Debugging

Debugging is nigh painless here, which is about the best thing you can say about debugging. The watch window allows expandable objects, so you aren't stuck with a non-helpful pointer address that you have to cast. The local watch window is still here and can also show objects' member details. Generally, the debugger is crisp and responsive. I did notice, however, that leaving a live session up was a good way to hang Delphi on my laptop.

Somewhere around Delphi 6, Borland introduced their optimizing compiler, which was probably the worst thing that ever happened to debugging. Once-valid places to break and examine variables became useless as they were “inaccessible due to optimization”. Those “optimizations” are still there. (You'd think the debugger could have a little “memory” for spied variables it knows are being optimized. I'm sure that's way more complex than it sounds, but I'm a user in this context, so I can make unreasonable demands.)

I also really like the way the IDE allowed me to have my design and debug layout separate, and it generally switched between them as appropriate. It did seem reluctant to switch back from the debug layout from time to time, but I preferred to not interpret that as an editorial comment. Another much-welcomed feature is the option to set files that get opened during debugging to auto-close afterwards. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has ended up with a couple dozen open files after a particularly deep drill-down session.

Note that the SR variable's fields are laid out. Also behold the groovy new line number set-up. You can also see the "Synchronize" method underlined as though it were flawed. Delphi's attitude toward my thread objects was less than friendly.