There are two new undocumented procedure directives in the Delphi 8 compiler. Presumably, these are in preparation for Delphi 9, which is coming at the end of the year, as mentioned here.
These are: winapi and ilcode.
I have yet to discover what these directives do, however, on encountering winapi, the compiler complains that “[Error] filename.dpr(nn): xxxx must be yyyy”.
So, Dan, since you said “I dunno. I don't really need my hand held all the way from beginning to end.”, how about doing some sleuthing work and find out what “xxxx” and “yyyy” stands for? ;o) And, if you managed to find out, try and figure out the use of winapi and ilcode.
All: I've changed the actual title from [three words] to “stuff” so that Dan can have his fun.
In 2017, with the release of Delphi 10.2 Tokyo, Embarcadero introduced a specialized implementation of the Observer pattern into the System.Classes unit. While it has been in the wild for 9 years, it remains a "hidden" architecture for many, primarily because it serves as the invisible engine behind LiveBindings. Other than live bindings, you can also use the Observer pattern as a way to update component settings to the Windows registry, an .ini file, or persist it elsewhere.
System.Classes