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Author Topic: WANTED: A Few Great Apps  (Read 40479 times)

ps

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #60 on: August 20, 2017, 12:19:08 am »
So what types of apps would probably not be suitable to showcase?
  • Apps that use a non-standard look, feel or practice for a target platform.
Hmm we are finishing brand new CRM system with all fancy modern web like UI so: one page, no forms (only panels), no standard controls (only TMemo without borders), no standard comoboxes (only TMemo with panels ...) etc.(this was hard part as hell, but it will be best looking CRM in the whole world (including all web CRMs)). It's ok for showcase? :) (and yes we use Lazarus for Win/Mac/Linux and Delphi for Mobile (Android/iOS)). Backend is in PHP :)
Small simple CSS/box model implementation: https://github.com/pst2d/csscontrols/tree/dev

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #61 on: August 20, 2017, 12:26:10 am »
It's ok for showcase? :) (and yes we use Lazarus for Win/Mac/Linux and Delphi for Mobile (Android/iOS)). Backend is in PHP :)

Sounds quite ambitious. Why not start with a blog on what you've created? I don't know diddly about CRM and would tend to dismiss it as something not interesting. Do a blog that explains why I should find it interesting.


lainz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #62 on: August 20, 2017, 12:50:06 am »
We can start making a good showcase website with the already made stuff like lazpaint, text editors that I've seen in the wiki, and tools for programming also

What I'm thinking of is more app oriented rather than programmer and tool oriented. With apps, you immediately have the chance to do something visually interesting. Contrast these two sites, one of apps, one of modules:

https://electron.atom.io/#apps

https://www.mapbox.com/about/open/

Now, Mapbox's site is quite nice, but the simplicity and visual nature of Electron's site really grabs my eye. I don't know what criteria they used for selecting these particular apps out of the vast list of apps built with Electron, but most have really nice logos. I really like the Insomnia logo.

Something like the website I did for OPM

Packages.lazarus-ide.org

Not bad, but a couple suggestions:
(1) Do these packages have icons or logos? You have a lot of room to the right of the package name. Stick the icon/logo in there.
(2) Make the control that looks like a dropdown but isn't into a normal dropdown. Very disconcerting to me to see that kind of non-standard behavior.

Well LazPaint is actually an app, a visual app  :)

1) These don't have.
2) Well is a standar dropdown, the style is the bootstrap default, and the look and feel of the items is managed by the browser, so is native actually. But it can be changed to a 'bootstrap native' with a better visual that has the same look and feel as the search for example.

BTW I'm thinking of using Material Design, not bootstrap for that website, is more visual than bootstrap.

One of these lists:
https://material.angularjs.org/latest/demo/list

And the normal input
https://material.angularjs.org/latest/demo/input

Or the autocomplete input
https://material.angularjs.org/latest/demo/autocomplete

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #63 on: August 20, 2017, 12:54:36 am »
1) These don't have.

They don't have palette icons or anything?

2) Well is a standar dropdown

On Firefox/Mac, when I click the dropdown arrow, or in fact anywhere in the control, a separate menu pops up in the middle of the screen, unattached to the dropdown control. That is not a standard dropdown.

Edit: The Angular stuff looks good.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 12:56:28 am by Phil »

taazz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #64 on: August 20, 2017, 01:05:49 am »
Here in Brazil, the strength of Free Pascal and Lazarus relies on making software for commercial and database related applications, but that is a market niche not a general audience.

I feel your pain. I do scientific modeling. Not exactly a conversation starter.

Maybe a key is to find something about that kind of software that _is_ interesting to a larger audience, particularly younger programmers. For example, making anything that's commercial seems very interesting to me.
You are being unfair. As far as I can see we have everything needed for showcase we just don't have any spinners to spin things around. for example a small show case about scientific modeling easy and fast will bring more interest than a fresh and perky crm/erp and all that yesterdays news. A free, access type, of application with two or three ready made applications for the end user and running on win/mac/linux, are enough. We do not need application we need community, libraries, youtube channels, blocks etc. do your part on your knowledge niche a small easy and fast to use (not execute so much) scientific modeling that you know well start spinning leaving usable cramps all over the place for more scientist to follow and test. some one with hardware experience or not could use raspberry PI for a garden watering management system or a Variable Speed Drive for stepper motors, we already have a CAD written in lazarus a small mill CNC based on raspberry or other type of arm not anything big something small for modeling enthusiasts, open source, free, commercial, maker, mentality all valid as long as they are willing to use a powered by chetah on their block/channel/forum plans etc. 

Now time to take my own advice..

PS
I'm not bashing crm/erp/ etc they are all welcome as long as we can spin it a bit.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 01:08:06 am by taazz »
Good judgement is the result of experience … Experience is the result of bad judgement.

OS : Windows 7 64 bit
Laz: Lazarus 1.4.4 FPC 2.6.4 i386-win32-win32/win64

lainz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #65 on: August 20, 2017, 01:07:18 am »
I tested it on Firefox and chrome on Linux and windows and works like a native one

The behavior you describe is like it works on Android. Like a pop-up. BTW is the native look on Android.

So it's a native one but it changes depending on the platform

Is an HTML5 element.

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #66 on: August 20, 2017, 01:20:01 am »
The behavior you describe is like it works on Android. Like a pop-up. BTW is the native look on Android.

Well, in any case, use the Angular stuff and it will should be fine.

One thing that's always worth looking at with showcase pages or even just the first page of a Web site is typeface. Here are some examples:

Angular links from above: It appears from their stylesheet that they prefer Roboto, followed by Helvetica Neue if Roboto is not available. Looks great here on my Mac, probably because it's using Helvetica Neue, the world's most beloved typeface (Roboto is an Android typeface, I believe).

Swift homepage: https://swift.org/

Look how clean it looks, not a visual cocktail like some sites. Font? Appears to prefer Helvetica Neue.

Lazarus home page: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Page looks a lot better than it did a couple years ago, but I would lose the bottom 2/3 and just keep the stuff at the top - only what fits on one page. And change the font. What does it use? Again, looking at the stylesheet, it appears to be Segoe UI. What the heck it that? A Windows UI font. Probably not what you want for a Web page.


avra

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #67 on: August 20, 2017, 01:41:19 am »
I don't think that anyone mentioned here that Total Commander 64bit is compiled with Lazarus since 2011 :D

http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=47005
ct2laz - Conversion between Lazarus and CodeTyphon
bithelpers - Bit manipulation for standard types
pasettimino - Siemens S7 PLC lib

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #68 on: August 20, 2017, 02:04:28 am »
I know many companies that have to offer a better salary and train inside the fresh young programmers just hired to maintain or develop Pascal made software.

I've heard that anecdotally, but it's hard to find any evidence for it in surveys:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#top-paying-technologies


Akira1364

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #69 on: August 20, 2017, 04:47:32 am »
I know many companies that have to offer a better salary and train inside the fresh young programmers just hired to maintain or develop Pascal made software.

I've heard that anecdotally, but it's hard to find any evidence for it in surveys:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#top-paying-technologies

Shouldn't be surprising to anyone, honestly... Object Pascal is my favorite language by far, but there is no conceivable way I could possibly come close to making a living programming if it was the only language I knew. As it stands I just happen to work for a company with a relatively large legacy Delphi codebase that I generally only get to work on when I'm not doing my main job writing C++/C#/sometimes Python code on their flagship applications. (And even then it's only as a maintainer... they're certainly not ever going to be adding new features to the Delphi application.) Also, I would say that upwards of 90% of the younger programmers I work with have absolutely never heard of Delphi or Lazarus, and are only vaguely aware of Pascal in the most "historic" sense possible.

That being said, am I really seeing people in this thread advocate for Electron as a viable GUI-app-development-environment replacement over Lazarus? Yeah, no thanks, ever, for a variety of reasons:

-Every Electron app literally just bundles what amounts to a copy of Chrome (and all of the related binaries) with it when you, ahem, "build" them. (As they are in no way actually "native" apps.. just web apps that hide the fact that they're web apps.) However, unlike the actual Chrome, the bundled copies are immediately and permanently guaranteed to never be updated or receive bug-fixes as they aren't connected to the normal auto-update service.

-Because of the bundled dependencies I mentioned above, the total disk-space "payload" for each Electron app is generally around 250-500 mb. That's not HUGE in this day and age (although it's also definitely not ideal), but the more Electron apps there are in the wild are the quicker that adds up.

-They tend to use far more memory than they should, regardless of what they're specifically doing. (This is, again, related to the fact they're they're running through a bundled Chrome!)

-They're not particularly performant. Javascript is not fast. There are some offshoots of it that are a bit better than "vanilla JS", but overall they are for the most part entirely unable to compete with the level of optimization you can get with a compiled application.

-It has drastically fewer GUI components available for it than Lazarus (or Delphi) and is unlikely to ever come anywhere close to catching up as it simply isn't designed to be extensible in the same way.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 06:18:59 am by Akira1364 »

bylaardt

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #70 on: August 20, 2017, 07:33:14 am »
I know many companies that have to offer a better salary and train inside the fresh young programmers just hired to maintain or develop Pascal made software.

I've heard that anecdotally, but it's hard to find any evidence for it in surveys:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#top-paying-technologies
Valdir.marcos told the truth.
I'm an accountant in my primary job here in Brazil.
Our government change tax rule every time, and you have a minimum time to adapt. Pascal and the rad concept is the best way to have results in a reasonable time.
Here you learn programming outside the school and new programmers have no  enough knowledg on pascal, accounting, business or taxes tax assessment.
It's easiest trainning a accountant to learn pascal and paying more for this than the opposit.
Our lemma is: "Desenvolvido por contadores, para contadores", something like: developed by accountants, for accountants.
In Others jobs occours the same.

It is very common to see that a good programmer needs to know several programming languages and ignore or forget that in fact more important than this is to know about the final objective of the program that will develop.
Whats the point on having multiple programming languages on your curriculum vitae to be hired to develop something that you do not even know the technical of the science where the app will be used?

danPadric

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #71 on: August 20, 2017, 11:26:13 am »
Hello everyone. May this message find you well.

I step into this conversation as a stranger; ignorant of all the good work being done here. I apologise. Please know I mean no disrespect.

That being said, am I really seeing people in this thread advocate for Electron as a viable GUI-app-development-environment replacement over Lazarus? Yeah, no thanks, ever, for a variety of reasons:

@Akira1364: I agree with you. From an engineering standpoint and user point of view it is bad practice to drag so much weight with you.

I think it is worth understanding the lure of a framework(?) like Electron, which links to the theme of this topic. Please be patient with me as I work up to my point.

---
Pascal was my first love. Pascal without Delphi. The love affair lasted 3 years long in the mid '90s. On several occasions I have tried to get up and running with the help of Lazarus. ..and failed.

Now again I am dabbling with coding. This time playing with Visual Studio Code and (more so) Atom. Both built onto Electron.

Seeing the demo projects here, I think - "wow! I wish I knew how to do that!"

Seeing add-ons for Atom - "wow! That is nice. Let me modify it to work as I want it to."
---

The motivation for designers to choice a language/framework/ide is how quickly you can get results. Especially the first results; this motivates a designer to move forward.

This what hooked me onto Atom vs VSCode - how quickly did I get a result. (Only playing with customizations & creating a custom grammar.) A month's worth of dabbling in free time exposed me to Coffeescript, Javascript, LESS and so on, all because of the first attempt being easy.

I am not comparing Lazarus with Atom. I am focussing on the structure that an Electron project puts down that makes it approachable even for a n00b like me.

Showcasing Pascal projects is not what going to people jump in IMHO. Some type of framework or template that makes it easy to start experimenting - that is the ticket. Even a LITE version of Lazarus can help.. let the newbie designer discover what he needs, yet has the tools to create things quickly.

Now... maybe you have all the attributes I am thinking of. If you do, then why is it that a stranger like me did not notice this while strolling casually by?

Regards,
 Dan Padric

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #72 on: August 20, 2017, 05:19:43 pm »
That being said, am I really seeing people in this thread advocate for Electron as a viable GUI-app-development-environment replacement over Lazarus?

No, I don't think that's what you're seeing. What you are seeing is people who are curious about or trying to understand the phenomenon of Electron. How is it that a development tool with so many apparent deficiencies is used to create so many good-looking apps? (https://electron.atom.io/#apps)

I would suggest that its appeal is to the many, many developers who are already creating Web apps, working with JavaScript and node.js, etc. Now they can create a desktop app, plus installers for all 3 major platforms, without much additional effort.

(I think you might be exaggerating the installed footprint of Electron apps a bit. Visual Studio Code looks to be one of the larger Electron apps. Its installed size on Mac is 216 MB. Lazarus is 700 MB + FPC. Xcode is 12.3 GB. Really, who cares?)

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #73 on: August 20, 2017, 05:23:59 pm »
It's easiest trainning a accountant to learn pascal and paying more for this than the opposit.

That's interesting. I wonder if that's more of a local situation. In the U.S., the normal arrangement is a programmer works closely with one or more specialists (so-called "domain experts"). The programmer, as you say, won't know much about the subject.

In fact, I've suggested for years that if a programmer is casting around for good ideas for apps, or wants to start a company but isn't sure what kind of software to specialize in, team up with some boffin who has expertise and ideas but can't program - a good division of labor.

Thaddy

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #74 on: August 20, 2017, 05:30:07 pm »
May look good.... but...I tried just one and got this:
Specialize a type, not a var.

 

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