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Author Topic: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor  (Read 4930 times)

trev

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #15 on: April 15, 2021, 07:25:04 am »
The discussion has been useful (feel free to continue).

What has become clear is that the Forum software Poll feature will not be fit for the anticipated task, although it could work for determining how many users had previously used Pascal which may, of itself, be worthwhile.

I note that Stack Overflow Developer 2020 survey garnered responses from 65K developers from 415 countries - no mention of Pascal as Most loved, Most dreaded or Most Wanted to learn.

alpine

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #16 on: April 15, 2021, 10:09:50 am »
There have been a number of discussions in the past and currently about Pascal, FPC and the Lazarus IDE often promoting Idea X as a way to increase market share. However,  as someone perceptively observed recently, you really need to understand the motivation/reason why the current cohort of users chose FPC +/ Lazarus.

IMHO, It has to be done in some practical way, need to go back to basics and ask why someone is using FPC/Laz at first place. What are the most important features that are useful to him now. Otherwise, you will probably have to read a lot of life stories (mine included), given the long existence of the Pascal language and descendants.

IMHO there are so many reasons in so many categories that pre-canned answers won't capture the real reasons. Only an open-ended question can do that, so most of us would probably go for your "other" and make of this thread a "normal" one. :D

Perhaps the answers should start in plain text and once the critical mass is reached, the finished answers should be prepared.
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avra

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #17 on: April 15, 2021, 10:23:36 am »
There have been a number of discussions in the past and currently about Pascal, FPC and the Lazarus IDE often promoting Idea X as a way to increase market share. However,  as someone perceptively observed recently, you really need to understand the motivation/reason why the current cohort of users chose FPC +/ Lazarus.
I used Delphi in the past, so it was natural to use Lazarus and FPC. Cross platform with fpcupdeluxe is especially impressive and easy to do. So many platforms supported. Native GUI development is much nicer, easier and faster then QT/C++/Python alternatives. I do look over the fence when I need a missing lib (especially in embedded). And for embedded Pascal/C/C++ Visual Studio Code is fine, too. I am also impressed by TMS web core and their Visual Studio Code integration of web form designer (https://www.tmssoftware.com/site/blog.asp?post=653 or https://www.tmssoftware.com/site/blog.asp?post=778). Lazarus needs a long way to even come close to that for visual web pascal development. For such a use case, this is no brainer and so much better option at the moment.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2021, 10:30:55 am by avra »
ct2laz - Conversion between Lazarus and CodeTyphon
bithelpers - Bit manipulation for standard types
pasettimino - Siemens S7 PLC lib

Wilko500

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #18 on: April 16, 2021, 11:02:56 pm »
My suggestion to Trevs list is:   Former VB6 User

For what its worth I had looked at many options before I found FPC/Lazarus.  Since I am primarily a Mac user Xcode/C variants were of interest but for my limited use I considered the learning curve too steep.

My choice based on (the last point on discovered after I selected FPC/Lazarus)
  • Cross platform
  • Free
  • Easy migration from VB6
  • Very helpful community and forum
MacBook Pro mid 2015 with OS Monterey 12.7.2
FPC 3.3.1 Lazarus _3_0

lainz

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #19 on: April 17, 2021, 04:51:10 am »
I use Lazarus thanks to Inno Setup. It mentions Pascal in the help file. And I was young and I only knew Lua script. Then I started with Pascal. Then I started a web programming course (full stack) , then university (c, Java) . Now I work with pascal and many other languages.

Blade

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #20 on: April 17, 2021, 06:46:10 am »
2 that I can think of at the moment.

1) Most suitable for the task I want to accomplish

Similar to "Most suitable for the job", but job can give the impression of being used professionally, which might not be the case.

2) Came from other programming language

Maybe "other" would cover this, but this might be more specifically helpful.  All converts might not have come from Pascal related variants, but other languages for various reasons.  Like was using a scripting language and needed a compiled language, etc...

Martin_fr

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #21 on: April 17, 2021, 04:01:19 pm »
Another probably interesting factor is the order of discovery between Pascal and Lazarus.

I would guess, but have no knowledge about it at all, that most people who use FPC/Lazarus had some affinity to Pascal before.
However some may have come to Pascal, either by discovering FPC/Lazarus or via some indirection by discovering another Tool (like Delphi) first.

In either case:
- Did you learn about Pascal first. How? (list of possible reasons)
- Did you learn Pascal because of the Tools/IDE (Lazarus/Delphi/other Pascal specific IDE)?

Mr.Madguy

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #22 on: April 17, 2021, 07:01:24 pm »
Not sure, if we need such poll. I guess, the most popular answers would be "I like idea of RAD development, introduced by Delphi, but Delphi isn't free - it's way too overpriced, has many bugs, limitations and at the end I like whole idea of free and open software".
Is it healthy for project not to have regular stable releases?
Just for fun: Code::Blocks, GCC 13 and DOS - is it possible?

VTwin

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #23 on: April 17, 2021, 07:17:05 pm »
* Best cross-platform desktop GUI RAD.

I am a former Turbo Pascal user, so that was a plus, but I had dropped it for some decades. Since then I tried or considered all alternatives I could find (in C++, Java, Python, etc.) before committing to Free Pascal/Lazarus.
“Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” -Linus Torvalds

Free Pascal Compiler 3.2.2
macOS 12.1: Lazarus 2.2.6 (64 bit Cocoa M1)
Ubuntu 18.04.3: Lazarus 2.2.6 (64 bit on VBox)
Windows 7 Pro SP1: Lazarus 2.2.6 (64 bit on VBox)

kupferstecher

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #24 on: April 19, 2021, 03:15:28 pm »
I would guess, but have no knowledge about it at all, that most people who use FPC/Lazarus had some affinity to Pascal before.
[...]
In either case:
- Did you learn about Pascal first. How? (list of possible reasons)
- Did you learn Pascal because of the Tools/IDE (Lazarus/Delphi/other Pascal specific IDE)?
Yes, I think that are good and important questions.
I'm an example of someone who wasn't in touch with Pascal before I came to FreePascal/Lazarus. At the time I wanted to start graphic programming and searched for possibilities. And I like the native style, so Java dropped out. I had hesitation to start with Lazarus, because of its lack of prominence. But I dislike C, so I gave it a try and since never regretted my choice :-)

(And I think there are a lot of people out there allergic to C.)

marcov

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #25 on: April 19, 2021, 05:15:40 pm »
C=64+ 6502 assembler (till +/- 91), a short few months QB (the one that came with msdos5), TP4, 5.5, 6 and 7 in the years after that (mostly I ran what the school had a site license for).

Then switched to Topspeed Modula2 and iterated from 1.15 to 3.10.  Better and cleaner syntax, but as said less practical, specially quite laborious string handling.

Feeling 16-bit was getting limiting, I tried a few 32-bit dos compilers (Dec M3, djgpp C and GPC) but those *nix derivates felt very rough and unpolished, and so I ended up with FPC, somewhere early 1998 I think. I think I couldn't even get some of them to run to actually follow the tutorials (DJGPP and GPC)

Professionally I use a mix of Delphi (big applications that bring in the bucks) and C++ (mostly wrapping SDK for use in Delphi), a bit of SSE assembler here and there (I'm in image processing, hard to avoid) and plain C (microcontroller dspic33).

For the rest I use Lazarus/FPC, so all personal stuff and most supporting and administrative applications at work.

I've also done Java (school work, and customizing a measurement result aggregation app) and C#/ASP.NET for about the year after VS2005 came out.

I'm not allergic to C, but don't put it on a pedestal like so many people. It is an akward old language with a lot of compromises and legacy. 

But it is the attempts at mindless mixing of minor C details into Pascal that I personally find frustrating.  It feels like believing that duck-taping a paper trunk to a cow gives it the properties of an elephant instead of a cow that tramples everything because it can't see where it is going.

Frankly it does a disservice to C too, reducing all it properties to some minor syntax rather than its typesystem and general langugage/parsing philosophy.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2021, 05:31:30 pm by marcov »

dseligo

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #26 on: April 19, 2021, 06:23:23 pm »
C=64+ 6502 assembler (till +/- 91), a short few months QB (the one that came with msdos5), TP4, 5.5, 6 and 7 in the years after that (mostly I ran what the school had a site license for).

I started same or very similar as you did. I am not sure if we had TP4 in school or if I started with TP5.5.
Edit: Only, I just remembered, before QB it was some other BASIC in school (7th or 8th grade) on 8-bit computer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orao_(computer)).
« Last Edit: April 19, 2021, 06:26:34 pm by dseligo »

garlar27

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Re: A poll about FPC +/ Lazarus IDE - the precursor
« Reply #27 on: April 20, 2021, 10:50:44 pm »
First things first: You can't do statistics if "Other" has a big percentage and free keyboard input is hard to quantize ()

Another probably interesting factor is the order of discovery between Pascal and Lazarus.

I would guess, but have no knowledge about it at all, that most people who use FPC/Lazarus had some affinity to Pascal before.
However some may have come to Pascal, either by discovering FPC/Lazarus or via some indirection by discovering another Tool (like Delphi) first.

In either case:
- Did you learn about Pascal first. How? (list of possible reasons)
- Did you learn Pascal because of the Tools/IDE (Lazarus/Delphi/other Pascal specific IDE)?

It looks you're interested in how and why we got here. Then some back ground (other languages known the level we think we have on it, for how long and how many things we did or do with them) and context info could be added:
  • Where did you know about FPC/Laz (web, College, at work, a friend, etc)
  • What do you do with FPC and Lazarus hobby, work, learning, teaching
  • Platform used to develop and production (percentage of each one)
  • Types of app you develop (desktop, command line, daemon/service, Apache modules, Laz components, etc)
  • The app category (game, research, graphic editor, CAD, point of sale, backoffice, etc)
  • If the app communicates with external devices like sensors, scanners, etc. and protocols used to send/receive signals
  • If use HTTP, TCP, UDP, etc.
  • DB you use with laz
  • Do you use cryptography
  • what ever you might think is useful to know what the FPC/Laz community is

and the list can go for ever and ever and I don't think we should figure out all the existing programing languages nor the app category. Someone must already have made one and we can borrow from them.


 

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