Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE • Hacker News Board

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#101

Post by tomc1985 » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #69

whitten wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't XAML and XUL supposed to be user interface markup languages ? Wikipedia thinks so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_...

If the "industry" adopts them as a standard, then they could take off (and if not encumbered by intellectual property lawsuit risk). XUL also looked "too Webby" to me, closer aligned to HTML than desktop-like GUI's.

I'd beg to differ, XUL produced very clean native UI yet accepted styling with CSS years before I'd seen anything else like it. At the time I was writing Firefox addons and I was blown away but what I could do with it vs. WinForms or somesuch

RIP XUL, you died too early

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#102

Post by pkphilip » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 2:15 AM UTC

meredydd wrote: post #48

pkphilip wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice product but it may have been better to release this as a opensource product because there will always be a fear that if your company goes bottoms-up, those companies who used your platform will be left high and dry.

The thing is, making Anvil open source now would virtually guarantee that outcome. The market has spent the last few years demonstrating that the sustainable number of large companies whose main product is open source is...One. (Red Hat, if you were wondering.) Even trying to become that kind of company requires a highly speculative VC-fuelled trajectory, which is famous for turning sustainable 100m-scale companies i…

What about releasing it like how Node.js was released? that is a full web platform but one which uses Python instead of Javascript? and with a repository for packages which people can download and use or even contribute to?

Ultimately unless there is an active and vibrant ecosystem, there is very little reason to consider your platform - especially when there are alternatives like Node.js, Django etc.

Also, for me I will be concerned about how I will integrate Anvil with third-party libraries needed for things like reporting, authentication/authorization, E-commerce etc.

Sure, the GUI wizard is not there for Django but what if someone were to develop such a wizard for Django? or what if someone were to say that it is best to stick with Django / Vaadin/Ketura/.NET/Go/Rocket.rs even if it takes another 25% more time to develop in because the ecosystem is much bigger and we can predict with more confidence that Django / Vaadin/Ketura/.NET/Go/Rocket.rs is going to be around?

HOWEVER, if your product was available open source, is a lot easier to setup and use than Django/Ketura/... (you could provide it as a docker image) and you had a business model where you provide hosting for that solution (similar to Heroku) and/or paid support, you may end up making more money because a lot more people would use your platform - lot more than your current model which very few companies will risk purchasing.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#103

Post by tluyben2 » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #69

whitten wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't XAML and XUL supposed to be user interface markup languages ? Wikipedia thinks so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Application_Markup_...

If the "industry" adopts them as a standard, then they could take off (and if not encumbered by intellectual property lawsuit risk). XUL also looked "too Webby" to me, closer aligned to HTML than desktop-like GUI's.

Some part of the industry did; in MS shops a lot of XAML is used. The old MS would've pushed XAML for web applications a lot more, but the new is more of whatever the developer wants. There are people working on XAML everywhere (all platforms including web), especially in the Xamarin.Forms camp, but there is no force or adoption there. It's mostly WPF (and a bit of Xamarin) that uses XAML, but that's a large group still; I encounter it everywhere at partners/clients (usually Java runs on the servers 'in the basement' and some non trivial amount of WPF/Xamarin.Forms (XAML) (now with .NET Core where possible; even the .NET only shops do seem to like it) runs on the front facing systems).

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#104

Post by m0zg » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #16

I love the idea of a WYSIWYG IDE that's integrated with the language like this, or like VB used to be, but personally I just can't stomach the whole "have to learn yet another language to use it" problem. From what little I've played with Lazarus and FPC it seems really nice though, and I might make use of it for some smaller projects at work in the near future. I'm sick of trying to make web apps and all the ridicul…

>> have to learn yet another language to use it

Many of us graybeards already know Pascal though. Some even used Delphi and C++ Builder in their heyday, and remember it fondly. It was basically the only sane alternative to VB, with better productivity (instantaneous compilation, even on hardware from 20 years ago!) and a real programming language behind it.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#105

Post by analognoise » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 3:19 AM UTC

Hi everyone, I just want to encourage anyone who is on the fence to give Lazarus/FPC a shot.

It's LGPL, there's no company that can take it away, and it generates native binaries without the bloat and garbage of Qt or the mental gymnastics of C++. It's cross-platform native and really wonderful. Give it a try. The community is awesome.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#106

Post by blunte » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:04 AM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #16

I love the idea of a WYSIWYG IDE that's integrated with the language like this, or like VB used to be, but personally I just can't stomach the whole "have to learn yet another language to use it" problem. From what little I've played with Lazarus and FPC it seems really nice though, and I might make use of it for some smaller projects at work in the near future. I'm sick of trying to make web apps and all the ridicul…

Learning another language, if you've already learned a few, it's a very small cost if the other benefits are big. After all, many of use learned some of the languages we learned because of the benefits that came with them.

I learned Java because of the promise (long ago) of write one run anywhere. I learned Ruby because of the promise of Rails. I learned Go because of the promise of fast and single-file-executable (maybe not the best reasons, but those were my excuses :) ). Etc.

How hard can it be to learn Pascal? Is that really a frustration or an obstacle?... If I were making desktop apps, I wouldn't care what language it was as long as I could quickly make cross platform GUI apps that did what I needed.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#107

Post by ablekh » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

Ah, good ol' Delphi ... Sweet memories ... (A former user of Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C++ Builder here.) For some desktop applications, using Lazarus is most likely fine. For a wider adoption, it needs a rich(er) set of VCLs and a seamlessly integrated way to build modern Web applications. Just my 2c.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#108

Post by boznz » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

Thanks guys. Getting better all the time..

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#109

Post by WaltPurvis » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #95

nly wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QML has provided what you want for a decade, and it runs on Linux, macOS, Windows and Android

Interesting. Thanks. On first impressions QML looks more suited toward multimedia applications than CRUD or business applications. But, we can test that theory...

I use QML exclusively for "CRUD or business applications" (i.e., desktop apps with some kind of database); it works quite well.

Re: Lazarus 2.0 RC3 – Delphi-compatible cross-platform IDE

#110

Post by saganus » Wed, Jan 09, 2019, 5:13 AM UTC

thijsvandien wrote: post #97

saganus wrote: post #71

Has anyone used a recent Lazarus version to create apps that can connect easily to an HTTP API? Some months ago I had a need to create a "quick and dirty" API utility for internal use and I remembered about Lazarus. However I couldn't find an HTTP client component that I could use. I just wanted to do the equivalent of a curl GET/POST call. I'm not sure if maybe I'm not familiar enough with the wiki structure so I mi…

Indy is one of the more commonly used networking libraries. It’s open source and in active development (with few breaking changes). Works for Delphi as well as FPC. I’ve had great success with it for FTP, HTTP, POP3, and SMTP.

Thanks for the recommendation!