TwoDesk Delphi Blog

First off: Don’t worry, Castalia is still going strong, and I have some cool new stuff coming your way in the not-too-distant future.

The way people communicate online has changed. Years ago, technically-minded people (like the smart programmers that use Castalia) used newsgroups all the time, and that was the expected channel for both community interaction and technical support. That has changed. Newsgroups have been all but forgotten, replaced by email, online forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc…

For Castalia specifically, questions that I would call “technical support” used to be about 80% Newsgroups, 20% Email. Now it’s probably 99% Email. There hasn’t been a new post in the Castalia newsgroup in over 2 months.

So, effective immediately, I am no longer using the newsgroup as an official support channel for Castalia. The TwoDesk news server will stay online for another week, in case someone wants to archive anything old. On (or about) April 26, 2012, the TwoDesk NNTP server will be shut down.

As always, I’m committed to helping Delphi developers rock, and am constantly trying to improve the level of support I provide for customers.

If you’re interested in enterpreneurship, software business, or especially the “Micro-ISV” world, this is for you:

I’ve teamed up with my friend John, an experienced marketing executive, to create a new website/blog about the software business, especially the marketing aspect that us geeks tend to misunderstand.

Check it out at http://www.howtomarketsoftware.com.

Here are a few of the topics we’ve covered so far:

• Where should “marketing” fit in the software development cycle?
• What’s the difference between advertising and marketing?
• How do you know if your business idea is a good one?
• And more…

Could you use a little more time in the day? Castalia adds dozens of time-saving tools to the Delphi IDE.

I’ve just released Castalia 2012.1.1, a bugfix update that fixes two bugs, one of them critical:

• Fixed: Certain syntax error conditions can cause a runaway, memory-leaking, stack consuming, infinitely recursive zombie parser thread.
• Fixed: A syntax error is incorrectly identified for an array member of a constant field declaration.

Castalia users with a current subscription can download Castalia 2012.1.1 at http://subscribe.twodesk.com.

Everyone else can give it a try at http://www.twodesk.com/castalia/freetrial.html.

Castalia 2012.1 is now available, which means Delphi just got better!

This is a very exciting release. First, it includes the beta of my brand new scripting engine for Delphi. There will be a lot more blogging about this scripting engine coming up, but you early-adopter types will want to just jump in and see what you can do.

The scripting engine runs right in the Delphi IDE, and lets you write code to manipulate the contents of your Delphi editor.

It’s just a beta, and there are big plans for the future – this scripting engine is going to revolutionize the way you customize your IDE!

Castalia 2012.1 also includes several bug fixes:

• Fixed: Delphi XE2 split editor doesn’t load color settings correctly
• Fixed: Split editor in Delphi 2009 and later doesn’t copy text to the clipboard correctly
• Fixed: Access Violation in the precompiler if certain registry values are blank or don’t exist
• Fixed: “Raise” keyword not treated properly by the internal code formatter
• Fixed: Parser doesn’t allow “Object” types to have class methods or properties (Thanks to “Thaddy,” for this fix contributed to the open source Castalia Delphi Parser).
• Fixed: Navigation toolbar doesn’t recognize project namespace prefixes when opening external units
• Fixed: Syntax error with a class helper for a class identified with a fully qualified name

When you chose to use Delphi, you picked a great language with an absolutely perfect, flawless, IDE that couldn’t possibly be improved.

Right?

Wait, what’s that you’re saying?

It’s NOT perfect? It CAN be improved?

Ok, I admit, that was a lousy attention-getter to open with, but the fact is, I love Delphi, but I think the IDE can be improved to save you time and effort, and I’ve set out to improve it with Castalia for Delphi.

For example, Castalia adds some awesome advanced syntax highlighting that helps you understand code faster, whether it’s your own code, someone else’s code, or even your own code that you wrote a while ago and now it looks like someone else’s (we’ve all been there).

There’s also some great code navigation tools that let you find your way around that code super fast, without having to hunt for things.

<BillyMays>Plus, there’s more!</BillyMays>

In this video, I show a few ways that Castalia improves the Delphi code editor to save you time. It barely scratches the surface of what Castalia can do, but if you’re writing Delphi code, you WILL be able to do it faster after you watch this 8-and-a-half minute video:

Give it a try. Download a free trial at http://www.twodesk.com/castalia/freetrial.html

I know you’re a good programmer, and you NEVER copy-and-paste code.

Right? RIGHT?

But sometimes, for whatever reason, you do need to select a chunk of code in the code editor.

How do you do this? Are you a drag-the-mouse-around-and-hope-to-get-it-right kind of programmer? Or are you a hold-down-the-shift-key-and-use-the-arrow-keys kind of programmer?

Whichever you are, forget it, because you’re about to learn a much better way:

Castalia has a feature called “Selection Expansion” that lets you select a chunk of code just by pressing a shortcut key (Ctrl+W by default).

When you press Ctrl+W, Castalia automatically selects the identifier under the cursor. Pressing Ctrl+W repeatedly will continue to expand the selection by logical groups, selecting the current expression, statement, block, etc… until you get the selection you wanted (or the whole method has been selected).

Consider this example (keep reading, there’s a movie at the bottom!):

Pressing Ctrl+W repeatedly selects:

1. Left
2. FirstInd.Left
3. FirstInd.Left+FDragOfs-GutterWid
4. The entire Trunc() call
5. The entire Editor.Paragraph.FirstIndent assignment
6. All of the code in the method
7. The entire method

Selection Expansion is just one of the many ways Castalia saves Delphi programmers time and effort. Learn more (and try it out) at http://www.twodesk.com/castalia.

A little while ago, I asked a random sample of Castalia users to complete a survey. The primary purpose of this survey was to get feedback on how I can make Castalia better, and I tried to ask questions that would both tell me what I’m doing right as well as where I can improve.

One of the questions was “What is the primary benefit that you have received from using Castalia?”

90% of the respondents answered the question, and OVERWHELMINGLY, the responses used words like “productive” and “productivity.”

The thing is, “productivity” is one of those sort of late-90′s business management buzzwords that has come to mean so many things that it’s just about meaningless. So here’s my question for you: What does “productivity” mean to a Delphi developer?

I’ll start: I think that a productive programmer does three major things:

1. Writes better code faster
2. Understands code (whether his own or someone else’s) better, and faster
3. Improves old code accurately (and faster)

I’ve been working on something new for Castalia. It’s nowhere near ready for general release, but here’s a sneak preview: http://screencast.com/t/FXaoj2AcO

In case it’s not obvious what’s going on, here’s a hint: Reversing a selection is *NOT* what’s being previewed here.

Castalia 2011.4.1 is now available. This is a bugfix release that fixes the following issues:

• Fixed: Rename Method doesn’t work correctly with some nested method calls.
• Fixed: Rename Method doesn’t work in some “with” statements
• Fixed: Assertion failure in “Eliminate With” refactoring under some circumstances

The Castalia website (and the rest of twodesk.com) has a new look. Check it out at http://www.twodesk.com/castalia.