the “Advent Calendars” popular this time of year where kids open a daily tab on a wall-hung calendar to reveal a surprise as they count down the days until Christmas.

Tonight we’ll look at a batch script that calls three command-line utilities which perform a lot of tedious work of migrating legacy Delphi 5 programs to compile under Delphi 12. The old code base uses the BDE and a lot of custom components; the new code uses FireDAC and Raize Controls and Quantumn Grid from DevExpress–a huge jump in functionality and improvement in user interface!

This month will be a light touch on a few of the recent features added to Delphi 12, including AI integration, Split Editor, Focus Mode, and WebStencils.

This month, we’ll meet at Gene and Sue’s home for authentic home-made pizza! They have a new address and would like a head-count, so watch your email and RSVP to that. If you want to attend, join our Groups.io mailing list and I’ll make sure you get an invite.