May 26, 2026
TMS Data Modeler is now on GitHub — and that's a bigger deal than it sounds
If you've been writing Delphi for any length of time, you know TMS Data Modeler. It's the visual ER-diagram tool that quietly sits on a lot of our machines — the one you reach for when you'd rather draw a schema than hand-write CREATE…
May 9, 2026
No Developer Should Be Without Version Control: Set up your own private GitHub with Gitea in 10 minutes
At a recent conference where I had the pleasure of speaking to a room full of talented Delphi developers, I once again — as I do at every event — asked the audience to raise their hand if they used version control in their daily work. The…
April 2, 2026
Spec Coding with Delphi: How I Built a Native Game Save Backup Tool in One Afternoon with Claude Code
This is not an April Fools joke. This is a real project I built in an afternoon using Claude Code and Delphi. It is a command-line tool that scans my PC for installed games, identifies their save file locations, and creates backups with…
February 23, 2026
Adapt or Disappear: How AI Turned a 2-Year Project Into a 1-Week Sprint
The Delphi community has strong opinions about AI — and I get it. Privacy concerns, code quality worries, the instinct that real developers should not need a machine to help them write code. I have heard every argument in the book, and…
February 21, 2026
AI Won't Replace Delphi Developers. But...
The other day I saw a post on a Delphi developer forum. A fellow developer had been struggling for days trying to convert a bitmap to grayscale. Days. He had tried multiple third-party components, downloaded libraries, read through…
February 10, 2026
TMS Training Days 2026 in Rotterdam – April 23-24!
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be speaking at TMS Training Days 2026 in Rotterdam, and I hope to see you there! After successful events in Lille and Bruges, the TMS team is bringing this incredible two-day developer conference to the…
January 5, 2026
RAD Is Not No-Code: Why Delphi Still Dominates Windows Desktop Development After 30 Years
The no-code movement is having its moment. Articles proclaim its death, its rebirth, its transformation. But amid all this noise, there's a critical distinction being lost: Rapid Application Development (RAD) is not no-code, and the…
January 2, 2026
From 30 Years of Delphi to the Modern Web: My Journey Into 2026
A personal reflection on three decades of desktop development, and what comes next --- I started with Delphi before most developers today wrote their first line of code. Over 30 years, I watched Borland rise, worked inside the company, and…
December 30, 2025
GitHub Is Not a Backup (And Why That Matters)
I came across something this morning that made me pause: a developer celebrating their move from daily ZIP files to GitHub, calling it their "backup solution." While I'm genuinely happy they've discovered version control, this statement…
December 29, 2025
Random Numbers in Delphi: When the RTL is Good Enough (And When It Isn't)
I recently came across several Delphi implementations in which developers used their own random number generators, apparently unaware of—or unconvinced by—the built-in Randomize and Random functions that have been part of the RTL since…
December 27, 2025
TStringList: The Swiss Army Knife You're Probably Underusing
If you've been writing Delphi code for any length of time, you've used TStringList. It's the go-to container for managing lists of strings. But here's the thing: most developers only scratch the surface of what this versatile class can do.…
December 21, 2025
🎅 Santa's Sleigh: A Festive Delphi VCL Experiment 🎄
As the holiday season wraps us in its magical embrace, I wanted to share a fun little project that perfectly captures the Christmas spirit while showcasing the power of AI-assisted Delphi development. Meet Santa's Sleigh - a delightful VCL…
December 17, 2025
**A Christmas Carol for Delphi Developers: “AI Humbug!” … or Maybe Not? 🎄**
Every December, you can hear it echo across developer forums: “AI? Bah, humbug! It doesn’t help with real Delphi code!” If you’ve spent decades refining your Delphi craft — from Turbo Pascal to today’s VCL and FireMonkey projects — you…
December 11, 2025
Looking Forward to Speaking at TMS Training Days 2026 in Rotterdam!
I’m very excited to share some great news — TMS Software has announced the next edition of TMS Training Days, which will take place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on April 23–24, 2026! This isn’t my first time being part of a TMS event,…
November 21, 2025
Why IBExpert Remains My Go-To Tool for Firebird Database Management
After 30 years in software development, I've learned that specialized tools almost always outperform generalist solutions. Nowhere is this more evident than in database management, where IBExpert stands as the undisputed champion for…
November 12, 2025
Why TMS XData Is My Go-To Choice for Building Web Services in Delphi
After years of working with various frameworks and tools for building web services, I've come to a clear conclusion: TMS XData is the best tool for the job—if you're a Delphi developer. Now, I'll be upfront—I've been doing extensive work…
September 30, 2025
Why You Need to Switch to Delphi 13 and its 64-bit IDE Yesterday
For most Delphi developers, the switch to 64-bit isn’t obvious at first glance. After all, for decades since Delphi 2, we’ve been working quite happily in a 32‑bit IDE, building applications, connecting to databases, and delivering…
September 11, 2025
RAD Studio 13 Florence has been released
Exciting times being a Delphi developer! Embarcadero has just released RAD Studio 13 Florence, bringing a host of new features and improvements to the Delphi and C++Builder development environments. This release focuses on enhancing…
August 25, 2025
How to configure Linux for Delphi development
Delphi has long been a powerful tool for Windows application development, but with the introduction of Linux support in recent versions, developers can now leverage Delphi's capabilities to create applications for Linux environments. This…
May 17, 2024
Cherish the Past, Embrace the Future: Web development with Delphi and TMS WEB Core
This week, I watched several technical sessions from Google I/O and React Conf 2024. Two conferences that contain a plethora of information about the latest trends in web development. It's fascinating to see how the web platform has…
May 12, 2024
Bridging Worlds: Delphi, TMS WEB Core, and the Evolution of Hybrid Desktop Applications
In the ever-evolving landscape of software development, the boundaries between different platforms and technologies continue to blur. One such convergence is the fusion of web and desktop applications, facilitated by powerful tools like…
March 31, 2024
Coming soon! Image gallery from conception to deployment
In this upcoming video series, I will show you how to create a modern, responsive image gallery with TMS WEB Core. In addition, you will learn how to integrate the Pexels API. Starting with basic principles of web development using…
February 13, 2024
Results of the poll: HIW LIVE
I just wanted to give brief feedback on the results of the poll from the beginning of this month. It has become very much clear looking at the results that there is little interest in LIVE HIW seminars with the opportunity to ask questions.
February 12, 2024
Delphi turns 29! Join us for the celebration!
To the Delphi community, February 14 is not only known as Valentine's Day (you're welcome for the reminder 😁), it is also Delphi's birthday. This year, it will turn 29 and Embarcadero -- Ian Barker to be more precise -- will be hosting a…
February 10, 2024
Support my projects with GitHub Sponsors
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, community-driven support plays a crucial role in fostering innovation and growth. Today, I'm thrilled to share a significant step in my journey as a Delphi enthusiast and content creator – I…
January 27, 2024
POLL: LIVE seminar about Web development ?
In recent weeks, I have gotten inquiries about a live seminar to build a full stack project with Delphi. With regard to scope, something like my latest video series with the ability for you to interact and ask questions. The seminar would…
January 25, 2024
FREE video series published
Here's just a heads up that my latest video series named "Modern Delphi Web Development" has been completely published by TMS Software on YouTube. It consists of 8 episodes with a run-time of over 3 hours! A full table of contents with…
January 3, 2024
NEW 'How it works with Holger' soon
Happy New Year! 🎉 I hope you had a peaceful and quiet Christmas break and arrived healthy and sound in 2024! We're jumping right into some Delphi fun with a new video series.
December 26, 2023
Upcoming content in 2024
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas break! After releasing my latest book "Modern Software Development with Delphi" (see below) just in time for the holiday and relaxing a bit, I also used the time to consider my upcoming video and…
December 19, 2023
New Book: Modern Software Development with Delphi
As announced yesterday, my new book for Delphi developers has been published. Once again, I decided to write a hands-on book. The difference to all previous books: It will present how to develop a complete application with Delphi from…
December 18, 2023
Christmas 🎄 surprise!
I admit this blog has been a bit quiet lately, but there has been a good reason for it. I just uploaded my next Delphi book to Amazon for publication!
September 15, 2023
Delphi Coding Bootcamp 2023 Session Replay
It was my pleasure presenting the power of TMS WEB Core in this year's Delphi Coding Bootcamp. In particular, I show how easy it is to create applications for the Web if you are a Delphi developer already used to writing desktop…
July 2, 2023
Delphi: Convert any string to date - even "no date"
Converting strings to dates never seemed to be straightforward. First, specifying the source for all the different date component was difficult. Second, if the conversion is unsuccessful and "no date" has been defined, it could not be…
June 29, 2023
TMS Training Days 2023 Session Replays
For the first time in years, TMS was able to celebrate Training Days in-person again! This year, TMS introduced us to the city of Bruges in Belgium. It was a wonderful event with a lot of opportunities for Delphi developers to mingle and…
June 24, 2023
Hello Holger's Code, goodbye Wordpress!
Welcome to my new blog! Once again, it is time for an update. In the last 20 years, we have come a long way. It seems like yesterday I started blogging, but as this post will show, there is quite some history involved.