Contracts Part V : The Delphi way

Yamikuronue

@lucas1 I don't care, I'm just poking fun at your grammar.

lucas1

@Yamikuronue Okay just spotted it. I used to write everything by hand so I kinda abuse the ability to edit.

Tsaukpaetra

@lucas1 said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

@Yamikuronue Okay just spotted it. I used to write everything by hand so I kinda abuse the ability to edit.

Yeah. Aren't pencils great?

Had an "erasable pen" once. It was awesome, except it bled almost more than a poorly-driven fountain pen.

I'm glad I don't need to manually scribe things anymore...

lucas1

@Tsaukpaetra I had one of those invisible ink pens. You could write in purple and then use the other side of the pen to "rub it out".

Wish life was that simple now :D

ScholRLEA

Two more quick questions about the editor: first, does it resemble a Smalltalk Object Browser at all?

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Second, can you view the code generated by the tool after it combines the var declarations and the begin .. end; blocks?

lucas1

@ScholRLEA nope neither. It is a custom delphi app.

so it has a regular Windows border, and then a Win8 style tiles (I assume this is to make it more modern).

ScholRLEA

OK, some code questions: first, do all statements except end require a semi-colon (the trailing end of a conditional block doesn't require one, and the final block of a program would have a period instead)? Second, do you actually have to add the var and procedure parts, or does it simply insert those for you? Third, how do you define the parameter list? Fourth, does it allow to add either function or type declarations? Finally, does it allow nested procedures or functions?

lucas1

@ScholRLEA said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

Second, can you view the code generated by the tool after it combines the var declarations and the begin .. end; blocks?

No. But it has a syntax checker which can syntax check all custom code on a form, so what I think it is doing is concating al the code into something that would be the equivalent of a WinForm in delphi.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA No not all statements require a semicolon. But reading about delphi over the last few weeks and how it works that the semi-colon doesn't mean the same as what it does in say C# or Java. I have written scripts where I have missed it out like JavaScript and it works fine.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA so the var parts are a separate text box so you would do something like:

myInt : Integer;
myString :  string;

and then do something like in the "procedure" text box something like:

myInt := 2
myString := "hello world"

ScholRLEA

Does it actually use the double-quote there, are is that just habits from other languages showing? Ordinarily, in Object Pascal, strings are delimited exclusively by single-quotes, and double-quotes literals that carry no interpretation at all. This can be a pain when going from some other languages, so I asked for a reason.

Also, the lack of semi-colons after non-ending statements is definitely not typical (they are separators rather than delimiters as they are in C and its descendants, hence the rule that the last statement of a block doesn't require one; I got a bit mixed up when I was trying to explain that earlier, it isn't the end statement that can drop it, but with the statement immediately before one). It may be that this tool is limiting you to a single line per statement, and inserting the semi-colons after each line break.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA

Does it actually use the double-quote there, are is that just habits from other languages showing?

Yes is was laziness from other languages and shouldn't be taken verbatim.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA

Also, the lack of semi-colons after non-ending statements is definitely not typical (they are separators rather than delimiters as they are in C and its descendants, hence the rule that the last statement of a block doesn't require one; I got a bit mixed up when I was trying to explain that earlier, it isn't the end statement that can drop it, but with the statement immediately before one). It may be that this tool is limiting you to a single line per statement, and inserting the semi-colons after each line break.

Again don't take that verbatim. It was just an example to show you that they are two different sections in the "code form".

cartman82

@lucas1 said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

To be Delphi looks a little like VB.NET and probably more like VB6 ... but it isn't something I am interested in learning when I interviewed for a Mobile Website Developer that would be using JS and BootStrap.

How the fuck do you always end up in these kinds of jobs?

-- Hello, I am proficient with frontend web development, with accent on-
-- Great! You are just the guy we need to resolve the rat infestation on the ISS!

Do you ever get hired as a web developer, and end doing just some plain old web development?

ScholRLEA

Gotcha, OK, not a problem. It does give me some idea of what you're looking at, then.

Is there any way to set procedure parameters?

lucas1

@cartman82 I honestly think I don't ask enough questions because I believe I am interviewing for a "Front End Dev" and I got asked in the interview "It seems you have knowledge of both which do prefer". I said I rather work backend if I had to choose, what the really meant was "do you want to work on the team that does web, or the team that does something totally different".

EDIT (for clarity): I assumed backend meant C#. My bread and butter is HTML, CSS, JS and C# / VB. So I assumed they either meant VB or C#. I don't mind using VB or C# ... I prefer using C# but VB if you have the right project options in the compile section is good enough, even though I am not a fan of the syntax.

ScholRLEA

Oops, forgot to ask, did they ever give you any kind of justification or explanation as to why they a) lied to you about the type of project you would be working on, and b) set you doing this project rather the the guy who was already familiar with Delphi? I expect that if they did it was a bad one, but it might give some insight into their thinking.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA I assumed stupidly that the project name was some kind of code word that people was using and not the application.

I have worked for companies that have called internal projects by code words for years. So I though the "capital city of france" was a code word for a project and not an application. So I heard "you will be working on team" ...

lucas1

@ScholRLEA

b) set you doing this project rather the the guy who was already familiar with Delphi? I expect that if they did it was a bad one, but it might give some insight into their thinking.

The guy that does delphi did do the training course in said application ... so he doesn't know anything because he didn't do the Training course ...

Yet I am spending a lot of time talking to him in Spanish (his English is horrible) about how to do stuff in Delphi. Also his name is on a lot of Stack Overflow posts answering questions about delphi.

FrostCat

@cartman82 said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

STOP YELLING AT BRITISH BLAKEYRAT, YOU'LL CHASE HIM AWAY TOO

~~LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE~~Again, you mean?

lucas1

Most of the delphi I am doing in the limited editor is pretty much:

Form.Mandatory := True

£400 a day for doing this shit seems kinda fair as I want to fucking kill myself while doing it.

ScholRLEA

@lucas1 said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

@ScholRLEA

b) set you doing this project rather the the guy who was already familiar with Delphi? I expect that if they did it was a bad one, but it might give some insight into their thinking.

The guy that does delphi did do the training course in said application ... so he doesn't know anything because he didn't do the Training course ...

Wait, did you mean 'did the training course' (i.e., taught it himself, and thus isn't listed as having undergone it despite obviously knowing it and thus isn't considered qualified on it), or 'didn't do the training course' (didn't take it and didn't get asked/ordered to do so despite having previous experience in Delphi)? I've seen both varieties of idiocy in the past and it would be, well, not useful per se but, something that would clarify the level of stupid involved at least.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA I did a training course in an application that had was in delphi and then did a inner platform via delphi via an eval method.

lucas1

@ScholRLEA said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

I understand this sort of position all too well.

I interviewed for a JavaScript job .. they haven't suspected anything yet!

ScholRLEA

@lucas1 said in Contracts Part V : The Delphi way:

£400 a day for doing this shit seems kinda fair as I want to fucking kill myself while doing it.

I understand this sort of position all too well. The best paying job I ever worked was $70K a year with W___ F____ B___ turning scans of brochures into web pages that no one would ever, ever see, hand-coding the HTML because in 2000 most people still used dial-up and tools like Dreamweaver and AffrontRage produced exceptionally shitty markup that was both too slow and bloaty, and also frequently choked the dev team's homebrew staging system.

I think it was karmic retribution for a previous position, where one large multinational company paid another multinational software contractor to do their Y2K fixes, who in turn paid 20 developers to sit on their asses for six months while waiting for unfixed code and databases that never came. $30K for a six month paid vacation (albeit locked in a secure data center 40 hours a ~~day~~week (the days only felt that long))? I'll take it!

Hell, one guy was getting $120/hr from those suckers. That's the way to make a living, assuming you don't go crazy waiting for the other shoe to drop (as I almost did).