Book Image

Mastering Delphi Programming: A Complete Reference Guide

By : Primož Gabrijelčič
Book Image

Mastering Delphi Programming: A Complete Reference Guide

By: Primož Gabrijelčič

Overview of this book

Delphi is a cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that supports rapid application development for most operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, iOS, and now Linux with RAD Studio 10.2. If you know how to use the features of Delphi, you can easily create scalable applications in no time. This Learning Path begins by explaining how to find performance bottlenecks and apply the correct algorithm to fix them. You'll brush up on tricks, techniques, and best practices to solve common design and architectural challenges. Then, you'll see how to leverage external libraries to write better-performing programs. You'll also learn about the eight most important patterns that'll enable you to develop and improve the interface between items and harmonize shared memories within threads. As you progress, you'll also delve into improving the performance of your code and mastering cross-platform RTL improvements. By the end of this Learning Path, you'll be able to address common design problems and feel confident while building scalable projects. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: Delphi High Performance by Primož Gabrijel?i? Hands-On Design Patterns with Delphi by Primož Gabrijel?i?
Table of Contents (19 chapters)

Using object files

Before I jump into the complicated world of interfacing with C and C++, I'll introduce a simpler example—a library written in Delphi. The motivation for its use comes not from a bad algorithm that Mr. Smith wrote, but from a badly performing 64-bit compiler. This is not something that I am claiming without proof. Multiple Delphi programmers have pointed out that the 64-bit Windows compiler (dcc64) generates pretty bad floating point code that is 2-3 times slower than the floating point generated from an equivalent source by a C compiler.

When you have already explored all the standard approaches of speeding up the program, and the compiler is the only source of the problem, you cannot do much. You can only rewrite parts of the program in the assembler, or use an external library that works faster than the native code. Such a library will either use...