What is the origin of the name Lazarus for our beloved RAD app?

[dkjMusic]

...reviving a dead programming language? Surely not. 

...and what's with the cheetah mascot? Runs fast?

[Elmug]

...reviving a dead programming language? Surely not. 

...and what's with the cheetah mascot? Runs fast?

The name of the language is Free Pascal, so Lazarus really means "Delphi Replacement", according to my limited and dubious understanding.

[Martin_fr]

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/History

[dkjMusic]

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/History

Thanks for the link.  We all owe the people described there a huge debt of gratitude.

[dkjMusic]

...reviving a dead programming language? Surely not. 

...and what's with the cheetah mascot? Runs fast?

The name of the language is Free Pascal, so Lazarus really means "Delphi Replacement", according to my limited and dubious understanding.

Elmug, thanks for your thoughts.  How about the cheetah?

Extracting from Martin_fr's history link:
"Megido was a project that attempted to make an open source clone of Delphi...but died somewhere in 1999...So, Lazarus was started in February of 1999. "

Thus it seems to me that Lazarus was a resurrection of open source Object Pascal.

[felipemdc]

Elmug, thanks for your thoughts.  How about the cheetah?

The cheetah comes from Free Pascal. I think that Florian choose it, probably for being fast, an analogy with the speed of the Free Pascal Compiler.

Thus it seems to me that Lazarus was a resurrection of open source Object Pascal.

Yes, the name comes from the Bible, by analogy. Jesus resurrected Lazarus of Bethany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_of_Bethany

[CaptBill]

Lazarus translates from Hebrew to "God helps".

And Lazarus (the program) is actually a program (written in FreePascal) to help you to write FreePascal programs.

So Lazarus is like the High Priest that "helps" you to interact with FreePascal the "Father language".

Eventually you will depend less and less on "Lazarus" once you realize his job is  to "help you get started with FreePascal". Lazarus CAN, if you wish, step aside and allow YOU to speak directly in FreePascal.

So Lazarus is technically your "helper app" to speaking FreePascal and he is more like a trainer. You eventually will need less and less "help" from "Lazarus" as your FreePascal skills grow.

This is important to understand too, that Lazarus is an application written in FreePascal. Beginners should learn this early on and strive to understand that you want to "learn" FreePascal and Lazarus is there to "help" in that goal.

[dkjMusic]

Felipe and CaptBill: I really appreciate your insights.

I like Felipe's  reply because it jives with my preconceived notions. 

I like CaptBill's due to his spiritual interpretation and advice to learn FreePascal before I try to walk with Lazarus (which I will now go forth and do. 

[CaptBill]

Felipe and CaptBill: I really appreciate your insights.

I like Felipe's  reply because it jives with my preconceived notions. 

I like CaptBill's due to his spiritual interpretation and advice to learn FreePascal before I try to walk with Lazarus (which I will now go forth and do. 

Actually my main point is that Lazarus is the "helper", your intermediary, to the FreePascal language. You are learning FreePascal as you walk with Lazarus, your "guide". Just be cognizant of the role of Lazarus in the scheme of things as you learn so you don't confuse Lazarus as part of the "language". It is a FPC program itself. This is probably the toughest part of learning OO concepts, determining the "scope" or frame of referrence you are working from. "Is that FPC, RTL, FCL, or a general OO issue?"

You will save LOTS of time and effort by sorting out these differences early on.

Cheers

[eny]

This is important to understand too, that Lazarus is an application written in FreePascal. Beginners should learn this early on and strive to understand that you want to "learn" FreePascal and Lazarus is there to "help" in that goal.

That's a good point actually.
For beginners it can be confusing as to where FPC ends and Lazarus starts.

So Lazarus is technically your "helper app" to speaking FreePascal and he is more like a trainer. You eventually will need less and less "help" from "Lazarus" as your FreePascal skills grow.

I wouldn''t go that far 
Lazarus is more like an abstraction layer on top of FPC.
Highly recommended viewing (the entire series btw): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY (0:28:00)

[CaptBill]

Yeah, I will go further than that and say Lazarus, in reality, is more of an enabler to NOT learn some basics to the TRUE power of FPC. Lazarus allows you to ignore a lot of the real power of the language and keep going in a "linear" model of programming.

I spoke of how Lazarus is best approached, not how it IS approached unfortunately haha
It is to inviting to ignore some powerful advantages of FPC as a matter of fact. It is too easy to just let the real OO possibilities collect dust.

That is not a criticism of Lazarus whatsoever. The market gives what people want, easy RAD programming. It is a criticism of impatience that people have and rush through and skip where the REAL action is at. The effect is that you realize "Holy cow, there was a much better way to do that" too often after you learn some of the "optional fundamentals" that are a part of Lazarus/FPC.

If you sweat out the "optional fundamentals" early on you have all 5 gears to use vs. only using 3.

[jwdietrich]

The cheetah comes from Free Pascal. I think that Florian choose it, probably for being fast, an analogy with the speed of the Free Pascal Compiler.

Allegedly, the cheetah is Florian P. Klämpfl's favourite animal. Certainly, it also symbolizes speed, which may be an additional motivation to choose this big cat.

[jwdietrich]

That is not a criticism of Lazarus whatsoever. The market gives what people want, easy RAD programming. It is a criticism of impatience that people have and rush through and skip where the REAL action is at. The effect is that you realize "Holy cow, there was a much better way to do that" too often after you learn some of the "optional fundamentals" that are a part of Lazarus/FPC.

You may be right. However, with the speed and memory capacity of today's computers, suboptimal solutions are chosen increasingly, as optimization is less relevant than 20 years ago. And, I am sure that many people are glad to have a reliant and elegant environment for RAD that enables them to create applications despite having limited time.

What we need is a better education in schools and universities. Courses in Pascal and good programming practice would help to choose optimal solutions for time-critical routines while enjoying the support by an RAD-IDE like Lazarus for routine tasks like event-handling for the user interface.