The Road Ahead

You have done it! You have become a developer superhero, and now you have all the necessary skills to rapidly create stunning, native mobile apps from a single code base in record time.

In this final chapter, we are going to review some of the most important mobile development trends and think about the innovative and successful mobile apps you can now build.

This short chapter will cover the following points:

• Review of what we have learned
• Trends in mobile development
• Ideas for new and innovative apps for you to build

The objective of this chapter is to show you the road ahead to be successful in the world of mobile app development.

Review of what we have learned

Throughout this book, we have made the journey through different topics related to Delphi programming from the perspective of building mobile apps. Here, we aim to provide a brief summary while also offering references to more specialized books for further exploration of the topics covered in this book.

The main focus of Chapter 1 was to install and configure the Delphi IDE for cross-platform mobile development. That’s the single, biggest feature of Delphi cross-platform development: from one source code base, from one project, just by switching target platforms in Project Manager, you can compile your code to a binary executable for all major mobile and desktop platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you need more information about the IDE configuration, you might want to use the Delphi online documentation, at https://docwiki.embarcadero.com.

Chapter 2 was all about the Object Pascal programming language. From basic...

Trends in mobile development

Ideas on how you should structure your software architectures are changing at an even faster pace than ever. Clearly, the technology is becoming more complex, and there are plenty of things to look at.

From the perspective of mobile developers, there are mobile platforms themselves, with new capabilities added with every new operating system version, but there are other areas to keep an eye on, most of which are relevant for each type of application, not just mobile ones.

Think about the exploding world of artificial intelligence (AI) with new releases and features popping up almost every week, the continuous switch toward cloud-based infrastructures, and the myriad of cloud and REST services (or APIs) you can integrate with to build your applications faster. Even the space of games development, which is a significant part of the mobile app business, is continuously evolving with new libraries and trends.

A single screen is not your limit

Mobile...

Ideas for new and innovative apps for you to build

Your next Delphi mobile app will obviously be very cool and successful. Think big and start small. There are many sources of inspiration and places to learn about Delphi. One source of inspiration for app ideas can be one of the contests for the coolest Delphi app that is regularly organized by Embarcadero. Check out what other Delphi developers are building, and you will be surprised about all kinds of interesting apps built with Delphi.

You can also check out the app stores for successful apps and emerging threads. Mobile apps are different because they can have so much feedback and input from the physical context of execution, using sensors and cameras to understand what the phone and its user are doing. There is no limit to what you can imagine and build.

In case you are not ready to start your own app journey, you can join a Delphi open source project or library and continue learning while you are offering a direct contribution...

Summary

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this book as much as we did writing it. That was a great journey. Delphi is fun. We are sure that the elegance of Object Pascal language and the technical excellence of the Delphi IDE and its libraries will continue to enchant a growing number of software developers now and in many years to come.