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Author Topic: WANTED: A Few Great Apps  (Read 40474 times)

ahiggins

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #30 on: August 14, 2017, 02:16:00 pm »
I really wish the Raspberry Pi foundation would bundle FPC/Lazarus I feel this hardware/software combo as such a lot to offer at every level.

eny

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #31 on: August 14, 2017, 06:05:51 pm »
So what types of apps would probably not be suitable to showcase?
  • Apps that look and feel like 90s Windows desktop software.
  • ...
  • Apps that use a non-standard look, feel or practice for a target platform.
Interesting...  8)
All posts based on: Win10 (Win64); Lazarus 2.0.10 'stable' (x64) unless specified otherwise...

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #32 on: August 14, 2017, 06:15:09 pm »
So what types of apps would probably not be suitable to showcase?
  • Apps that look and feel like 90s Windows desktop software.
  • ...
  • Apps that use a non-standard look, feel or practice for a target platform.
Interesting...  8)

These kinds of issues aren't that hard to avoid. Just look around at the other software on your computer. For example, if you put the About command under the Help menu on Mac, you're doing it wrong. If you make some Unix-y assumption about where you put files on Windows, you're doing it wrong.

These other programs, particularly the successful ones, didn't get that way by throwing code against the wall. For example, for many years Microsoft didn't fully embrace the ways of OS X and they caught infinite grief for it. Then one day, for whatever reason, they got the message and started producing software that Mac users didn't complain about. I use MS's Remote Desktop app just about every day on my Mac and even though it's written against (and includes) the Qt libraries, it's a great Mac app. Same with Office. Office apps on Mac are now just enormous, eg, Word has a 2GB footprint. But they run fine even on ancient Mac hardware with 4GB RAM.

eny

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #33 on: August 14, 2017, 06:25:50 pm »
I did a large project with Lazarus last year and ran into a couple of issues (mostly) related to the gui and 3rd party components that contain smaller and bigger bugs, and the stability of the debugger.

What I would love to see is a more flexible way to set up the UI.
Maybe a more 'CSS-ish' way of designing the user interface.
All posts based on: Win10 (Win64); Lazarus 2.0.10 'stable' (x64) unless specified otherwise...

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #34 on: August 14, 2017, 10:16:01 pm »
What I would love to see is a more flexible way to set up the UI.
Maybe a more 'CSS-ish' way of designing the user interface.

Not sure where that would fit in the LCL view of the world. In Web apps that's pretty common. For example, with Mapbox, if you want your custom control to take on the stylings of Mapbox, you just set its classname as in this example:

https://www.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/#icontrol

A lot of what you can and cannot do with UI depends on where the cross-platform bar is set. With LCL, it's set pretty high. There's a huge amount of machinery ("implementation") below that bar that you normally don't have to worry about. The lower you set the bar, the more flexibility you have, but at the cost of cross-platform functionality.

The problems arise when you have to dip down below the LCL bar due to a bug or lack of functionality or need for additional customization. Now you're doing exactly what you set out to avoid by adopting the LCL.

For example, the virtual tree control does not work correctly on Mac. Wouldn't it be great to be able to substitute the native Cocoa NSOutlineView? (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsoutlineview)

Well, short of becoming an expert in LCL, custom controls and Cocoa, there's no way to use that control in a Lazarus app.


Perhaps you'd like to do a showcase app where you identify some real-world UI problems and come up a solution that you illustrate in your app. I don't see any reason why this can't be entirely informal. Someone with an idea for an app that they've wanted to implement also would like to discuss and "showcase" it for other developers. I would start at the conceptual level, maybe propose it here if you need more input or ideas - people here love to give advice. Or maybe a discussion of design philosophy would be appropriate. Whatever. It's up to the author.


lainz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #35 on: August 15, 2017, 12:40:27 am »
So what types of apps would probably not be suitable to showcase?
  • Apps that look and feel like 90s Windows desktop software.
  • ...
  • Apps that use a non-standard look, feel or practice for a target platform.
Interesting...  8)
So let's just say that Photoshop is not suitable. Because it uses a custom UI. Also popular apps like Telegram, Media Players like Kodi.

I think is just that the opposite now. A custom UI is more valuable than a native only.

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #36 on: August 15, 2017, 01:07:09 am »
So what types of apps would probably not be suitable to showcase?
  • Apps that look and feel like 90s Windows desktop software.
  • ...
  • Apps that use a non-standard look, feel or practice for a target platform.
Interesting...  8)
So let's just say that Photoshop is not suitable. Because it uses a custom UI. Also popular apps like Telegram, Media Players like Kodi.

I think is just that the opposite now. A custom UI is more valuable than a native only.

I'm not familiar with those apps, but I would be surprised if Mac versions (if they exist) would deviate much from the standard Mac look and feel.

Note I left it kind of vague, saying "probably". Perhaps I should have added to both of those points "for no good reason". That might be a good rule of thumb - "innovate" if you want, but justify it.

For example, there's a program I use on my Mac quite a bit. It's Qt-based, but it's fine, looks pretty good on all platforms. Except they decided for some reason to have a "Project" menu instead of a "File" menu. Well, Lazarus, Xcode, Xamarin Studio, etc. all deal with "projects", yet they all have "File" menus. Hmm, I see a pattern there: follow the standard or the convention unless there's some compelling reason not to.

So what that app did, by introducing a "Project" menu, is what in tennis they call an "unforced error".

Another example: Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Yikes. This is what you get when you rip the desktop look and feel out of macOS and try to transplant it to a decidedly non-macOS context. Now once you've shat on it, you have Unity. Another unforced error.


eny

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #37 on: August 15, 2017, 10:11:14 pm »
I think is just that the opposite now. A custom UI is more valuable than a native only.
A more customizable and flexible UI was indeed my point.
Nowadays there is hardly a 'uniform UI' anymore.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry has his own UI for web apps and the trend for Windows is the same.
That's why I would love to see a more flexible way of setting up a UI.
Never said it would be easy  :D

Not sure where that would fit in the LCL view of the world.
Nowhere. It's a different UI design paradigm.
All posts based on: Win10 (Win64); Lazarus 2.0.10 'stable' (x64) unless specified otherwise...

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #38 on: August 15, 2017, 10:47:53 pm »
I Googled last week what the simplest programming languages were, and most recommended JavaScript as a first language...

I'm not sure what "simplest" means. I suppose if you're starting with Web design and development, the basics of JavaScript would be sort of a lingua franca, but easiest? And which JavaScript would that be? EcmaScript 5? Or 6 with all the new stuff?

See this article and its caveat about JavaScript:

http://blog.flatironschool.com/should-i-learn-javascript-or-ruby-at-a-coding-bootcamp/

lainz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #39 on: August 16, 2017, 01:49:52 am »
I Googled last week what the simplest programming languages were, and most recommended JavaScript as a first language...

I'm not sure what "simplest" means. I suppose if you're starting with Web design and development, the basics of JavaScript would be sort of a lingua franca, but easiest? And which JavaScript would that be? EcmaScript 5? Or 6 with all the new stuff?

See this article and its caveat about JavaScript:

http://blog.flatironschool.com/should-i-learn-javascript-or-ruby-at-a-coding-bootcamp/

Interesting article. Basically it says you should learn to learn, not just a language (any).

I started with a scripting language called Lua, you know how untyped languages works: everything is a variable, and you can or not declare it first, and don't know it's type, and you can modify it's type to another later, etc.. just with functions and nothing more. Like old javascript.

In the other hand, typed languages, you design and know each type: like TypeScript does (and you can mix both worlds with it), then compiles to javascript.

And OOP is very limited in javascript: you can't have 'easily' a hidden method in a class, you need to underscore it '_method' is currently the good practice due to language limits.

But I think is easier to learn like any scripting language. But you can't live only with that, you need to master OOP also, in the article compared to Ruby (that I never touched more than an online school and never used it).

But I can compare it to Pascal. JavaScript is easier because it has less features, or handy features like everything is like a "variant object" to my eyes. Of course it has it counterparts, you still need to parseFloat, parseInt and .toString() if you need it, like in pascal StrToFloat, StrToInt, IntToStr, and the like.

I did nothing with Node yet, so I can't compare it to pascal in the system level.

BTW javascript is more popular and widely used than pascal, not just for web, for servers, for games (Unity). It doesn't come that you need to learn pascal or javascript, I agree with the article that you must master anything you need to work with.

I don't see anyone using pascal for making a wii u game, or a ps4 game, but yes javascript because it's available to make it. it's availability a good point also.

It's my point of view, I agree with some parts of the article but I added my own view.

Pascal for me was harder to learn that javascript.

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #40 on: August 16, 2017, 01:57:40 am »
Interesting article. Basically it says you should learn to learn, not just a language (any).

I found the graphic showing what languages their graduates used on the job to be pretty bizarre. Now certainly in a market as vast as New York City, with its enormous entertainment/tourism/nightlife/social media industry, there would be a lot of Web site and mobile app developers (hence Swift already at 15%). But what about the equally ginormous banking and finance industry in NYC? What do those analysts write their models in? JS? Sorry, don't buy that. So maybe that school is placing their students only in certain job areas and not others, although one of the featured alums works at NASA, so that's pretty old-school tech.

Still, a programming job is a programming job. Better to have one than not have one.

Pascal is probably a small fraction of the "Other" circle, if at all.

lainz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #41 on: August 16, 2017, 02:29:44 am »
Sure working in a bank you will earn more than me :)
And I will be happy programming for a bank in any language they use.  8)
Of course that kind of software sure is harder to do.

Edit: I'm not being sarcastic. If not clear.
« Last Edit: August 16, 2017, 02:58:48 am by lainz »

Phil

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #42 on: August 16, 2017, 03:52:48 am »
Of course that kind of software sure is harder to do.

I always thought proper UI design was pretty hard to do.

It's funny that JavaScript doesn't even need to be promoted. If that were necessary, that is, if there were multiple browser scripting languages to choose from, it might be kind of hard to get people to adopt JS.

Speaking of promotion, here's how you promote Swift without even talking about Swift:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJAGqDYmW1o&feature=youtu.be

Don't miss the opening joke, it's pretty good.

That's how you sign up 3 million new developers in a year.

lainz

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #43 on: August 16, 2017, 04:39:55 am »
I always thought proper UI design was pretty hard to do.

It is. Even for web design, there are good tools out there like bootstrap and material design, I was working in a project using both, and these can be mixed nicely, but putting all together to work on desktop and mobile with the same source can be time consuming (at least) sometimes more time than the code itself. The smallest screens are the big problem.

Don't miss the opening joke, it's pretty good.

Hello World  :D

Thaddy

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Re: WANTED: A Few Great Apps
« Reply #44 on: August 16, 2017, 09:06:29 am »
Quote
Hello World  :D

You mean:
Code: Text  [Select][+][-]
  1. ++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.
In my bf compiler written in Object Pascal? Would that count Phil? I have to look up the code, but it is freeware...
« Last Edit: August 16, 2017, 09:08:31 am by Thaddy »
Specialize a type, not a var.

 

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