🚀 go-pugleaf

"Martin Harvey" <martin@pergolesi.demon.co.uk> skrev i melding
news:39009953.2D1D2901@pergolesi.demon.co.uk...
> Here comes my problem. I'm currently developing with Delphi 4 standard,
> and hence I don't have the source (or even the help) on some of these
> objects!
>
> The list and the critical section are no problem, my tutorial has
> already discussed all the quirks involved with them.
>
> The multiple read fancy synchroniser is also trivial. I have the help
> files for this, and although I don't have the source, this particular
> synchronisation mechanism is such a classic textbook case, that I will
> have no problem explaining its internal workings without the source.

Hi !
The classes found in syncobjs unit;

 TCriticalSection,
 TSynchroObject,
 TEvent,
 TSimpleEvent;

are somewhat silly, if you ask me. The only thing they do, is adding more
lines to your code, and exchange WinAPI datatypes with Delphi classes. And -
the most impoortant: They obscure the reality of thread programming: You need
to understand the core of Windows OS somewhat better to succeed. I would
advice programmers to dive into the WinAPI instead.
The same may be said about TThread: The fact that this class exists, lead
programmers to believe that this is some basic pattern for threads. It took
me quite a while to understand that you would normally need to redesign the
TThread class both for startup, termination, execution *and* synchronization.
If they had provided a basic exception handling mechanism, it would be worth
something...I'm sure I would get there faster without the prewritten class,
at least.

Good luck with your book !

--
Bjoerge Saether
Consultant / Developer
Asker, Norway
bsaether.removethis@online.no (remove the obvious)