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This seems a good starting point for a complex yet possibly constructive tool-related discussion. I recently started building a bunch of personal productivity

This seems a good starting point for a complex yet possibly constructive tool-related discussion. I recently started building a bunch of personal productivity and hobby apps using Lazarus / Free Pascal, because there are quite a few things I didn't want to deal with from the web development world: - Constant browser upgrades that can instantly change how well your JS tools work, especially if you integrate third-party components like CKEditor - The sheer number of different types of updates that are spread across various front- and back-end contexts: HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP/More JS/whatever, but then you've also got to consider your choice of editor / coding environment, whether you're using SASS, any deployment tools, fonts and font services, etc. - Having a single binary to use vs. needing to open a web browser which will then try to tie everything together for you, meanwhile maybe you have good reason not to be using a web browser at all - Working with tons of files that exist locally, and will always exist locally, and which you don't want to add to a server or the cloud (doable via the web tools but just a bit weird in its way) It's been nice to just build a thing I need and see it immediately fit into normal native desktop app characteristics, meanwhile I can focus on the productive logic and workflow. But that doesn't really even sum it up, does it? You can do _something like that_ on the web...it's just different. I found myself with ample time to design an icon for my latest desktop app, having completed all the main functions, and caught myself smiling at the thought--it was a good feeling.

asdasdasdasdwd 7y ago
Decades ago I discovered HTA (Html Applications). It was a program from MS that let you build applications using a single html file. It had no browser UI in it, had it's own button in the menu bar, and other than the default white background it looked like a native application. All you needed to update it was to edit the file and reload the application, no compilation step needed. You could embed scripts and styles and even images so it could be one file if you wanted. I used it for building small toy apps. It was the times of IE5, I didn't really care about browser upgrades. Better of all, the files were small and you didn't need to package an executable since all Windows machines had the executable already.
Sophistifunk 7y ago
Does Lazarus have a good GUI story on MacOS yet?
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  I'm end-to-end Linux here and migrating all our Macs to Linux so I'm not sure. The dev team seems responsive enough that I'd make sure you're using the very latest version you can get, and maybe the situation has changed since whenever you tried it last.
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  Good, no, but there is a working one. The Carbon backend is still the best "native" option, though thanks to Catalina that isn't really an option anymore. The Cocoa backend has issues, but nowadays gets all the effort so things will improve faster than previously (but you most likely want to check the development versions). The most stable and featureful backend is most likely Qt though, largely because it is also used by people on Linux. There aren't that many Mac developers after all (and Apple doesn't make it exactly easy for them). In any case, macOS will always be a sort of "third wheel" for Lazarus since it is the most "alien" to the way it works. After all the API was designed (by the Delphi developers) for Windows and it feels most comfortable in Windows-like environments. Of course IMO even that is much better than a web-based environment which doesn't feel comfortable anywhere :-P

asdasdasdasdwd 7y ago

Decades ago I discovered HTA (Html Applications). It was a program from MS that let you build applications using a single html file. It had no browser UI in it, had it's own button in the menu bar, and other than the default white background it looked like a native application. All you needed to update it was to edit the file and reload the application, no compilation step needed. You could embed scripts and styles and even images so it could be one file if you wanted. I used it for building small toy apps. It was the times of IE5, I didn't really care about browser upgrades. Better of all, the files were small and you didn't need to package an executable since all Windows machines had the executable already.

Sophistifunk 7y ago

Does Lazarus have a good GUI story on MacOS yet?

themodelplumber 7y ago
I'm end-to-end Linux here and migrating all our Macs to Linux so I'm not sure. The dev team seems responsive enough that I'd make sure you're using the very latest version you can get, and maybe the situation has changed since whenever you tried it last.
badsectoracula 7y ago
Good, no, but there is a working one. The Carbon backend is still the best "native" option, though thanks to Catalina that isn't really an option anymore. The Cocoa backend has issues, but nowadays gets all the effort so things will improve faster than previously (but you most likely want to check the development versions). The most stable and featureful backend is most likely Qt though, largely because it is also used by people on Linux. There aren't that many Mac developers after all (and Apple doesn't make it exactly easy for them). In any case, macOS will always be a sort of "third wheel" for Lazarus since it is the most "alien" to the way it works. After all the API was designed (by the Delphi developers) for Windows and it feels most comfortable in Windows-like environments. Of course IMO even that is much better than a web-based environment which doesn't feel comfortable anywhere :-P