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For those interested, Free Pascal and Lazarus, the free open source implementation of Delphi, is amazing. It has an active development community and works on mo

by sysrpl 7y ago

For those interested, Free Pascal and Lazarus, the free open source implementation of Delphi, is amazing. It has an active development community and works on most all platforms. https://www.getlazarus.org/learn/tutorials/introduction/ https://www.getlazarus.org/learn/tutorials/introduction/

imagine99 7y ago
What are the advantages / pros of this vs. the free Delphi Community Edition? Seriously asking, as I've been out of the "Delphi sphere" too long and not really familiar with the latest developments but looking to get back into it.
- sysrpl 7y ago
  The advantages? The compile works on must every CPU and platform, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Gameboy Advanced, Amiga, and on and on. Also it's open source, so when you are writing code you can actually navigate to the underlying sources and step into everything with the debugger if you want. Finally, it comes with library support for so much more than Delphi, including Google APIs, FreeType, Cairo, Fuse, and so on. Oh and it can also build to Java byte code and run in a Java JVM, also to Android. Did I mention it's free and open source under active development?
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    "The compile works on must every CPU and platform" Not just the compiler. If the board has enough juice one can run the entire IDE itself on it, therefore developing on the same iron. I've tried Lazarus on old H3 based NanoPIs and slowness aside (microSD, years old board, 1G RAM) it was perfectly usable to write, compile and run code on the same board. Not an ideal condition, still speaks a lot on why Open Source is great. I wish the IDE supported more languages and compilers though, and even a basic port of the LCL and debugger to them would be a huge achievement.
  - nurettin 7y ago
    But does it have devexpress widgets? A pivot grid is a really nice thing to have.
haunter 7y ago
What's the difference between this and https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/?
- exikyut 7y ago
  (Same thing. Not sure why there's two websites.)
  - haunter 7y ago
    Ok I kinda find out. https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ is made by the Free Pascal team, that's the "official" version. It has precompiled binaries to download https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=about https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=about https://www.getlazarus.org/ https://www.getlazarus.org/ is a different version (but not sure by how much), using download scripts https://www.getlazarus.org/about/ https://www.getlazarus.org/about/
bmn__ 7y ago
> Free Pascal and Lazarus […] is amazing. No, it is less than mediocre. It has not kept up at any sufficient pace to other languages and environments. Just a small excerpt because I don't have the nerve to write an exhaustive critique: bignum, first-class functions, generators, lazy lists, lexical scope, macros, namespaces. Single window in Lazarus requires recompilation that errors out in CheckLst.pas instead of being a preference somewhere in a menu.
- bjoli 7y ago
  What are your issues with scope in FPC? Namespaces have been supported since 3.0. The other things I understand though. I much prefer Pascal syntax and compilation time, but I have started reaching for c++ these days
  - bmn__ 7y ago
    > What are your issues with scope in FPC? Simple begin/end should create a scope, cf. { … } in ES6 or Perl. Instead, to make it work, the programmer has to nest named procedures. > Namespaces have been supported since 3.0. Sorry, I did not notice. Apparently it's been available for 5 years, but the standard library or other popular libraries did not adopt the feature.

by sysrpl 7y ago

imagine99 7y ago

What are the advantages / pros of this vs. the free Delphi Community Edition? Seriously asking, as I've been out of the "Delphi sphere" too long and not really familiar with the latest developments but looking to get back into it.

sysrpl 7y ago
The advantages? The compile works on must every CPU and platform, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Raspberry Pi, Gameboy Advanced, Amiga, and on and on. Also it's open source, so when you are writing code you can actually navigate to the underlying sources and step into everything with the debugger if you want. Finally, it comes with library support for so much more than Delphi, including Google APIs, FreeType, Cairo, Fuse, and so on. Oh and it can also build to Java byte code and run in a Java JVM, also to Android. Did I mention it's free and open source under active development?
- squarefoot 7y ago
  "The compile works on must every CPU and platform" Not just the compiler. If the board has enough juice one can run the entire IDE itself on it, therefore developing on the same iron. I've tried Lazarus on old H3 based NanoPIs and slowness aside (microSD, years old board, 1G RAM) it was perfectly usable to write, compile and run code on the same board. Not an ideal condition, still speaks a lot on why Open Source is great. I wish the IDE supported more languages and compilers though, and even a basic port of the LCL and debugger to them would be a huge achievement.
- nurettin 7y ago
  But does it have devexpress widgets? A pivot grid is a really nice thing to have.

haunter 7y ago

What's the difference between this and https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/?

exikyut 7y ago
(Same thing. Not sure why there's two websites.)
- haunter 7y ago
  Ok I kinda find out. https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ is made by the Free Pascal team, that's the "official" version. It has precompiled binaries to download https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=about https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=about https://www.getlazarus.org/ https://www.getlazarus.org/ is a different version (but not sure by how much), using download scripts https://www.getlazarus.org/about/ https://www.getlazarus.org/about/

bmn__ 7y ago

> Free Pascal and Lazarus […] is amazing. No, it is less than mediocre. It has not kept up at any sufficient pace to other languages and environments. Just a small excerpt because I don't have the nerve to write an exhaustive critique: bignum, first-class functions, generators, lazy lists, lexical scope, macros, namespaces. Single window in Lazarus requires recompilation that errors out in CheckLst.pas instead of being a preference somewhere in a menu.

bjoli 7y ago
What are your issues with scope in FPC? Namespaces have been supported since 3.0. The other things I understand though. I much prefer Pascal syntax and compilation time, but I have started reaching for c++ these days
- bmn__ 7y ago
  > What are your issues with scope in FPC? Simple begin/end should create a scope, cf. { … } in ES6 or Perl. Instead, to make it work, the programmer has to nest named procedures. > Namespaces have been supported since 3.0. Sorry, I did not notice. Apparently it's been available for 5 years, but the standard library or other popular libraries did not adopt the feature.