KSDev released this year CrossVCL - a framework that allows you to build multi-platform applications.

What is the difference between Firemonkey and CrossVCL?
If you want to make your current app multi platform, you need to port it to Firemonkey. With CrossVCL you don't need anything!!!
Embarcadero should fear them!
And learn a lesson form them!
They really upgraded Delphi/C++ programming to a brand new level!

Cool features and functions in Delphi

 

List of IDE features that are cool (when they work)

• Search backwards - Ctrl+F to do a search in your code. F3 to go to the next position Shift+F3 to go to previous position.
• Move/Relocate/Rename project's files directly from Project Manager
• Navigate to recently modified code - Ctrl+Shift+F7 and Ctrl+Shift+F8

• Search for usage - Right click a variable and invoke 'search for usage'. A panel will list all places in current project where that variable is used. In my cases this will make the IDE to freeze. 
• UML diagrams (Live Diagrams) - simply doesn't work 
• IDE insight (F6) - It could be useful but seems to list a lot of random items.
• CodeSite - a logging system - I couldn't really find it useful
• AQTime - Performance profiler + memory allocation debugger - I couldn't really find it useful

List of functions/units/classes that are cool (when they work)

• SysUtils.GetHomePath - Returns c:\users\username\appdata\roaming.
• IOUtils - Lots of new cool functions. Totally broken.
• SplitString - Example of usage at the end of this document. Unfortunately, the function is VERY slow!
• FindCmdLineSwitch - Example: System.SysUtils.FindCmdLineSwitch('-f', sFileName)
• TThread.ProcessorCount;   { Specifies the number of CPU cores in the system }
• TBinaryReader / TBinaryWriter - Nice but only half ass - Interesting but I recommend this library which is much faster: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5639531
• System.Diagnostics.TStopWatch - Can be used to precisely time your code.
• $WeakLinkRTTI - Put these two directives in your DPR file (at the very top) to reduce exe size with 4%: {$WEAKLINKRTTI ON} {$RTTI EXPLICIT METHODS([]) PROPERTIES([]) FIELDS([])}
• TStringBuilder - It was supposed to help you build strings. But it is horrible! Simply don't use it. It is painful slow.
• PtInCircle & PtInRect - Tells you if a point is located in a circle. Could be handy one day.
• TTimeSpan (System unit) is a data structure used for holding information about a period of time. The smallest unit of time is a tick which is 100 nanoseconds. The largest unit of time is a day.

CONST

• SLineBreak - global constant that changes its value depending on target platform (Win/Linux/Mac)
• Win32MajorVersion & Win32MinorVersion - To get current Windows version

List of VCL controls that are cool (when they work)

• TJumpList - To list a custom file in a JumpList your program must be registered (in Windows registry) to be able to open that type of file. Another problem is that when the user clicks a 'recent file' in the JumpList, the message is not sent to your app directly. You need to intercept that message.

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function CountWords(CONST s: string): Integer; { Might be faster than the one above }
VAR
   sArray: TStringDynArray;
begin
  sArray:= System.StrUtils.SplitString(s,  '.,? =<>*!-:;()/\'+cr+lf);
  Result:= Length(sArray);
end;