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Author Topic: First time FPC IDE for beginners  (Read 3012 times)

alpine

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First time FPC IDE for beginners
« on: April 17, 2021, 02:34:12 pm »
Would anyone recommend some kind of minimalist IDE for Pascal? 

Imagine a teenager who spends most of his time with CS and Fortnite and used to get results with just a few clicks. Needs to be converted to the right religion. The undertaking is quite delicate...

Lazarus is much overloaded with features to be a 1-st time environment, fpide.exe is fine, but it is not a 'native' Win GUI, which I consider to be a problem in this particular case.

I really like ArduinoIDE, but unfortunately it's for C.

Any suggestions welcome!
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marcov

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2021, 02:46:58 pm »
I would advise to stick with lazarus, it is IDE with the best finishing touch, which is important for beginners.

Martin_fr

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2021, 04:37:25 pm »
About Lazarus:
Yes it has tons of features. And many of them you may not need, but you will never get to see them either.
Many of those features will only be notable to you, if you actually look for them.

Some things I can see....
The Lazarus menus have lots of entries. That is something you will be exposed too.
I do not know, never tried myself, but if memory serves there is a package EducationLaz (or similar), that does reduce the menu clutter. It would be a one time task to install it.
I can not advice if it really is useful to you. Maybe someone else knows.

The other issue, where you get into "all the features" is the option dialog. But you probably can avoid going there at all. And if you have to go there, it has a search box.

All else, should be fine.
You get out of the box, an source code editor, a GUI form designer, and GUI elements to place there. Nothing excessive in all of that.
You can ran the App you create pressing F9, and if anything goes wrong the debugger will pop up. (and more debugger access is under menu View > Debug Windows).

And that is really all you need in order to start.

alpine

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2021, 08:04:56 pm »
[snip]
I do not know, never tried myself, but if memory serves there is a package EducationLaz (or similar), that does reduce the menu clutter. It would be a one time task to install it.
[snip]
And that is really all you need in order to start.

Thanks Martin_fr, it seems that your memory serves you quite well!
IMO, that package will do the work. I just need to pick the menu items one by one.

Regards,
 
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CM630

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #4 on: April 21, 2021, 04:08:21 pm »
Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.
Лазар 3,0 32 bit (sometimes 64 bit); FPC3,2,2; rev: Lazarus_3_0 on Win10 64bit.

dsiders

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #5 on: April 21, 2021, 05:52:03 pm »
Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.

Now that we have a DockedFormEditor that works, it is growing on me. I am hopeful that this combo is more stable than the Sparta alternatives. They were perpetually broken.
Preview Lazarus 3.99 documentation at: https://dsiders.gitlab.io/lazdocsnext

El Salvador

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2021, 05:59:50 pm »
Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.

Now that we have a DockedFormEditor that works, it is growing on me. I am hopeful that this combo is more stable than the Sparta alternatives. They were perpetually broken.
Broken?

dsiders

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #7 on: April 21, 2021, 07:50:33 pm »
Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.

Now that we have a DockedFormEditor that works, it is growing on me. I am hopeful that this combo is more stable than the Sparta alternatives. They were perpetually broken.
Broken?

Yeah, broken. Won't compile, or won't install, or won't run without error, or using incompatible generic classes. Broken.
Preview Lazarus 3.99 documentation at: https://dsiders.gitlab.io/lazdocsnext

CM630

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2021, 05:37:15 pm »

Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.

Oops, I have meant AnchorDockingDsgn. I have no idea what AnchorDocking is used for.
« Last Edit: April 22, 2021, 08:21:02 pm by CM630 »
Лазар 3,0 32 bit (sometimes 64 bit); FPC3,2,2; rev: Lazarus_3_0 on Win10 64bit.

alpine

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #9 on: April 22, 2021, 06:28:31 pm »
Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.
Oops, I have meant AnchorDockingDsgn. I have no idea what [/size]AnchorDocking is used for.
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CM630

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #10 on: April 22, 2021, 08:22:48 pm »
Sorry, the forum has some bug, it keeps changing the font size to almost zero, usually, I see and fix my post.. not not always.
×извинявам се.
Лазар 3,0 32 bit (sometimes 64 bit); FPC3,2,2; rev: Lazarus_3_0 on Win10 64bit.

tr_escape

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #11 on: April 22, 2021, 09:05:07 pm »
Maybe some online tools can help for console apps:

https://ideone.com/l/pascal-fpc

But at the end of journey of learning fpc+lazarus they will install whole package.

In this step I prefer fpcupdeluxe

https://github.com/LongDirtyAnimAlf/fpcupdeluxe/releases

It is easy to install for trunk version.

Also normal installs of fpc+lazarus smaller than Visual Studio Community Edition or even Visual Studio Code too.

However in my experience I can say fpc+lazarus is good enough.

But I also using Visual Studio Code portable edition actually it is really good solution for me maybe lazarus team works for portable app I mean really portable as xcopy-able edition.



alpine

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #12 on: April 22, 2021, 09:14:13 pm »
Sorry, the forum has some bug, it keeps changing the font size to almost zero, usually, I see and fix my post.. not not always.
×извинявам се.
NP, I didn't expect these to be letters. I had to be able to guess. AFAIK AnchorDocking does with the program what AnchorDockingDsgn does with the IDE. But I haven't gone into detail because I don't think it's very stable. I had problems with IDE + AnchorDockingDsgn and had to rub the configuration files to normalize.

@CM630, congrats on the sly nickname!  ;)
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
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lucamar

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2021, 12:16:33 am »
Sorry, the forum has some bug, it keeps changing the font size to almost zero, usually, I see and fix my post.. not not always.

Just guessing but you could try *not* clicking the "font face"/"font size" combo's when you mean to click the "Tt" button ;)
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PascalDragon

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Re: First time FPC IDE for beginners
« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2021, 03:45:02 pm »

Just install the AnchorDocking package. IMHO, it makes the Lazarus IDE much, much better.

Oops, I have meant AnchorDockingDsgn. I have no idea what AnchorDocking is used for.


AnchorDocking is the runtime package that is used by AnchorDockingDsgn. You can use this for example to turn your own application into a dockable one (if your application provides multiple windows).

 

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