Delphi 2009’s God-awful help

May 16th, 2009

This is straight from the “you have got to be f’ing kidding me” book. All I want to do is see if Delphi offers a ternary IF operator like in C or Java, so all I’m trying to do here is find the help for the IF statement. Obviously, I’m asking way to much, as you can see below. (click the image, then click it again on the resulting page to view it full size)

delphiconvolutedhelp

Wrong line highlighted

May 4th, 2009

After breaking on an exception, the wrong line gets highlighted in the callstack. The line before the line in red is the line that was being called. Ridiculous.

wrong-line-highlighted

Stupid editor

May 4th, 2009

If you search for a whole word, when the editor finds it, it highlights the entire word just like every other editor on the planet. But then if you start typing, the highlighted text gets UN-HIGHLIGHTED and the new text gets APPENDED, unlike EVERY OTHER EDITOR ON THE PLANET.

Try except finally

May 1st, 2009

Umm - unless I’m missing something, you can’t have a try with an except AND a finally. It’s either/or. I just don’t get that at all.

I can show you where help is, but I can’t open it

April 29th, 2009

I don’t know if this is a Delphi thing or an XP thing, but regardless, it’s pretty stupid. If you try to bring up the Help and the Help window is already open, the system is smart enough to blink the icon on the taskbar to let you know that it’s already open, but apparently not smart enough to bring the damn window forward. L-A-M-E.

Help When Help is Already Open in Delphi 2009

Delphi’s Wonderful Help System

April 26th, 2009

Look at how easy it is to tell the difference between the various overloaded methods.

delphiswonderfulhelpsystem

Absurd, isn’t it? Here is an excerpt from the DocuShare 6 API reference, which is in standard JavaDoc format, and demonstrates a much better way of displaying summary information for overloaded methods (in this case, constructors):

dsqueryconstructordocs

Delphi 2009’s Help System

April 22nd, 2009

Hey I think it’s wonderful that Delphi 2009’s help system contains an entire reference section for VB Script, something WHICH I HAVE NO USE FOR NOR WILL EVER HAVE ANY USE FOR. Plus I love waiting around for display the help window - gives me extra time to contemplate the lake across the street.

RemObjects devs are on crack

April 21st, 2009

Sorry - but if you’re a RemObjects dev, time to put down the crack pipe.

Session.Values['RemObjectsDeveloper'] := ‘CrackSmoker’;

That’s the line of code I had to add to get the stupid piece of shit server to keep a session around. Without it, the session goes away. 2 days I wasted on this crap - nothing in the docs about it at all.

Waiting for Delphi 2009 code complete

April 17th, 2009

Short video to show how excruciating this is:

waiting-for-code-complete-in-delphi-2009

The Power and Beauty of Windows

April 15th, 2009

awesometaskmanager