TDelphiHobbyist.Create(Self);

Well, I'm not all that certain that we need yet another blog on programming. Having said that, it looks like we're going to get one anyway ... this post exists, here you are reading it and I really don't expect it will be the last I have to say on the matter. I'd like to start off by defining where I plan on going with this and a bit about myself. The name of the site is really apropos considering what I have in mind as to what you're going to find here. I'm an occupational developer* with a long standing interest in programming and creating my own tools for use at work. I've been puttering with computers and programming since the TI-99a that I owned back in 1982. My current IDE of choice is not much of a secret given the name of the blog ... Delphi for Object Pascal from CodeGear. I've been investigating Delphi for Object Pascal for nearly three years now. I did have a brief look at the the literature back when Delphi 2 was first released but decided to move from VB-DOS to VB3 anyway. In retrospect ... boy, was that a bad idea. Having said that, I did have fun with VB and I actually managed to get a couple of tools out the door. Both are still in use, both are exactly what you'd probably expect of an untrained newbie [with some exception], touching anything in either of them would likely blow them up and finally, both are in desperate need of an update ... enter Delphi. I'm a marine engineer by trade and have spent my entire career working for the same company doing coastal work. Creating an exceptional hobbyist out of self is the objective and I'm hoping that keeping track of the process here, will help someone else who's interested in becoming one themselves. In my Delphi journey, to date; I've produced a number of throw-aways, read hundreds [if not thousands] of lines of various types of source code, have a stack of [dog eared] computer books and have yet to write one functional line of code for any of my projects. I'm a firm believer in do it right or don't even bother ... I'm not doing things the way I did in VB any more! All this is fodder for more posts that I'll get to ... in time. The plan is ... a post a week. We'll see how it pans out from here.

******************************************************** program Project1; {$APPTYPE CONSOLE} uses SysUtils; begin writeln('Hello World'); end. ********************************************************

Thanks for stopping by, -- Dave * The term "Occupational Developer" most certainly isn't anything I am laying claim to. The first time I ever heard of it was in during one of the first Delphi Hour sessions with Nick Hodges of CodeGear.