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Author Topic: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?  (Read 56299 times)

Vincent Snijders

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Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #30 on: August 28, 2007, 03:11:32 pm »
Quote from: "henrytj"
Quote from: "Vincent"



I just did a search on OS market shares. Here is one link.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2

Between Windows and Mac they have 98%+ of the OS market share. Linux has less than 1%.


Except that Mac OS X is a unix variant. But the figures are convincing. If want to make a commercially viable IDE, I should focus on windows and then on Mac OS X. Borland (and now CodeGear) take the right part of the pie. Lazarus / FPC doesn't have to make commercially sound plans and can opt for the commercially less attractive linux side. The win32 part of Lazarus merely a nice side effect, (OK, this is a hyperbool).

Quote
For 15 years Unix fans have told me how Unix was on the verge of leading the OS market. It has never even come close to happening. And Unix is even free!!!
Sorry, but that is the reality of the situation.


I don't think FPC/Lazarus is ever going to be the top development environment. It just does a good job, but that is not what sells or what people want.

I am not going to tell you next year is the year of the Lazarus break through. It should be good enough for you now and if it is not, then don't use it.

BTW: I think it will be good enough for you, because you don't hesitate to ask questions and found your way to the Lazarus community.

Almindor

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RE: Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #31 on: August 28, 2007, 07:49:10 pm »
Apart from the fact that "market share" is completely useless indicator, why are we wasting time talking to this troll?

antonio

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RE: Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #32 on: August 28, 2007, 08:41:23 pm »
For my understanding, the thread's question should be: with Lazarus out there, why Turbo Delphi?

On the other hand, Delphi users sometimes make insoluble questions about "Why Lazarus does not make this or that, as Delphi does". They should come to the project and share their problems and solutions.

RudieD

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RE: Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #33 on: August 28, 2007, 09:00:29 pm »
I got Ubuntu 7.0.4 going on my PC @ home with compiz/fusion. With the performance of the 3D desktop and a few other apps on my AMD ath XP 2400+ (cutting edge :) I feel sorry for people with Vista (some of my friends) who have PC from the begining of the year (~ 3800+) and suffer the speed Tax. Most of them are now at least dual booting. The more you play, the more you want to play.  I know of a few co's here in South Africa that have started to port their Apps from Win Delphi to Win FPC/Lazarus and will then after that start the win to Linux move. The performance increase is just to big to ignore.

I have also ported one of our products Installer from VB to Lazarus to get the same look and feel on Linux once we have tested and debugged it for Linux.
 
(PS: The only thing I mis in Linux is AOE II Conquerers - to slow under Wine, sniff, sniff, ...)
The FRED Trainer. (Training FRED with Lazarus/FPC)

antonio

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RE: Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #34 on: August 28, 2007, 10:57:06 pm »
I would also say that I never heard about an open source project that has refused improvements. Delphi users should think about this.

Lazarus already is a professional tool for daily use for several Linux users.

Vincent, modestness is good, but open source is going to mainstream! For me, and others, this is already a reality. If you compare Lazarus with Delphi, it is OK, but with Turbo Delphi.... Once one has known Lazarus, he does not want to use Kylix or Turbo Delphi anymore.

henrytj

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with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #35 on: August 30, 2007, 05:21:56 pm »
Quote from: "Vincent"

Can you give an example? Of an open source project that disapeared because they developers stopped developing because it didn't bring in enough money?


This is obviously a trick question. But I am sure that there are plenty of open source projects (of which there must be thousands) where people stopped doing development on them.

edit
I would hate to see an open source version of my favorite programming language to fail.

henrytj

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Re: RE: Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazaru
« Reply #36 on: August 30, 2007, 05:42:44 pm »
Quote from: "antonio"
This market share is valid only for USA, or USA and Western Europe. It is not so outside this region. Linux is growing.

Come to Lazarus.


Out of curiosity, what are the global market share numbers?

henrytj

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Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #37 on: August 30, 2007, 06:02:45 pm »
Quote from: "Vincent"
Quote from: "henrytj"
Quote from: "Vincent"



I just did a search on OS market shares. Here is one link.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2

Between Windows and Mac they have 98%+ of the OS market share. Linux has less than 1%.


Except that Mac OS X is a unix variant. But the figures are convincing. If want to make a commercially viable IDE, I should focus on windows and then on Mac OS X. Borland (and now CodeGear) take the right part of the pie. Lazarus / FPC doesn't have to make commercially sound plans and can opt for the commercially less attractive linux side. The win32 part of Lazarus merely a nice side effect, (OK, this is a hyperbool).



Yes, the current Mac OS is "based" on Unix. And a BIG Bravo!!! to Mac for fixing Unix's case sensitivity.  I think Unix's case sensitivity was one of the biggest blunders in computer science.  I would actually consider a Unix-like OS that fixed the case sensitivity and used real word for commands instead of (awk, grep, apropos, etc.) That is what has held back Unix the most and they don't seem to comprehend that.

I have no love for MS or Windows, but as long as Unix treats common users with contempt (and, yes they do) then it doesn't deserve more than the fringe user base it has now. At least MS and Apple do research on how people work best. Unix doesn't care and takes an arrogant cult/tribal attitude about it.

I support plenty other open source projects like FireFox, Thunderbird, Open Office, and so on. I have even been a vol. firefighter for about 15 years and a vol. EMT for 6 of those. Money is of little importance to me, but attitude is.

antonio

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RE: Re: RE: with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #38 on: August 30, 2007, 08:06:47 pm »
Quote from: "henrytj"
Quote from: "antonio"
This market share is valid only for USA, or USA and Western Europe. It is not so outside this region. Linux is growing.

Come to Lazarus.


Out of curiosity, what are the global market share numbers?


It's simply if Linux grows 50 or 100 per cent on a year, this does not appear on statistics. Outside that region, Linux is at least 10 times more popular.

Lazarus will not disappear.

And you can be sure that Borland's people know this forum.

Where Delphi is popular, so is Lazarus. What moves most people away from Lazarus are the bugs on Windows IDE. Among people who download Lazarus for Windows, 50% don't want to use it. They have a bad first impression. Some of them probably use Lazarus later.

Quote from: "Vincent"
I don't think FPC/Lazarus is ever going to be the top development environment. It just does a good job, but that is not what sells or what people want.

I am not going to tell you next year is the year of the Lazarus break through. It should be good enough for you now and if it is not, then don't use it.


I mean people learning Pascal throught Lazarus instead of Delphi, for example. This is not so far. FPC already is a great success on it, now there is a free Pascal compiler.

And Linux Online  calls Lazarus "a killer app",  http://www.linux.org/apps/reviews/lazarus.html

tatamata

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with free turbo delphi out there, why lazarus?
« Reply #39 on: September 28, 2007, 04:08:37 pm »
Hello, guys.
I meat Lazarus first time in 2005, while searching for a free/open-source alternative for MS Access. In that moment I had no idea about neither Delphi neither object pascal.
My interest for programming came unexpectedly from my need to solve some data-intensive and boring trending of data in pharmaceutical industry. I felt uncomfortable with Excel sheets and time-wasting dealing with data. Therefore I decided to learn something about databases. In that moment I was a complete "tabula rasa" for programming :).
I started learning MS Access untill I found myself completely consumed by it. It was great, the whole new horizon of possibilities came into my mind! But, after some  time I found myself stucked in Microsoft arrogant imperium and decided to try to find some open-source/free alternative, preferrably cross-platform.
I would never say it would be so hard to find decent alternative to MS Access. Whatever people could say, Access is really powerfull, and the fastest tool for creating database applications in the world....
My search leaded me from OpenOffice Base to Java Eclipse and NetBeans, from Python Boa Constructor to .NET and Mono's MonoDevelop. Also I was experimenting several months with a very interesting .NET language called Boo. I also tried many obscure projects and some nice, but limited products such as Knoda and Kexi. All of these languages/RADs dissapointed me a lot. Either they are to buggy or miss true data-aware components, or they have slow development progress or are too massive messy beasts hard to learn and understand. For example Java RAD tools drive me crazy with it's hell of multiple dependancies and incompatibilities... People suggested me to abandon desktop RADs and move to Web programming, especially PHP. But I never liked web applications, they always seemed to me so ugly and user-unfriendly that I just couldn't digest it.
In the same time I tried Lazarus and considered Lazarus to be very, very interesting in its philosophy, nice and compact, but to buggy and unstable for anything serious regarding databases...
I continued working with MS Access, but caming back to Lazarus web site every several weeks to see what's going on. Also, I started to read Delphi books meantime....
Finally, Lazarus version 0.9.22 appeared! On my surprise, Lazarus+ZeosLib+PostgreSQL+Firebird worked flawlessly. Nice and powerfull GUI, lot of components, stable and reliable! The progress in these two years was amazing! My applause to all people that contributed these improvements.
I was fascinated and decided to start intensive Pascal/Delphi/Lazarus learning curve. And the best way to learn something is to mix theory with practise. Therefore, now I read Delphi books and in paralel I write my Firebird/Lazarus application for production-manufacturing planning. In fact, I'm trying to rewrite my previously made Access application into Lazarus/Firebird. So far, I am very, very content. I'm so happy that I finally can replace Access with something else. I like this freedom and I think that Lazarus is now my definite choice and in following months all my efforts will be to learn everything about Lazarus and object Pascal.
Lazarus has a lot to offer to hobbiests like me, much more than any other open-source RAD tools, especially when talking about working with databases (which is my primary interest). According to the continous progress I predict that in two or three years it will be true alternative to any commercial RAD. It is already possible to write small commercial applications right now! But, contrary to many other open-source projects, most people have never heard of Lazarus. For example, most people here developing in Delphi have never heard that any other object Pascal exists out there. Isn't it strange? Everybody knows for Eclipse, NetBeans, Gambas or OpenOffice, but only few realize existance of Lazarus...
We need to spread word about Lazarus and to motivate people to join Lazarus comunity. Those who can develop Lazarus, let them develop, those who can not, let them spread word and test Lazarus for bugs.
Vincent, you are wrong, Lazarus is not and can not be only the metter of those few that actually develop Lazarus, but also all those "stupid" hobbiest that have found Lazarus to be only free/open-source alternative to Microsoft. Delphi is definitely not...

 

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