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Australian Delphi User Group
and
RoboCup Junior Australia
The Australian Delphi User Group (ADUG) aims to promote and improve the professional use of Delphi and related products and services, in the Australian developer community. ADUG is a forum for activities and information that relate to Delphi.
ADUG supports the core aims of RoboCub Junior, and as part of our involvement, we would like to introduce Delphi to the future crop of scientists, engineers and technologists that we expect to emerge from this competition. These are the primary occupations of many of our members, who find Delphi the ideal tool for development of incidental applications. Delphi is not just a platform for part-time developers: there is a viable community doing significant development on the platform. This demonstrates the breadth of the product.
What does Delphi offer the future technologist?
You do not have to be an Expert
From its earliest days as Borland Turbo Pascal the Delphi family has enabled a wide range of software developers to make effective use of the potential of the computer without having to worry about the underlying technology. For over two decades Turbo Pascal/Delphi has allowed computer users to easily acquire the skills required to become software developers that can build applications with all the functionality that they dream of and more. From its very beginning Delphi has pioneered the support for various relational database products and the creation of data processing forms that can be set up in an easy to use Interactive Development Environment (IDE) that also provides built-in debugging and other tools to make life easy for the developer.
You can be an Expert
But the ease with which you can start to develop in Delphi does not place limitations on what can be achieved with Delphi. Delphi is based on a sophisticated object-oriented programming language with an intelligent and lightning fast single pass compiler. Delphi's linker can operate in a number of modes: to produce either compact executables that do not require run-time environments; or packaged libraries that allow multiple applications to share code. The IDE and its associated tools help in the management of very large code bases, and both the platform, and the language, encourage and support code reuse on multiple levels. Wizards will get you started with various types of projects if you want to or you can start your projects completely from scratch to work close to the metal.
As your knowledge grows, you can work at any level of understanding. It is relatively simple to build Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) with a cutting edge look and feel, to deal with the largest and smallest databases, to use and customise communication protocols, to access Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) as if they were written in Delphi, to create Web Pages and Applications, to create Web Servers and Services and clients for them, to build multi-threaded applications, and much more. Most of this can be accomplished via the supplied drag and drop components with as little, or as much, code as you want or need. As an added benefit, in most cases, the actual source code used to wrap these complexities and hide them from most developers is provided. Thus you can research how it was done and if you want something slightly different, you can create your own implementation.
Programming techniques
Delphi, with its Object Pascal notation, has always been an ideal platform for the budding programmer. That is no surprise, because in 1971 Professor Niklaus Wirth conceived Pascal, Delphi's direct ancestor, as a vehicle for teaching good programming techniques. Thanks to Delphi and other compilers, Pascal has grown to become the basis for many a practical software system. (For example the popular application Skype is written in Delphi.) The original simple and consistent design continues to the present. Delphi has recently been accepted by the British Education system as a platform approved for A-Level Computer Science courses. See:
http://theregister.co.uk/2010/05/12/aqa_c_php/
How do I get Delphi?
You could Buy It
In the beginning, Turbo was the cheapest, fastest and most developer-friendly compiler around, and with earlier Delphi versions the "Standard" version of the product was very competitive. With increasing competition Delphi is now offered in several "levels" and even the entry point ("Professional") is now possibly beyond the reach of the hobbyist or student because of the advanced functionality already available at this level. Once you decide to commercialise your product, this is not such a problem but it may stop some people from even getting a first look.
Educational institutions should approach Embarcadero, the current owners of Delphi, for special Academic Licenses and Pricing.
Open Source Lazarus and Free Pascal
As free alternatives to Delphi, Free Pascal and Lazarus go hand in hand: Free Pascal is an Open Source compiler for Pascal and Object Pascal; and Lazarus is an Open Source IDE that uses the Free Pascal compiler. Lazarus has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that looks similar to Delphi 7, a popular version still being used by many developers.
Lazarus/Free Pascal provides for compilation on several platforms: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Apple Mac OS X. The relevant links for these two products are:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/
Lazarus is available at the download site:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/
Free distributions of Delphi
Over the years, limited free editions of Delphi have been made available as introductory platforms. The most recent of these are the "Turbo Explorer" versions of 2006. These can even be used for commercial development, see:
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/33659
These offer a restricted functionality in terms of expandability. ADUG has made a number of these discs available to the RoboCup Junior organisers together with the required activation codes. Do not be put off by the 2006 date or the limitation. While this version is missing some of the latest functionality, and has limitations that are mostly about not being able to access the wide range of third party components, many of our members are still actively programming in older versions of Delphi.
You can experience the feel of Delphi and develop and sell packaged applications. You can also count on the fact that anything you do develop in Turbo Delphi Explorer, will be able to be used if and when you eventually purchase a commercial version, no matter how far into the future that may be. For example, Delphi 2010 can still import and upgrade Delphi 1 projects from 1995.
I have Delphi - What now?
Getting started in Delphi is sometimes a little daunting and while there are many demonstrations and examples delivered with the product, mentoring from someone who has been there is always useful.
If you have Delphi or have managed to obtain a copy of the free distribution Turbo Delphi Explorer but would like help in getting started, you can register at:
http://services.adug.org.au/cgi-bin/ADUGWebServices.exe?events?1126
and be advised if ADUG runs a special "Introduction to Delphi" session in your area. These sessions will be arranged where there is sufficient demand
A starting point available from the web can be found at:
http://pascalprogramming.byethost15.com/index.php
Also, the following site, by well-known Delphi author, Marco Cantu, has links to downloadable tutorials in PDF format:
http://www.marcocantu.com/epascal/
