DaVinci Unlimited Software

Wow, what a week. CodeRage II went great. A lot of good content and I enjoyed presenting my sessions. You can get the code, links, etc. from them here:

• Exceptional Exceptions
• Implementing Cryptography
• Class Helpers: Friend or Foe
• Delphi Robot Rage

They all went really well I thought. Unfortunately I pushed the deadline back too far on Delphi Robot Rage and my JIT Presentation didn’t happen on time. Sorry to everyone about that.

Check back often for updates (seriously), or let me know if I missed something you are looking for from my sessions.

Thanks!

The session “Leveraging What You Have: 10 Top Things Added to Delphi Since Delphi 7″ by Pawel Glowacki was one I was looking forward too. The audio and video quality was a little poor, so I skipped it to watch later when I had more time. Pawel posted his list though, with a lot of details. That is probably more valuable to me then the video session. If the video was chopped up by list item so I could jump to a feature I was unfamiliar with, that would be really cool.

There are a lot of really cool enhancements since Delphi 7. I know a lot of people were holding out on Delphi 7 because it was such a solid release. Delphi 8 was .NET only, and of questionable stability. Since then each release has gotten much better. I must say, Delphi 2007 is definitely worthy of an upgrade from Delphi 7.

So I am breaking the cardinal rule of attending a virtual developers conference: multitasking. Sure, that is one of the advantages, but at the same time, it really detracts from how much you get from the conference if you are are tying to do your job at the same time (not to mention it detracts from your job performance). Normally I would commit some time, but we are on a serious deadline right now, so I am getting it done.

As a result I am skimming many of the sessions. I’ll catch them on replay.

The last session of CodeRage ][ (now FREE!) is the Delphi Robot Rage. This is your opportunity to show off your amazing Delphi programming skills. Download D-Robots and build your robot to compete in a Death Match on the Light Plaza map against one or more robots created by other participants. There will be amazing prizes (undisclosed as of yet), but of course the best prize will be having your amazing programming skills shown off to the world.

Requirements:

1. Robot must have unsecured source (no password, or password must be provided), although the source will not be revealed until after the challenge is completed.
2. If a unique skin is not used for your robot, then a new skin may be assigned to your robot for visual identification.
3. Competition is open to everyone. No purchase necessary. Not required to be in attendance at CodeRage II to enter or win, although that is the best way to see the action!
4. Email your robot to me (delphirobotrage@davinciunltd.com), and I will reply with acknowledgment. If I don’t reply, I didn’t receive it.

Deadline for submissions: November 26th, 2007 - midnight Pacific Time

Notice: There is an incompatibility between D-Robots and some video drivers (maybe just ATI). No known work around. It does work in a virtual machine, but your frame rate will be very poor.

If you submit your robot early enough, you might get some feedback from a practice round.

Short intro video online & Partial list of prizes.

Questions? Comments?

Be sure you are registered to attend CodeRage II. This is CodeGear’s second virtual developers conference. Being virtual it is a whole lot cheaper and easier to attend. The key is to actually schedule time to watch sessions and be sure you are not working or otherwise distracted. If you are overseas that gets even more interesting.

You can always catch the replays later, but then you miss out on the live chat and Q&A session. I must admit, as a presenter it is odd being in the chat room with the attendees while you are presenting - you are both the presenter and the “peanut gallery” at the same time.

You’ll see sessions on Delphi, Ruby, Java, PHP, C++, Databases, .NET, Win32 and all the latest CodeGear tools and technologies.

I’ll be attending and presenting both. I hope to see you there, virtually of course!

I was giving out a couple boxes of old Delphi and Turbo Pascal books last night at the users group. I have this habit of leaving odd things in books though, including large sums of money, so I have taken to inspecting my books before giving them away. A lot of them had the original CD’s or 3.5″ floppies (yes, that old) that came with them. One of them did have an unexpected bonus though.

A Turbo Pascal 1.0 floppy (5.25″ even!) Notice the lack of version number, and the copyright date of 1983. It is for IBM PC & Compatibles, not CP/M. You can download the contents of the disk for free, but it is kind of cool to have one of the actual disks.