3 ms·

If you want to try Delphi Lazarus with Free Pascal (http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/) makes for a pretty close FOSS r

If you want to try Delphi Lazarus with Free Pascal (http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/) makes for a pretty close FOSS reimplementation of the same Object Pascal language and the RAD IDE functionality. The IDE is reasonably mature but sadly not fully compatible with Borland Delphi 7, so you can't quite rely on a Delphi tutorial. It is cross-platform. The language combines reference counting and manual memory management, has modules and handling strings in it is pleasant compared to (vanilla) C or even C++ (which it is meant to compete with). Unfortunately, last I checked the Unicode support was imperfect. One thing I've been wondering about lately is if Free Pascal is a good alternative to C or Go for shipping self-contained static binaries to run on *nix. I haven't tried it yet but the small(ish) static binaries the Free Pascal compiler produces and the lack of libc dependencies in theory make it an attractive option if you want to write something to run on OpenWrt on your router. Has anyone here used FPC for that? How are the MIPS and ARM backends?

tluyben2 13y ago
I pick up Lazarus ever so often because I loved Delphi (it was my competitive edge; everyone was doing VC++ and I ate their lunches. And dinners.) back in the day. Lazarus as being FPC + libraries is great, but the IDE is still really bad in my opinion. It is unstable to say the least. I wish it was more solid or that Embarcadero would just get smart and open source the whole thing so it actually would have a chance. I'll keep checking though...
vram22 13y ago
Adding my 2c to this discussion: I saw just recently, via SourceForge's email newsletter, that Free Pascal made it to SourceForge Project Of The Month (POTM): http://sourceforge.net/blog/april-2014-project-of-the-month-free-pascal/ http://sourceforge.net/blog/april-2014-project-of-the-month-... I've used various Delphi versions, a little, for personal projects [1], off on on, and liked it. A pity that the free Turbo Delphi Explorer version was discontinued. (TDE was released and then stopped when Borland was in its CodeGear incarnation some years ago.) As others have said, hope Embarcadero comes out with a low-end free or low cost version of Delphi. (They did have a Delphi XE Starter Edition, not sure if it is still there.) I've also read off and on that Delphi (and other Borland products) were/are big in Germany and other European countries. [1] http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/08/digital-clock-v10-in-3-lines-of-delphi.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/08/digital-clock-v10-in-3-lin...
- vram22 13y ago
  Re [1] above: Image of the digital clock gone from the post, sorry. But it was just a narrow horizontal window with a text box in it, that showed the current time, updating every second, something like the LED digital clocks you see at railway stations or airports.
justincormack 13y ago
If you want to compile static Linux binaries, Musl libc is your best bet. http://www.musl-libc.org/ http://www.musl-libc.org/ - works with most things, and it is small. It has Mips and Arm support.

tluyben2 13y ago

I pick up Lazarus ever so often because I loved Delphi (it was my competitive edge; everyone was doing VC++ and I ate their lunches. And dinners.) back in the day. Lazarus as being FPC + libraries is great, but the IDE is still really bad in my opinion. It is unstable to say the least. I wish it was more solid or that Embarcadero would just get smart and open source the whole thing so it actually would have a chance. I'll keep checking though...

vram22 13y ago

Adding my 2c to this discussion: I saw just recently, via SourceForge's email newsletter, that Free Pascal made it to SourceForge Project Of The Month (POTM): http://sourceforge.net/blog/april-2014-project-of-the-month-free-pascal/ http://sourceforge.net/blog/april-2014-project-of-the-month-... I've used various Delphi versions, a little, for personal projects [1], off on on, and liked it. A pity that the free Turbo Delphi Explorer version was discontinued. (TDE was released and then stopped when Borland was in its CodeGear incarnation some years ago.) As others have said, hope Embarcadero comes out with a low-end free or low cost version of Delphi. (They did have a Delphi XE Starter Edition, not sure if it is still there.) I've also read off and on that Delphi (and other Borland products) were/are big in Germany and other European countries. [1] http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/08/digital-clock-v10-in-3-lines-of-delphi.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2010/08/digital-clock-v10-in-3-lin...

vram22 13y ago
Re [1] above: Image of the digital clock gone from the post, sorry. But it was just a narrow horizontal window with a text box in it, that showed the current time, updating every second, something like the LED digital clocks you see at railway stations or airports.

justincormack 13y ago

If you want to compile static Linux binaries, Musl libc is your best bet. http://www.musl-libc.org/ http://www.musl-libc.org/ - works with most things, and it is small. It has Mips and Arm support.