really? that is your major insite please make lazarus easier for sql databases? You compare a full blown visual designer that helps you visually place eachand every field in the expected position to what? ....
Yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting. If you search through the database forum here, or search the internet for variations on "how to connect Lazarus to SQL" you will see a lot of variations on a couple of themes: (1) new users having disproportionate recurring trouble with the same issues and (2) documentation which is either incomplete or out of date or which takes large leaps in assuming new users are more sophisticated than perhaps they are. As a "hero" member, probably with vast experience, I am guessing you can't relate. You don't need to relate: you need to OBSERVE WHAT REPEATS looking to triage investment in resources.
I work re-engineering manufacturing and other business processes (look up "lean manufacturing" or "toyota production system"). I'm not much of a programmer, and I know very little about Lazarus compared to most around here. What I am pretty good at is identifying where changes are going to be most profitable; what is the bottleneck/sticking point in a flow.
What I do know is Lazarus has huge potential but is not operating at its potential -- it is not catching on with new users and new companies as it, on the surface, should. Why not? What's the bottleneck? With limited resources and an otherwise falling popularity, the Lazarus community can either defend what isn't working too well or can try to figure out what is slowing adoption the most and focus resources there.
What I already "know" isn't what I look for (that's mostly what I try to pretend I don't know so I can SEE what is otherwise likely invisible to me). Put differently, I look for "mistakes" which repeats and is a limiting step.
A "mistake" which repeats isn't a mistake at all; it is a bad habit AND commonly a point of disproportionate leverage for productivity improvement.Lazarus' strengths vs Python (and really just about everything else) can be leveraged to grow most effectively by identifying and prioritizing sticking points and focusing on addressing them.
Imagine a Lazarus where a new user or a CEO -- say a person who is pretty bright but has maybe no programming experience -- is going to be taken through a tutorial showing Laz main strengths vs the top five programming languages (since that is the 20% that produces at least 80% of all programming investment).
What will trip up that new user? WATCH. Streamline THAT bottleneck or address THAT need. REPEAT. That is the basic improvement loop which took Toyota from a nothing company producing -- I think it was textiles -- using antiquated processes and equipment in a bombed-out medieval country to the dynamo of excellence you see today.
Thankfully, Laz doesn't need any super abstract new features. It needs to clean up a little bit what it already has -- to remove the maybe 1% of sticking points which are producing virtually all of the resistance to reaching its potential. And, yes, that means concentrating on new user adoption streamlining.
Laz is revolutionary, still, in its drag-n-drop IDE; its full database-widget integration; its RAD features for desktop development of business software; its being cross platform to Linux, in particular.
Make THAT the obsessive focus for the next few years of the core team and community and it seems reasonable/rational that disproportionate productivity (measured by adoption) will result which will look like a "miracle" to some.
That is what Borland did in the beginning. Go back to a winning strategy.
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Look, the last thing I want to to is antagonize you as a "hero" member. You guys have it all over me in terms of technical knowledge in programming, I'm sure. But I admit I am trying to be provocative. Making a suggestion that nobody paid any attention to didn't seem like a good use of my time. Trying to get those leading Lazarus to see things from a different perspective did seem like a good use of my time. The database integration is, like, 99.9% there. The Linux integration likewise. Cross the damn finish line in style and claim your victory; the applause you guys deserve will come.