First, I love Delphi (20 plus years use) and FireMonkey (5 plus years use – Android). My thoughts are criticisms, not a rejection.
FireMonkey has been around for about 10 years and you would think something simple as fixing “easy” problems could occur. However, with each iteration I guess they expect us to “get use” to those problems (while they introduce new problem). Don’t get me wrong. FireMonkey is a great tool that helps the developer quickly develop quality applications. However, as a developer I would expect (and hope) near perfection on basic things because I have been programming with Delphi for over 20 years and to me the Delphi VCL (Visual Control Library) is a gold standard.
Some of my never ending irritation examples are:
- Tab Order – it is offered for the user to utilize by setting the tab order of the controls on the form/window. It doesn’t. You are better off setting the tab order in code. Now, I guess they expect the user to not bother with the tab order because iOS/Android devices do not use tabs. You peck around the device with your finger. However, if you are using a Bluetooth (or virtual) keyboard that has a tab button, the user should expect some tab order when moving from control to control, right? Oh well.
- Image Degradation – when setting images in an image list one would expect that the quality of the images would stay intact. Wrong. Over time when developing a project, the developer has to reload/refresh the image list contents because the image quality melts away slowly. This is maddening.
- To be continued…