Hello,
I had an interest in learning Delphi, and some very friendly individuals on Freenode pointed me to the direction to Free Pascal and Lazarus.
I had a few general questions:
Delphi and Free Pascal, programming wise - Are there differences? If so, what?
If I write an application and give it to someone, will they need to install anything to run it? Any Free Pascal runtime, libraries, any of that, or do they just take my executable (in most cases) and execute it?
What are the major differences between the two?
I have limited knowledge, I've played around with Delphi and Free Pascal, and so far I haven't noticed differences, yet I was just doing very simple tasks, outputting text as well as results of variables.
As far as cross-platform applications goes, I am assuming I would need to actually compile on that specific platform? For example, if I were to design an application and want to permit Mac users to use it, I would have to then compile on a Mac, or would the Free Pascal compiler be able to compile for another platform on the native platform (if that makes sense?)?
An overall question would also be... I'm interested in learning Pascal, I looked at Delphi because of the RAD "things", and I'm told Lazarus and Free Pascal are just as good... Are these all good and accurate statements? Is Free Pascal the right way to go?
I'm just trying to make sure that I'm going in the right direction, and this is the right way to go... I like what I see so far, I just really want to make sure everything will work correctly and that Free Pascal is "just as good" as Delphi, I guess is a way to put it. I don't mean that in an offensive way... I like free, can't beat that... I guess I am just trying to make sure that Free Pascal will work just as good as the non-free products. I am liking what I see so far, I would just be frustrated if I took the time to learn some things then realize that Free Pascal isn't all that great that I keep hearing it is.
Thanks again.