Delphi

 Performance matters! Users hate to use programs that are not responsive to interactions or run too slow to be useful. While becoming a programmer is simple enough, you require dedication and hard work to achieve an advanced level of programming proficiency where you know how to write fast code.

 This book begins by helping you explore algorithms and algorithmic complexity and continues by describing tools that can help you find slow parts of your code. Subsequent chapters will provide you with practical ideas about optimizing code by doing less work or doing it in a smarter way. The book also teaches you how to use optimized data structures from the Spring4D library, along with exploring data structures that are not part of the standard Delphi runtime library.

 The second part of the book talks about parallel programming. You'll learn about the problems that only occur in multithreaded code and explore various approaches to fixing them effectively. The concluding chapters provide instructions on writing parallel code in different ways – by using basic threading support or focusing on advanced concepts such as tasks and parallel patterns.

 By the end of this book, you'll have learned to look at your programs from a totally different perspective and will be equipped to effortlessly make your code faster than it is now.

What you will learn

• Get to grips with algorithmic complexity and learn how to recognize it
• Use tools to determine program runtime behavior
• Speed up programs by doing less instead of more
• Discover the internal workings of Delphi data structures
• Gain an understanding of Delphi's memory manager
• Find out how to write low-level parallel programs with TThread
• Use parallel patterns from the PPL and OTL libraries to write fast code
• Include external code, written in C or C++, in Delphi programs

Who this book is for

 This book is for all Delphi programmers. Whether you're a beginner or an accomplished programmer, you will find something interesting. Even though the focus is on the latest Delphi release, the code uses only standard Delphi syntax without syntactic additions from the latest releases, and most of it should compile and run in any Delphi from XE7 onward. If you're using an older version of Delphi, don't despair! Most of the concepts in this book do not depend on a specific Delphi version and will be useful for everyone.

What you need for this book

 This book talks about Delphi, so you need it. Not all the recipes are available in all the Delphi editions. Typically, the mobile projects can be compiled only if you have Delphi Enterprise or higher (or Delphi Professional plus the mobile add-on, or RAD Studio professional or higher). All the projects are compiled and tested with the latest Delphi version at the time of writing, but many recipes can be compiled also on older versions.

 If you want to run the mobile app on a phone or a tablet, you could use the Android emulator or the iOS simulator, but we strongly suggest an actual device to see how the app really behaves. To deploy an iOS app on your device, you also need an Apple computer with MacOSX.

 Who this book is for

 This book aims to help the professional Delphi developers in their day-to-day job. This book will teach you about the newest Delphi technologies and its hidden gems. It is not a book for a newbie, but the practical approach will help you reach a new level with your Delphi skills. The experienced developer can benefit from this book because nontrivial problems are solved using best practices. Where more than one way is available or the topic is too broad to be explained in the available pages, references are provided to allow you to go deeper in that field. It is a book to have on your desk for the next few years.

 The guide to what's new in Delphi 2010, from the best-selling author of the Mastering Delphi series and the Delphi 2007 and 2009 Handbooks. The book covers all the new features of Delphi 2010 for Win32, from Extended RTTI to new IDE features, from Windows 7 support to the improved DataSnap architecture. This is a brand new book, there is no overlapping material with the Delphi 2007 Handbook and Delphi 2009 Handbook (which you can consider buying along with this book in printed or electronic format). The Delphi 2010 Handbook is expected to have about 300 pages covering exclusively new Delphi 2010 features. There is no introduction material or anything like that. The book is for developers who use Delphi 2010.