Chapter 1: Recent IDE Enhancements

Delphi is not just a language, nor just an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), nor just a toolset or programming environment, but all of that and more. Starting in the early 1980s with Turbo Pascal shipping on a single floppy disk, it has grown to be a powerful suite of libraries, tools, connected services, and integrated components that support virtually every computing platform. And as with most technological tools, Delphi is constantly growing, improving, and adding features.

This first chapter will give you a quick recap of all that the IDE encompasses and what new features you may have missed in the last few versions. Some of these are just for convenience, such as quickly locating a unit in Windows Explorer, or jumping to a method with the navigation toolbar. There are visual improvements with high DPI support, a new dark mode, and structural highlighting options. You'll be more efficient with faster loading times, greatly improved Code Insight features, and editor tricks such as bookmark stacks. Finally, you will understand your code better with add-ons, such as Project Statistics and Toxicity Metrics.

You will read about all of these and more in the following sections of this chapter:

• Understanding the Delphi IDE
• Delphi 10 Seattle
• Delphi 10.1 Berlin
• Delphi 10.2 Tokyo
• Delphi 10.3 Rio
• Delphi 10.4 Sydney