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Author Topic: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…  (Read 41967 times)

iAnonGuy

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #45 on: October 05, 2017, 07:16:14 am »
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I think Lazarus is severely lacking in polish.

Well, I went from Turbo Pascal to Delphi 1 and 2 then moved away. My return, via Lazarus is pretty good experience indeed ! I have not seen a recent Delphi so cannot comment. But Lazarus does the job for me now and would have been fine way back then.

As for Embarcadero policies, its a pretty normal business model for people who buy and sell going businesses. If you buy a business thats doing well, you coast from there spending the absolute minimum to keep people on track. And you run it down making a good profit while you do so.
Then, someone else buys it, they put a lot of work in attracting new customers, build it up and hopefully sell it to someone else. And the cycle continues.
Embarcadero has no incentive to attract new users offering deals for hobby and small scale users, they don't pay short term.

Davo
The experience is pretty good when you have used no decent commercial delphi ide since 1996. That's not really saying much...

Lazarus is convenient, like Delphi and BCB (and VB) always had/ve been. However, you really would have to have not used a decent commercial IDE in a decade or two to find it "decent."

That's not to say it's bad. It isn't good. It's serviceable.

When it's competing against the likes of Visual Studio Community, the benchmark for decent changes. Being a RAD took doesn't make that took decent by default, nor does simply being the cheaper option you prefer.

I will say that perhaps the widget set used may have something to do with this. I use both MacOS and Windows. Lazarus and the apps it generated (I'm assuming they use GTK or Qt) do not look native on either platform.

Parts of the UI render badly in Windows as a result.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2017, 07:43:21 am by iAnonGuy »

bee

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #46 on: October 05, 2017, 08:33:20 am »
I use both MacOS and Windows. Lazarus and the apps it generated (I'm assuming they use GTK or Qt) do not look native on either platform.
AFAIK, Lazarus is able to use many UI widgetsets –including but not limited to gtk and qt-- on many platforms. But, by default it's using the native widgetset on each platform which means gdi+ on Windows, carbon or cocoa on Mac, gtk or qt on Linux. Well, of course you may also use qt on Windows or Mac since qt also works on on many platforms as well (if it's already installed).

Parts of the UI render badly in Windows as a result.
I believe it's still using native widgetset on Windows (gdi+) but poorly set and configured, unless if you compile Lazarus using different widgetset (qt?). That's one of many problems with cross platform UI programming. Managing cross platform look-and-feel is not easy even when using the native widgetset, because all little details matters, such as button size, button position, widget behaviour, component margins, default menu items, etc.
-Bee-

A long time pascal lover.

Thaddy

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #47 on: October 05, 2017, 10:19:08 am »
Platform dependent applications should look like the platform guidelines.
Not look like an idiotic programmer wants them to look. ... it certainly will not be acceptable to a normal user...
I already wrote many times that programmers are not designers.
A Windows application should look and feel like a Windows application.
A MAC application should look and feel like a MAC application.
A GTK+  application should look and feel like a GTK+ application.

and so on......

Don't be silly.
Specialize a type, not a var.

RAW

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #48 on: October 05, 2017, 02:10:12 pm »
And if someone really wants the same appearance on each platform then I think it's easy to achieve: Use a bsNone-Window and do/paint everything yourself. Then it should look the same I guess... Haven't tried this on a Mac or on Linux though...  :)
Windows 7 Pro (x64 Sp1) & Windows XP Pro (x86 Sp3).

Mr.Madguy

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #49 on: October 06, 2017, 10:19:02 am »
And if someone really wants the same appearance on each platform then I think it's easy to achieve: Use a bsNone-Window and do/paint everything yourself. Then it should look the same I guess... Haven't tried this on a Mac or on Linux though...  :)
To have cross-platform GUI framework, written on Pascal from scratch, using VCL/LCL - is actually my dream. Just because every OS has it's own GUI framework, written from scratch, but using it's own graphics library, that all have very similar functionality, such as "Draw line, draw circle, draw rect, draw text and draw bitmap". Yeah, inviting a bicycle - is bad thing, but such framework would have better performance and better compatibility.
Is it healthy for project not to have regular stable releases?
Just for fun: Code::Blocks, GCC 13 and DOS - is it possible?

Handoko

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #50 on: October 06, 2017, 01:20:10 pm »
How about using OpenGL. Nowadays, I can't find computer that doesn't support OpenGL. I already wrote my own OpenGL Visual Component Library. Have not finished, but it works correctly on Windows and Linux. The most interesting about it is it solves the problem on different display resolution by drawing using its internal fix resolution. And also it won't stretch text un-proportionally because it keeps the text width/height aspect fix. Mine only requires OpenGL 1.2 (1998).

Thaddy

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #51 on: October 06, 2017, 04:14:41 pm »
And if someone really wants the same appearance on each platform then I think it's easy to achieve: Use a bsNone-Window and do/paint everything yourself. Then it should look the same I guess... Haven't tried this on a Mac or on Linux though...  :)
Someone is usually the programmer.... NOT the user..... That is the point.....

Anyway I give you that Doom or Heretic or any game are pretty much the same on all platforms when full screen- giving away my age -, but in the ORIGINAL Mario you could cheat by jumping off screen.... And you can't with any other  version....
Specialize a type, not a var.

RAW

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #52 on: October 06, 2017, 04:21:21 pm »
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.....but in the ORIGINAL Mario you could cheat by jumping off screen.... And you can't with any other  version....
Probably a feature ...   :P
Windows 7 Pro (x64 Sp1) & Windows XP Pro (x86 Sp3).

Thaddy

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #53 on: October 06, 2017, 04:51:30 pm »
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.....but in the ORIGINAL Mario you could cheat by jumping off screen.... And you can't with any other  version....
Probably a feature ...   :P
8-) O:-)
Specialize a type, not a var.

Ian123

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #54 on: October 07, 2017, 12:33:44 pm »
I don't know if new members for forum is any guide but there has been a bit of a reduction over time.
On the other hand I have read that the numbers of people using even very popular languages are declining as the market becomes more fragmented.
Windows 10 64 bit *  Lazarus 1.8.0RC1 * i386-win32-win32/win64

Handoko

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #55 on: October 07, 2017, 01:10:36 pm »
I think the decline of Delphi has negative impact for Lazarus/FPC too. Also the rise of mobile programming.

Phil

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #56 on: October 07, 2017, 11:39:28 pm »
I don't know if new members for forum is any guide but there has been a bit of a reduction over time.

I think you might be misreading the chart. I don't think there's been much a reduction. Rather, the sign-up rate has fallen back to its normal background rate, but unlike previous years there hasn't been anything in a while to temporarily boost the rate.

The only question is how to explain the spikes in previous years. That is, what goosed the rate temporarily? I think that's pretty easy to explain:

- The big jump to about 500 / month in the 2nd half of 2012 is undoubtedly related to the release of Laz 1.0. Within a year the rate had fallen back to its background rate since no other major release had been made in the meantime.

- The jump in late 2013 and into 2014 is probably due to the runup to Laz 1.2 and its release.

- What about the enormous jump in the first half of 2011? I suspect this has something to do with the excitement over the expansion of FPC to other platforms, particularly to iOS with FPC's ObjectiveC1 modeswitch, and this carried over to Lazarus. Delphi's support for iOS came at the end of summer 2011 and you can see what this does to Laz signups: they're back to the background rate.

Interestingly, subsequent releases of Laz 1.4, etc. have had no appreciable effect on the sign-up rate. But perhaps that's what one would expect - they're not the milestone releases that 1.0 and 1.2 were.

So you can see the pattern: users get their hopes due to new developments in the Laz project, resulting in a temporary increase in the sign-up rate, then a fall back to the background rate once the euphoria wears off (eg, with iOS, where nothing came of it). With nothing new I wouldn't expect spikes any time soon.

So it looks to me like interest in the Laz project is fairly stable now, although if the total number of developers of all kinds has increased, then a flat line is actually a decrease in the percentage of all developers using Lazarus. Apple signed up 3 million new developers last year. Lazarus? Looks like about 2,000. So that's 3 orders of magnitude difference.

JuhaManninen

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #57 on: October 07, 2017, 11:46:49 pm »
With nothing new I wouldn't expect spikes any time soon.
Not so. The coming 1.8 release will make all charts sky-rocket again. :)
Mostly Lazarus trunk and FPC 3.2 on Manjaro Linux 64-bit.

Phil

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #58 on: October 07, 2017, 11:56:49 pm »
With nothing new I wouldn't expect spikes any time soon.
Not so. The coming 1.8 release will make all charts sky-rocket again. :)

Well, hope springs eternal even in the face of trends that don't support that. See this:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/10/04/apple-partners-with-ohio-state-university-to-launch-digital-learning-initiative

Ten years ago that announcement would have involved Microsoft, meaning it would be a place where Pascal can still fit (desktop development). Today it's with Apple, a place where Pascal doesn't fit (iOS).

One thing I didn't try to account for is the rate at which former Delphi developer defect (no pun) to Lazarus. These are probably people who are retired or no longer developers, or perhaps they work for organizations that no longer provide them with Delphi and they're unwilling to buy it themselves. I would guess this is a pretty steady rate. Whether they stay or not is another question.


mangakissa

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Re: Avoid Delphi and use Free Pascal + Lazarus IDE, unless…
« Reply #59 on: October 08, 2017, 08:45:07 am »
I think the decline of Delphi has negative impact for Lazarus/FPC too. Also the rise of mobile programming.
100%

It's not easy to create an mobile app in Lazarus.
Lazarus 2.06 (64b) / FPC 3.0.4 / Windows 10
stucked on Delphi 10.3.1

 

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