About

The purpose of this blog is to explore the 'true native' approach to mobile computing on modern operating systems and devices -- and all the gory guts and glory thereof.

But it has another purpose as well, which is to show the real value of RAD (Rapid Application Development) technology in an age of advanced language and compiler design. The legitimate knock on RAD over the years has been the degree to which it encourages a jumbled mess of tangled spaghetti code. Old-school Delphi and especially legacy VB code bases very often inspire this criticism.

But modern languages and compilers -- and Delphi and C++ are both modern languages built on advanced compiler technology -- make it possible, for the most part, to have your cake and eat it too: it's totally possible to write excellent, well-crafted and highly testable code, even taking advantage of RAD where it really makes the most sense: the tedium of UI construction.

So the ultimate mission of this blog is to encourage users of RAD tools like RAD Studio to take engineering control of the code behind their applications. Moreover, it is to prove that we don't have to surrender performance to nanny run-times that "protect" us from the difficult stuff. This protection, of course, comes at a cost, and it's not just performance -- often it's basic developer freedom, too.