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FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

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Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#71

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51
mamcx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is interesting that people that "like" the c-like syntax consider pascal "ugly". The opposite is also true.

I've used both professionally. I'd say that "begin" and "end" may be clearer than "{" and "}", but less typing wins when you're writing a lot of code. Writing "if" statements without short-circuit operators is both tedious and error-prone. So, yeah, I like the C syntax. It's not a question of "ugly", though. Pascal is tedious. It's more work to write. And, of the kinds of tedious I've complained about here, it's not…

[deleted]

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#72

Post by rootlocus »

Animats wrote: post #14
trentmb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that you have to drop $1,405.00 [0] to get a 'professional' environment. [0] https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...

That's the problem. You can't sell programming tools any more. Everyone expects them to be free. Walter Bright, the designer of D and one of the first good C++, is on here, and has mentioned that before. So programming tools come from some source that has an agenda. Oracle. Microsoft. Google. Even Mozilla.

I pay for all the intellij products. Not only are they on a different level than anything else, they're not even expensive.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#73

Post by memsom »

revanx_ wrote: post #69
PeCaN wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works with Delphi and C++Builder for a job… yeah, it's the single shittiest development environment ever conceived by man, and they charge exorbitant prices for it. It's actually gotten so bad that my company is opting to migrate to C# for future development, in spite of our long investment in Delphi.

I wouldn't say that the IDE is shit, but it certainly isn't as good as VS, what issues do you encounter to make you say that?

I stopped developing in Delphi in 2007, and even by then the IDE was starting to drift. The Delphi 5/6 IDE was great - much like Lazarus. The Delphi 7... well, I think it was okay, but I didn't really ever use it. Everything after that, started to make me face palm.

I did like Kylix. I messed about with it and I remember going to watch the UK demo of it by Charlie Calvert in the Polish Centre in London circa 2001/2002. I had a licensed version of 1.0 (and used the Betas as my company at the time was sub contracted by Borland UK, so we got perks like being NDA'd.) That they got the IDE to work was cool. But CLX really messed up the direction.

By the time they did the .Net version, the writing was on the wall.... that bug in the compiler that tied the compiler down in a way that made the 2.0 framework unhappy to run 1.1 binaries, that really told me all I wanted to know. I transitioned to .Net and C#.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#74

Post by memsom »

iofj wrote: post #64
claystu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent meant Delphi

I believe it still comes with a version of Kylix. But sadly, yes, "no linux support" is pretty accurate, mostly because it sucks badly.

Kylix didn't suck per se - the CLX sucked. 2 frameworks that were almost, but not entirely, compatible was a big mistake. Borland were just too clever for their own good. They didn't understand that Linux is a moving target and not being able to keep up to date with the various libs and toolkits killed the product. Try getting Kylix 1.0 to run now... it's not a trivial task. It's painful. I could more than likely install Delphi 2.0 (first 32 bit version, though 3.0 would be "safer" as 2.0 was a bit of a mis-mash) even now on Windows (probably 1.0 on a system that still supported WOW for 16bit apps.)

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#75

Post by leledumbo »

zoom6628 wrote: post #41

Learn Pascal on an Osborne-1. First project was a device driver - a classroom project no less! Having coded in lots of languages since then, I like Pascal for its structure, its rigour, and uncomplicated binaries and installation. I dont mind if IDE setup is hard as long as anything i build is easily shared with others. Was easier and faster to get Lazarus working on my Mac than Visual Studio 2015 on my Windows (T440…

It's already done. Many people in Pascal community works with Arduino, Pi, Odroid, etc. Ranging from simple LED toggling to complex robotics.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#76

Post by claystu »

int_19h wrote: post #52
ebbv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's just perceived uncoolness. I learned Pascal in high school AP CompSci and I've always found it's syntax to be ugly and inelegant. But I learned C first so maybe that's why.

Pascal is unnecessary verbose, even in its own family. Even Modula-2, where the most prominent change that is immediately visible is that you don't have to say "begin" so many times, is noticeably better. It's really too bad about Modula-2. It was a very nice language, comparatively speaking, and it should have been what Pascal eventually became through its dialects (notably Apple's and Borland's).

Did you ever look at Oberon?

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#77

Post by leledumbo »

claystu wrote: post #40
gnud wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inside Lazarus, go to the 'help' menu and select 'help'. There's quite a lot of documentation! There's also context sensitive help. Put the text cursor over a type name, like 'TForm' in the default code that's there when you start Lazarus. Press F1 to see the documentation for that type.

I just checked. Help shows documentation on FreePascal and what the different options are for Lazarus as an IDE, but I don't see any more documentation on how the GUI system works, which is supposed to be what makes this system so special in the first place.

That's what the community has been missing all these years. Writing documentations are boring activity, so contributors tend to give only demos, examples and sometimes unit tests. How the system works is actually documented in a simplified diagram here: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Overview_of_Free_Pascal_a...

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#78

Post by leledumbo »

hugh4life wrote: post #27
ivoras wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, Lazarus is probably the single most-cross-platform-compatible GUI builder for native apps that exists, anywhere. Neither Java, nor Qt nor anything else come even close. And the apps are native! As for the "I don't like Pascal because Pascal is ugly" crowd: it's only different, and it's almost by chance (i.e. reasons external to the language itself) that most of today's production languages have use…

"Believe it or not, Lazarus is probably the single most-cross-platform-compatible GUI builder for native apps that exists, anywhere." Except they build on GTK 2, Qt 4, and Carbon on OSX. I haven't used it, but the whole LCL architecture seems absurd to me as there's no way that a project like theirs can keep things up to date. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/LCLArchi...

It's been 15 years since Lazarus (and thus LCL) was born and the following changes has happened:

- GTK1 interface is obsolete (was mainstream), GTK2 is mainstream, GTK3 is on the write - QT4 is mainstream, QT5 is on the write - Carbon is mainstream, Cocoa is near completion

I believe legacy already shows how the project can keep things up to date. It's the power of full community driven project, there's no necessity for a single maintainer to update everything on his own. Contributors may come and go, but they're there to update things.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#79

Post by leledumbo »

claystu wrote: post #76
int_19h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pascal is unnecessary verbose, even in its own family. Even Modula-2, where the most prominent change that is immediately visible is that you don't have to say "begin" so many times, is noticeably better. It's really too bad about Modula-2. It was a very nice language, comparatively speaking, and it should have been what Pascal eventually became through its dialects (notably Apple's and Borland's).

Did you ever look at Oberon?

It's what Pascal should have become IMHO. Base syntax: case-insensitive Oberon. Extensions: Object Pascal features. Now that's heaven. If only we don't need to maintain backward compatibility...

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#80

Post by dwc »

jestar_jokin wrote: post #63
dwc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends. As long as I've been in the game there have been relatively expensive options. Back in the day I kept hearing about SmallTalk and I saw the price tag in an ad in Dr.Dobbs. Sticker shock! But "serious" pricing is still alive today. Check http://www.lispworks.com/buy/prices-1c.html for instance. For some languages, lower prices won't significantly increases sales volume. And 1.5K is not a barrier if it's…

The problem is, to gain traction these days, you target the developers, give them enough resources to work on something in their spare time, and hope they have enough influence to make their company switch from language A to language B. Charging the developer, before they even have a chance to try the language out, when there are other free options available, means they'll never even give the language a chance.

I agree with you, but I also still agree with me:

Making Delphi or Common Lisp the next hotness is pretty much a lost cause, and has been for a long time. The people using those things tend to be heavily invested in them, and still making money. If you're not making enough money to spend US1.5K on your primary tool then you're not really making money.

Most of the people who balk at $1,500 will probably still pick the free option rather than pay $19.99.

Even though there are good free options (in the case of common lisp there are multiple good free options), there's still no gaining of traction.

So these companies charging money have defined their target market as people already using the language professionally, and they've found a price point that lets them stay in business and provide quality tooling (specialized IDEs, debuggers, GUI frameworks, et al). If they lowered their prices to $19.99, rather than attract loads of new mindshare they'd simply go out of business.

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