3 ms·

Why would anyone use that over Lazarus (https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/)?

pjmlp 2mo ago
The IDE experience, they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows, and the industry that cares about Object Pascal, usually only cares because of Delphi. Don't get me wrong, FreePascal is great, but it hardly has a presence at big corporations. If they no longer use Delphi, means they have long moved into either Java or .NET.
- badsectoracula 2mo ago
  > they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows That is not the case, Free Pascal has improved the language before Delphi and Delphi followed, e.g. FPC added generics before Delphi and more recently it implemented management operators before Delphi. One big annoyance though is that when Delphi does decide to implement some language feature introduced by Free Pascal they implement it using an incompatible syntax which is petty (at best). FPC then has to support both their own syntax (usually in OBJFPC mode) and Delphi's syntax (usually in DELPHI mode) to let people share code between FPC and Delphi.
FooBarWidget 2mo ago
How good is Lazarus nowadays? Haven't taken a look for 20 years so this is a genuine question.
- DanielHB 2mo ago
  I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.
- kmaitreys 2mo ago
  If you can bear his idiosyncrasies, Tsoding did a stream on it recently. It was pretty cool. https://youtu.be/4vcA7yJMoPg https://youtu.be/4vcA7yJMoPg
- mkovach 2mo ago
  Over the past year, I've replaced quite a few of my Tcl/Tk GUI apps with versions built in Lazarus. Lazarus 3.x was a bit quirky for my tastes, but 4.x has been very good. It's not quite the Delphi experience, but it's close enough that I could see myself using Lazarus for day-to-day development and being fairly productive with it.
- adornKey 2mo ago
  It improved a lot and it is good. On Linux I think the default way to go is still Lazarus. But with Delphi you can buy more shiny polished things on top. So for commercial use Delphi is more relevant. And there are enough differences in compatibility, so you most likely don't want to deal with both at the same time.
- cestith 2mo ago
  Someone maintains a GitHub readme comparing Delphi and FPC with Lazarus. It’s deeper than a couple of feature checklists. https://github.com/ideasawakened/delphi-and-fpc-lazarus-comparison https://github.com/ideasawakened/delphi-and-fpc-lazarus-comp...
OCTAGRAM 2mo ago
Lazarus does not support BPL. Android and iOS support are under question. Free Pascal devs for many years did not look into Ada, and looked into C++ more, and that made Free Pascal ugly. Delphi did not look into Ada either, but they looked into .NET instead, and that made Delphi not as great, but better than Free Pascal. Anything is better than C++. Delphi delivered controlled types, that was IIRC for many years in top 10 feature requests on Quality Central, until QC was purged. They call it "managed records". Delphi has got inline const syntax. They talk about inline var, but from my Ada programming experience inline const is the real game changer. When there was only local variable block, some stuff was assigned inside loop. This stuff was assigned once per iteration, but since variable is declared outside the loop, it is considered variable. Now, when inside loop, it can be assigned once and made read-only. I have some doubts that Free Pascal is up-to-date with these changes. Hi-DPI. Did not test, but questionable that Free Pascal got it right.
- zerr 2mo ago
  I wish Lazarus had support for C++ as well. Pascal/Ada's English prose syntax is a deal breaker.
  - zulux 2mo ago
    Pascal Syntax is horrible for programming. It's verbose and confining. It's wonderful for reading ten years later and figuring things out.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Apparently Markdown is much better.
- badsectoracula 2mo ago
  I'm not sure how you find Free Pascal "ugly" while Delphi not so considering that they're 99% the same language (up that to 99.9% when you compile Pascal code in "Delphi mode") :-P. > Hi-DPI. Did not test, but questionable that Free Pascal got it right. Free Pascal is the compiler and has nothing to do with Hi-DPI. Lazarus is what you probably have in mind and does Hi-DPI (in fact it can do Hi-DPI even with widgetsets like Gtk2 that themselves do not have support for it).
FpUser 2mo ago
I use both for desktop applications but as an IDE and for debugging in particular Lazarus is behind Delphi.

pjmlp 2mo ago

The IDE experience, they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows, and the industry that cares about Object Pascal, usually only cares because of Delphi. Don't get me wrong, FreePascal is great, but it hardly has a presence at big corporations. If they no longer use Delphi, means they have long moved into either Java or .NET.

badsectoracula 2mo ago
> they are the ones driving the language evolution, FreePascal follows That is not the case, Free Pascal has improved the language before Delphi and Delphi followed, e.g. FPC added generics before Delphi and more recently it implemented management operators before Delphi. One big annoyance though is that when Delphi does decide to implement some language feature introduced by Free Pascal they implement it using an incompatible syntax which is petty (at best). FPC then has to support both their own syntax (usually in OBJFPC mode) and Delphi's syntax (usually in DELPHI mode) to let people share code between FPC and Delphi.

FooBarWidget 2mo ago

How good is Lazarus nowadays? Haven't taken a look for 20 years so this is a genuine question.

DanielHB 2mo ago
I used briefly some 8 years ago, it is very good for getting full-native (including native UI toolkit) cross-platform desktop apps. It can build self contained binaries that just work. My use-case was building a simple USB-stick-portable application for windows and it was great for that.
kmaitreys 2mo ago
If you can bear his idiosyncrasies, Tsoding did a stream on it recently. It was pretty cool. https://youtu.be/4vcA7yJMoPg https://youtu.be/4vcA7yJMoPg
mkovach 2mo ago
Over the past year, I've replaced quite a few of my Tcl/Tk GUI apps with versions built in Lazarus. Lazarus 3.x was a bit quirky for my tastes, but 4.x has been very good. It's not quite the Delphi experience, but it's close enough that I could see myself using Lazarus for day-to-day development and being fairly productive with it.
adornKey 2mo ago
It improved a lot and it is good. On Linux I think the default way to go is still Lazarus. But with Delphi you can buy more shiny polished things on top. So for commercial use Delphi is more relevant. And there are enough differences in compatibility, so you most likely don't want to deal with both at the same time.
cestith 2mo ago
Someone maintains a GitHub readme comparing Delphi and FPC with Lazarus. It’s deeper than a couple of feature checklists. https://github.com/ideasawakened/delphi-and-fpc-lazarus-comparison https://github.com/ideasawakened/delphi-and-fpc-lazarus-comp...

OCTAGRAM 2mo ago

Lazarus does not support BPL. Android and iOS support are under question. Free Pascal devs for many years did not look into Ada, and looked into C++ more, and that made Free Pascal ugly. Delphi did not look into Ada either, but they looked into .NET instead, and that made Delphi not as great, but better than Free Pascal. Anything is better than C++. Delphi delivered controlled types, that was IIRC for many years in top 10 feature requests on Quality Central, until QC was purged. They call it "managed records". Delphi has got inline const syntax. They talk about inline var, but from my Ada programming experience inline const is the real game changer. When there was only local variable block, some stuff was assigned inside loop. This stuff was assigned once per iteration, but since variable is declared outside the loop, it is considered variable. Now, when inside loop, it can be assigned once and made read-only. I have some doubts that Free Pascal is up-to-date with these changes. Hi-DPI. Did not test, but questionable that Free Pascal got it right.

zerr 2mo ago
I wish Lazarus had support for C++ as well. Pascal/Ada's English prose syntax is a deal breaker.
- zulux 2mo ago
  Pascal Syntax is horrible for programming. It's verbose and confining. It's wonderful for reading ten years later and figuring things out.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Apparently Markdown is much better.
badsectoracula 2mo ago
I'm not sure how you find Free Pascal "ugly" while Delphi not so considering that they're 99% the same language (up that to 99.9% when you compile Pascal code in "Delphi mode") :-P. > Hi-DPI. Did not test, but questionable that Free Pascal got it right. Free Pascal is the compiler and has nothing to do with Hi-DPI. Lazarus is what you probably have in mind and does Hi-DPI (in fact it can do Hi-DPI even with widgetsets like Gtk2 that themselves do not have support for it).

FpUser 2mo ago

I use both for desktop applications but as an IDE and for debugging in particular Lazarus is behind Delphi.