Back last July, I blogged about terrible example code posted by Stephen Ball, an Embarcadero ‘Product Evangelist’. Ultimately, the critique of Ball’s code was really just a lead-off for pointing out how the same anti-pattern used had appeared prominently in the FMX source too. Happily, XE3 RTM saw most of that removed (though not all of it). However, for reasons I don’t understand, Ball has now proudly turned his blog post into a YouTube video:
Honestly, view it and weep. I expect his defence will be ‘but I’m only illustrating class helpers’, but if so, that would be pathetic given he’s already been warned the example makes him look foolish [on his original post, the automated pingback from my blog was accepted, but my actual comment - 'I’ve just posted a critical (but friendly) commentary here' - never got past the moderation queue. His reply implied he still read it though]. Moreover, it’s perfectly possible to demonstrate class helpers without writing rubbish – check out the relevant page on Lachlan Gemmell’s TIndex for examples. (*)
That said, the class helper anti-example wasn’t the first time Ball had put out crap – if you want something just as bad, check out his ‘white paper’ on packaging a FMX form into a DLL or dylib, which was also something he originally put out in the XE2 timeframe and has now recently re-promoted. The example used in it is an image file picker, which is fair enough, but here’s how he writes his exports:
function SelectPicture(AFolder : PChar): PChar; cdecl;
var
ResultStr : string;
Temp: PWideChar;
begin
ResultStr := '';
try
ResultStr := TfrmImages.SelectPicture(AFolder);
finally
Result := StrAlloc(Length(ResultStr));
Temp := Addr(ResultStr[1]);
StrCopy(Result,Temp);
end;
end;
procedure DisposePicture(SelectPictureResult : PChar); cdecl;
begin
StrDispose(SelectPictureResult);
end;
If that doesn’t embody the mentality of ‘It compiles, so ship it!’, I don’t know what does.
(*) PS – the David Glassborow articles linked to on the TIndex are now found here and here– I’ve posted the corrections to the TIndex blog, so hopefully the links might even be fixed by the time you read this post.
