{"id":936,"date":"2012-07-31T20:16:45","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T08:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=936"},"modified":"2018-02-28T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T23:22:13","slug":"a-pain-in-the-butt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/936\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pain In The Butt"},"content":{"rendered":"[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span>

This post is one of those classic double-entendres for which us Brits are (in)famous, involving as it does both an actual Pain In The Butt and a euphemistic one.
\n<\/p>\n

I have been incapacitated recently by a sudden onset of sciatica caused – so my physio seems to think – by “Piriformis Syndrome<\/a>“. Basically a result (he thinks – without an MRI it is impossible to be sure) of the way my sciatic nerve is routed under or possibly through a muscle in my butt, click here to read more<\/a> about this wonderful condition. Nope, so rather than the “classic” spinal injury normally associated with sciatica (herniated disc etc).<\/p>\n

Certainly I know I pulled something<\/em> in my butt a couple of months ago (just moving some not very heavy boxes and over-extending slightly) and had been hobbling around with a sore hip which got variously better and worse ever since. I then woke up almost two weeks ago in deblitating agony – literally unable to stand, let alone walk.<\/p>\n

This actually had me in hospital on IV morphine for a couple of days, but thankfully recovery is proving quite rapid, and I am gradually resuming my normal activities.<\/p>\n

On that score I decided to pick up the CFFTPSample porting project<\/a> I embarked on a few weeks ago, specifically with a view to tackling the step of getting an iOS environment up and running with Delphi XE2.<\/p>\n

Quite simply, I gave up.<\/p>\n

I have had quite enough actual<\/strong> pain in my butt in recent weeks – I don’t need any more, euphemistic or otherwise.<\/p>\n

[Actually in the interests of medical accuracy, although the cause of my recent actual pain was located in my butt, the symptoms were actually felt primarily in my lower leg – constant, excruciating severe cramping of the muscles in my leg from the knee down to my toes.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

I only got as far as trying to install the FireMonkey for iOS libraries and when it refused because I didn’t have the right versions of iOS (demanding 4.2 or 4.3 – I have the latest Xcode and iOS 5.1 SDK) this was enough for me.<\/p>\n

If it doesn’t “just work” then it might as well not work at all.<\/p>\n

Delphi – in the form currently delivered in XE2 – is in my view simply unusable for serious iOS development.<\/p>\n

Knowing from others how much trouble they had getting things up and running in this area (without, as far as I know having run in to such early hurdles), quite simply I have too many other things of interest to waste my time fighting with Embarcadero’s hacks and work-arounds trying to get something up and running that will no doubt fall over at the very next Delphi, Xcode or iOS update.<\/p>\n

If they deliver something which is less of a hack, more stable and much easier to get up and running in XE3 then I might revisit it, but at the moment I feel my time in these areas is better spent learning Objective-C.<\/p>\n

Embarcadero seriously dropped the ball on this one. No matter how “clever” they thought they were being (riding in to town on the coat-tails of the efforts of the FPC community!!) and shoe-horning their rushed FireMonkey solution onto iOS, it certainly isn’t very smart.<\/p>\n

XE3 will have to demonstrate some vast improvements in this area, but I find it worrying that with the anniversary of the launch last year in Auckland of XE2<\/a> just 4 days away and the usual release window for the next version of Delphi rapidly approaching, we have heard nothing (to my knowledge) significant about the forthcoming release.<\/p>\n

Maybe the new “Delphi Evangelists<\/a>” know something about what is coming.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit of a shame that Embarcadero don’t have a “Critical Friend” program. Clearly my evangelism isn’t of the sort they appreciate.<\/p>\n

Upon further consideration this post might even represent, therefore, a triple entendre, as “A Pain In The Butt” might reasonably be how Embarcadero perceive me right now. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span> This post is one of those classic double-entendres for which us Brits are (in)famous, involving as it does both an actual Pain In The Butt and a euphemistic one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[4,143],"tags":[292,135,137,136],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TKYv-f6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":760,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/760\/","url_meta":{"origin":936,"position":0},"title":"Platform Independence Version Dependencies in the XE2 RTL","date":"14 Sep 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"So I have spent about a week now with XE2 and FireMonkey and thought I would share some of the experience so far. After an initial peek and poke around, the first order of business for me was to migrate some of my existing code to the new RTL. First\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":843,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/843\/","url_meta":{"origin":936,"position":1},"title":"XE2 Update #4 On The Horizon","date":"19 Jan 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The release notes for Update #4 have appeared online, signalling the imminent arrival no doubt of the update itself. The good news if you are using FireMonkey is that this is a significant update, including functionality for printing. 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This coincided nicely with my reaching a point in my Objective-C learning where this sort of exercise was of interest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":815,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/815\/","url_meta":{"origin":936,"position":4},"title":"Something the XE2 Un\/Installer Should Tell You…","date":"30 Sep 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"If you are about to install update #1 for Delphi XE2, the first thing you will need to do is uninstall your current version. But beware - the uninstaller doesn't tell you something quite important. When uninstalling a folder in the XE2 Program Files area (\"InstallAware\") cannot be deleted, presumably\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1974,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/1974\/","url_meta":{"origin":936,"position":5},"title":"Improved Quality in Delphi – Yeah Right","date":"28 Oct 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here in Aotearoa there is a beer company called \"Tui\", named in turn for a native bird. As well as a series of TV ads voiced by the great Tom Baker, Tui are famous here for their \"Yeah, right!\" billboard ads. I felt compelled to make one for Delphi. 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