Object Pascal is a wonderful programming language! It is easy to read and understand while giving you a full array of modern object oriented language features.  Strings are easy to work with, constructors are virtual, functions can be nested - these are only some of the goodies that come with the language.

I am by no means "religious" when it comes to languages though. It all depends on the project that one works on. The framework that one works with is much more important than the language itself in my opinion.

Object Pascal got popularized by the development environment called Delphi. It was initially created by Borland. If you programmed in the 80's or early 90's - chances are - you used Turbo Pascal (procedural Pascal) which was Borland's best product at the time. They later evolved the idea of IDE into a modern language and framework.

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Cross-platform development for desktop applications is becoming increasingly important. Chances are that your application user uses OS X, Windows, Linux or has a combination of these. For example - it is not uncommon for people to have a Windows based desktop and an OS X laptop.

In the recent years OS X platform really took off with the introduction of Intel based Macintosh computers. This makes the OS X platform hard to ignore.

As a developer - you have a few tough choices to make, but by far the toughest one is selecting the right development environment.

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Symmetry is good. Any scientist worth his or her salt will tell you that there are many clues and insights to be found by looking for symmetry.

And yet, when it comes to writing code, most developers are either not paying any attention, don't care, or (if I may be optimistic) haven't thought about the benefits of leveraging symmetry as a driver for good coding style.

Of course, there is plenty of debate about what constitutes good coding style. Unfortunately, it's my sense that most people don't really think too much about the issue and simply adopt  whatever style to which they have previously been exposed. That's why we end up with the bizarre asymetrical style inherited from the C world, i.e,

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