5 ms·

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

by Yuioup 5y ago

analognoise 5y ago
Lazarus/FreePascal tech slaps. It will blow your mind.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Dropping by to second this statement: it really is a good example of RAD (rapid application development) for desktop software, since it supports a variety of platforms, has a UI toolkit that just works across them and doesn't need to depend on many components on the target system either, or a particular version of a particular runtime. The language is also pretty simple and doesn't feel that much worse than Java, whereas the Lazarus IDE just reminds me of NetBeans - it's no JetBrains product, but it's also perfectly passable and has everything you need. The compile times are also excellent, the compiler itself is decently friendly with its error messages and the runtime itself lets you write code that feels safer than C++ in most cases. Oh, and it really comes with "batteries included" - you'll find components for everything from UI elements, to database access, to working with events and such. Here's actually a large list of all sorts of software that has been created in it: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Free_Pascal https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Free_Pascal Now, the bad things. It's basically dead. Sure, there are contributors who keep working and they do have a roadmap here: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Roadmap https://wiki.freepascal.org/Roadmap However, there is no hype around Pascal, many people disliked the language for a variety of reasons. No one also seems to care much about its advantages for some odd reason, instead people are talking about Electron, JavaFX/OpenJFX, .NET MAUI/Avalonia or other new technologies that attempt to do what Lazarus did many years ago, with varying degrees of success. Sadly, to me it seems like technologies live or die by how much hype there is around them and how many thousands of man hours people are collectively willing to put into them to create brilliance. And Lazarus doesn't have that anymore. Compare both the IDE, its approach to things, as well as Pascal nowadays with the likes of Rust - the latter gets hundreds of libraries created for it, thousands of tutorials and will have developers that literally grow up to like and use it. The former feels neglected in comparison, you won't be doing web development while utilizing super popular libraries that attempt to cover most concerns like Rocket (https://rocket.rs/ https://rocket.rs/) does. You also won't be interfacing with the likes of GraphQL, or even RabbitMQ, due to a lack of interest in developing libraries for those, as well as many other technologies. It might be a similar story for something like YAML or TOML. Nor will you find many good books and tutorials, maybe apart from this nice piece of writing: https://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal_introduction.html https://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal_introduction.html
  - gaganyaan 5y ago
    I clicked on the the castle-engine.io link out of curiosity and then went to the Hello World example, and was greeted by this line: {$mode objfpc}{$H+}{$J-} // Just use this line in all modern sources That screams "lots of old cruft". Poking around the rest of that tutorial, I see crufty things like inheritance, manual freeing of memory, and a whole section on CORBA. I can't speak to why Pascal died, but I would guess that historical baggage is the thing that's preventing a revival.
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      In many ways, that's the price you pay for long term backwards compatibility. After all, JavaScript didn't remove the function(){} syntax either when the arrow syntax was introduced. Moreso, React hasn't remove class based components either as of yet, even though we have hooks and function components now. I actually find myself wishing that Java 8+ hadn't removed so much of the standard library without backwards compatible ways to reintroduce the logic, since now the transition from 8 to newer releases is a massive pain, especially because of migrating a 1M SLoC enterprise app is no small feat. So yes, Pascal has baggage but it's not always a bad thing.

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

by Yuioup 5y ago

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

analognoise 5y ago

Lazarus/FreePascal tech slaps. It will blow your mind.

KronisLV 5y ago
Dropping by to second this statement: it really is a good example of RAD (rapid application development) for desktop software, since it supports a variety of platforms, has a UI toolkit that just works across them and doesn't need to depend on many components on the target system either, or a particular version of a particular runtime. The language is also pretty simple and doesn't feel that much worse than Java, whereas the Lazarus IDE just reminds me of NetBeans - it's no JetBrains product, but it's also perfectly passable and has everything you need. The compile times are also excellent, the compiler itself is decently friendly with its error messages and the runtime itself lets you write code that feels safer than C++ in most cases. Oh, and it really comes with "batteries included" - you'll find components for everything from UI elements, to database access, to working with events and such. Here's actually a large list of all sorts of software that has been created in it: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Free_Pascal https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Free_Pascal Now, the bad things. It's basically dead. Sure, there are contributors who keep working and they do have a roadmap here: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Roadmap https://wiki.freepascal.org/Roadmap However, there is no hype around Pascal, many people disliked the language for a variety of reasons. No one also seems to care much about its advantages for some odd reason, instead people are talking about Electron, JavaFX/OpenJFX, .NET MAUI/Avalonia or other new technologies that attempt to do what Lazarus did many years ago, with varying degrees of success. Sadly, to me it seems like technologies live or die by how much hype there is around them and how many thousands of man hours people are collectively willing to put into them to create brilliance. And Lazarus doesn't have that anymore. Compare both the IDE, its approach to things, as well as Pascal nowadays with the likes of Rust - the latter gets hundreds of libraries created for it, thousands of tutorials and will have developers that literally grow up to like and use it. The former feels neglected in comparison, you won't be doing web development while utilizing super popular libraries that attempt to cover most concerns like Rocket (https://rocket.rs/ https://rocket.rs/) does. You also won't be interfacing with the likes of GraphQL, or even RabbitMQ, due to a lack of interest in developing libraries for those, as well as many other technologies. It might be a similar story for something like YAML or TOML. Nor will you find many good books and tutorials, maybe apart from this nice piece of writing: https://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal_introduction.html https://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal_introduction.html
- gaganyaan 5y ago
  I clicked on the the castle-engine.io link out of curiosity and then went to the Hello World example, and was greeted by this line: {$mode objfpc}{$H+}{$J-} // Just use this line in all modern sources That screams "lots of old cruft". Poking around the rest of that tutorial, I see crufty things like inheritance, manual freeing of memory, and a whole section on CORBA. I can't speak to why Pascal died, but I would guess that historical baggage is the thing that's preventing a revival.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    In many ways, that's the price you pay for long term backwards compatibility. After all, JavaScript didn't remove the function(){} syntax either when the arrow syntax was introduced. Moreso, React hasn't remove class based components either as of yet, even though we have hooks and function components now. I actually find myself wishing that Java 8+ hadn't removed so much of the standard library without backwards compatible ways to reintroduce the logic, since now the transition from 8 to newer releases is a massive pain, especially because of migrating a 1M SLoC enterprise app is no small feat. So yes, Pascal has baggage but it's not always a bad thing.