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
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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...