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Author Topic: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?  (Read 39087 times)

mai

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Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« on: October 16, 2017, 09:31:55 am »
 :-X   dude, if you install Laz via a Debian package manager (say, synaptic or apt), most likely, you have already set up yourself for total failure in Pascal.    :-\


Laz is nothing like Delphi, which just worked and gave you a powerful RAD/IDE after just one double-click.

With Laz, you have to struggle for days to get anywhere at all.

Is there anyone out there, who actually had a favorable first impression of Laz ? I kinda doubt it ...  ;D

segfault

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2017, 09:43:47 am »
I use a debian distro and didn't have any issues installing the latest Lazarus from the download debs. I haven't installed the cross-compiler yet so I may have some issues there but the basic set up was trouble free.

So yes, I'm a newbie and have had a first time favourable impression of Lazarus. I think the developers have done an amazing job.

munair

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2017, 10:13:16 am »
:-X   dude, if you install Laz via a Debian package manager (say, synaptic or apt), most likely, you have already set up yourself for total failure in Pascal.    :-\


Laz is nothing like Delphi, which just worked and gave you a powerful RAD/IDE after just one double-click.

With Laz, you have to struggle for days to get anywhere at all.

Is there anyone out there, who actually had a favorable first impression of Laz ? I kinda doubt it ...  ;D
What distro did you install Lazarus with? The Debian package manager is used by several distros, including non-debian based. My experience from the last couple of years is that Lazarus and FPC work great out of the box with Debian 7 to 9 after installation from the repo. No struggle whatsover. With GTK based desktops everything should work right away. With a Qt based desktop you may have to manually install the lcl-qt library (from the repo).

It should be noted that distros based on Debian Testing (like Ubuntu or Mint) may cause problems, often dependency related. In fact, I did try those distros and they weren't as stable as Debian in the long run. Most common problem was broken dependencies. But even there your "struggle for days" sounds exaggerated.
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marcov

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2017, 10:39:41 am »
Is there anyone out there, who actually had a favorable first impression of Laz ? I kinda doubt it ...  ;D

Well, mine was before 2000, so let's just forget that. But my first impression of Delphi was not that great either. I found it overly complicated (compared to TP, with mandatory projects and all), and manual editing in the protected fields made the designer give up, and (still) don't understand why the main program needs a different extension if it is written in the same dialect/language.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2017, 10:57:15 am by marcov »

Eugene Loza

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2017, 10:43:30 am »
Laz is nothing like Delphi, which just worked and gave you a powerful RAD/IDE after just one double-click.
I switched to Lazarus from Delphi when Lazarus was 0.24 version young (you can't imagine how buggy it was) in Windows (was it 2006?). And those days it was at least comparable to Delphi (I don't remember which Delphi version I used), imho even better.
I've had a few "issues" when I've switched to Debian Linux in 2009 thou, because I didn't know how to use dpkg those days and was forced to use a significantly obsolete repository version by apt-get. As soon as I've became more experienced in Linux, I had only once a serious problem ever since - I've bugged some Lazarus installation parameters and couldn't fix it until I've found out that removing+purging old Lazarus version doesn't remove /home/user/.lazarus folder to eliminate damaged fpc.cfg and the new installation was again using invalid path to gdb.
Except for that. Yes, I had an awful 1st experience with Delphi after Turbo Pascal (was it 2001?). But after Windows denied all direct memory/CPU access in terminal (98 or was it in 95) I had no more reasons to stay behind.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2017, 10:48:53 am by Eugene Loza »
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tudi_x

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2017, 11:18:23 am »
Quote
Laz is nothing like Delphi, which just worked and gave you a powerful RAD/IDE after just one double-click.

Even if you compare apple with oranges as Delphi does not have yet a Linux installation kit after you install Delphi yes you get an IDE. Unfortunately Delphi users cannot be aware of how bad it is as users of Delphi are not aware of the Lazarus user experience. Only when coming from Lazarus you can understand how bad the user experience is in Delphi.
Have to say for myself that I have installed and tried to use the Starter version from Delphi and also been having a Turbo Delphi License.
But I do not use them. Open source software these days tends to be so much better than software produced by companies with a boxed vision.
Lazarus 2.0.2 64b on Debian LXDE 10

Thaddy

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #6 on: October 16, 2017, 11:23:59 am »
I don't know what you are talking about (except that Debian lags big time) because when you install the latest stable Debian you can install a rather proper Lazarus and FPC.
Can you explain a little? It works out of the box...

As for my own experience with Lazarus: I, like Marco, also tried it around 2000, found it insufficient, tried again about three years ago and found it to be the most pleasant experience to develop on Linux.
(And I do this as a professional that also uses C, C++, Java and scripting since about the late seventies). FPC itself was never an issue: even Delphi used it. It is a proper compiler. If you have issues, you must be doing something very wrong or use a very old version of Debian. So plz explain? Because if you want to be current, then you have to do a lot of work yourself, as with ANY current packages that run on Debian but are not in the distribution yet.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2017, 11:26:54 am by Thaddy »
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munair

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #7 on: October 16, 2017, 12:44:52 pm »
I don't know what you are talking about (except that Debian lags big time) because when you install the latest stable Debian you can install a rather proper Lazarus and FPC.
Where does Debian lag? Except for its more conservative nature, it is one of the best operating systems in existence. True, one needs to add drivers if an open-source alternative is not available like with wireless networks. But if I compare a fresh install to Windows (as we're talking Delphi here too), Setting up Debian is more pleasant, easier, cheaper and faster. Unless Windows is a preinstalled OEM, there is a lot of work with installing drivers, tuning and tweaking and going through the now extensive list of services to get it working more optimal. Not to mention the regular cleaning up of the registry and hard drive.

Out of the box Debian is 100% open source at the expense of some default functionality, although one really can't complain: Office is right there, video and audio can be played from internet most of the time (where Windows requires a whole codec pack to be installed due to license issues).

In my experience Lazarus works great out of the box, both with GTK and Qt desktops at least since Debian 7. You can even build perfectly looking GUI apps for KDE 5 plasma using the Qt4 bindings (Qt is doing a much better job here than GTK). Where else do you find such compatibility?

Finally, no operating system is perfect, nor is any RAD tool. But I find Lazarus both on Windows and Linux the best and most versatile tool to quickly build cross-platform software. Last time I used Delphi was with version 7. I stopped using it for the same reason I quit using VisualStudio and Xojo: there's either no Linux support or it is very limited (bad).
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cpicanco

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #8 on: October 16, 2017, 02:36:31 pm »
As you know, you don't have delphi for linux. So I had an excelent first impression, because I have installed a stable version (1.6.x) in my debian based system directly from the site with some clicks.

I was using Lazarus for very basic stuff and even using the wrong command to startup lazarus (you should use startlazarus), I managed to convert a simple delphi project with two clicks. Eventually, I have found the need for packages, and then startlazarus was mandatory. So, please Lazarus Team, if possible, do not expose other ways to start lazarus to the end user.

Also, something that will certainly piss off any beginner. Until today I don't know why I can't get help (pressing F1) from built in constructions like WriteLn, Copy, blah blah blah. Until recently, I didn't know that you could do TSomeArray.Create, because somehow stuff inside TSomeArray (which is of course of an arry type) is not exposed. May I ask what else you can do with an array here? (better in another topic)

I don't have words to express my gratitute to the Lazarus team. That is why I have donated some money to them  :D.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2017, 02:40:20 pm by cpicanco »
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cpicanco

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #9 on: October 16, 2017, 02:43:59 pm »
For FPC 3.0.2, there was a gotcha. Because this version was built against Ubuntu, users on a Debian based system must rebuild the compiler. I think Martin is doing against Debian now, so I expect no more problems to come.
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jacmoe

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #10 on: October 16, 2017, 04:09:58 pm »
In my experience, the most pain free installation option for Lazarus on any Linux is fpcupdeluxe

I've had problems with the Debian packages, and I wonder how they could ever work, considering that many aspects of Lazarus/FPC requires write access to units (package installation and IDE rebuild).

Fpcupdeluxe is a frontend for building Lazarus/FPC from source, and it is 'installed' in your home directory. I recommend that very warmly!
(And surprised that it hasn't become the default installation method on *nix)
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munair

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2017, 05:03:48 pm »
In my experience, the most pain free installation option for Lazarus on any Linux is fpcupdeluxe

I've had problems with the Debian packages, and I wonder how they could ever work, considering that many aspects of Lazarus/FPC requires write access to units (package installation and IDE rebuild).

Fpcupdeluxe is a frontend for building Lazarus/FPC from source, and it is 'installed' in your home directory. I recommend that very warmly!
(And surprised that it hasn't become the default installation method on *nix)
Most common problem comes from installing manually downloaded deb packages. Installing Lazarus from the distro's official repository shouldn't give much problems. (I haven't had any with the last few versions of Debian).

Write access also shouldn't be a problem. When rebuilding Lazarus, the rebuild is installed in your home directory and during startup you can choose the version (preinstalled or recompiled). Problems occur when manually adding directories (as root or super user). Again, installing from the repo is the best way.
keep it simple

bee

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2017, 05:28:07 pm »
:-X   dude, if you install Laz via a Debian package manager (say, synaptic or apt), most likely, you have already set up yourself for total failure in Pascal.    :-\
Not to my experience using FPC and Lazarus since v.1.x. But yes, you gotta know what you're going to do before hand.

Laz is nothing like Delphi, which just worked and gave you a powerful RAD/IDE after just one double-click.
Of course, but Delphi (IDE) only works on Windows, while Lazarus and FPC works (almost) everywhere. And you have to pay thousands of dollars to have Delphi with equal features as Lazarus IDE which comes free. And especially on Linux, I think Lazarus IDE is the best RAD IDE and development tool on Linux.

With Laz, you have to struggle for days to get anywhere at all.
For days? at all? Clearly you're exaggerating. Even for pre-1.0 version, you may only need a few hours to get FPC and Lazarus installed and working correctly. Yes, sometimes it got problem on specific version on some distributions. But overall, it's not that difficult if you know what to do. Just read some tutorials or wikis before starting.

Is there anyone out there, who actually had a favorable first impression of Laz ? I kinda doubt it ...  ;D
I am. I'm using Lazarus since v.0.x. Compare to those old pre-1.0 version, current Lazarus is far more easier and a lot better.

The most difficult thing I've encountered with FPC and Lazarus is installing cross compiler tools. But I think it's now solved by using fpcupdeluxe. I haven't tried it though.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2017, 05:32:49 pm by bee »
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Martin_fr

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #13 on: October 16, 2017, 07:12:48 pm »
I think Martin is doing against Debian now, so I expect no more problems to come.
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RAW

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Re: Do newbies get a good "1st time impression" of Lazarus ?
« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2017, 09:25:47 pm »
My first LAZARUS experience was 0.9.3 or something like that if I remember right. I couldn't get the IDE to run stable on my computer, I encountered a lot of crashes. On the other side the IDE looked a lot like DELPHI and to get all this for free (OPEN SOURCE) was a little bit unexpected and very nice. It felt like getting a FREE-PHOTOSHOP version...

The next version I tried was 1.2.4 and that was really a total different thing:
1. very fast and stable install
2. no problems at all, but I didn't had much time so I couldn't play around much...

What I like about LAZARUS:
1. Very easy and fast install (WINDOWS). I really like the SECONDARY-Installation...
2. The IDE starts very fast... very nice
3. Very good forum where people tell you a lot of things even if the topic is about something else, very helpful...
4. The moderators are very relaxed if it comes to OFF-TOPIC-POSTS compared to other forums. I like that.
5. There are so much OPEN SOURCE-Libraries out there that I can use with LAZARUS or FREE PASCAL... very nice
6. It's very easy to use DELPHI-Code with LAZARUS, at least in my case...
7. LAZARUS runs fine on my old "P4" and "Celeron M430" computer.  :D
8. I always find something useful inside the IDE that I didn't recognize before...

Of course this is only the point of view of a beginner and always will be like that due to lack of time, but that's ok...
« Last Edit: October 16, 2017, 10:06:34 pm by RAW »
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