Who are the Pascal lovers ?

[Handoko]

- Suggesting new features for Lazarus/FPC is okay, but being too pushy is annoying. Especially if they say, because xyz development tool has it so we must have it.

- Criticism can be good. But criticizing Lazarus/FPC, without doing any contribution themselves but wanting others to improve it, is no good.

- Lazarus/FPC is the result of all contributors. Being impolite and disrespectful is bad. That also includes frequently using the red face emoticon.

- Being off topic, spamming, trolling and flaming.

Those are the things I know that can cause one being banned. Actually this forum is very tolerable, as long as the behavior hasn't reach certain limit.

I'm sometimes impatient, luckily I'm not a moderator. So I just report and let moderators to decide.

[Joanna]

Indeed. There is some comfort though that the forum is actually alive and used, that provides motivation and keeps it bearable. Nothing is so frustrating as doing it for a nearly dead forum just in the hope that somebody passes by.

I couldn’t have said it better. Sometimes the hardest part is to attract and retain good active people.

Should they all not be allowed here as well?
Pascal might not even be their primary programming language.

I’ve had quite a bit of experience with trolls/griefers both in IRC and 15 years of online gaming. One of the most unpleasant aspects of being a moderator is being sometimes second guessed by people who don’t understand what is happening.
Trolls can permanently chase away good people and kill a community very quickly which is what happened to our irc channel back on freenode before I started helping with it. Freenode being destroyed made us lose even more people.

It’s best not to lose focus on what we are trying to accomplish. I believe that the forums and irc exist for the purpose of helping people utilize the free pascal compiler which is written in pascal language and intended for pascal programmers.
Just because the forums and irc are easy to get to does not make it ok for people who hate pascal and have no interest in talking about it in a non disparaging way to come harass us and try to discredit our community.
For example : recently a troll in irc came out of hibernation because I shared a link about operating systems written in pascal given to me by someone on this forum. The other day a troll made up lies about his “wife” being harrassed in the forums. This sort of behavior is completely unacceptable and happens regularly.

We have a right to exist and program in pascal do we not ? It’s time to have some self respect. I could care less how many other Programming languages people know/use, but if they aren’t interested in learning and using pascal why would they go to pascal support places?

There are plenty of places online for non pascal programmers to go but precious few places where I can go online and talk about pascal without being ridiculed.

[Joanna]

- Suggesting new features for Lazarus/FPC is okay, but being too pushy is annoying. Especially if they say, because xyz development tool has it so we must have it.

- Criticism can be good. But criticizing Lazarus/FPC, without doing any contribution themselves but wanting others to improve it, is no good.

I have encountered these types of people and their awful suggestions about what should be done with Lazarus. One of them even suggested making the Lazarus client connect to IRC!!
I’m not sure what the intentions of these people are but if they aren’t serious users of fpc with actual projects they shouldn’t be taken seriously.
If they are actual fpc users they should try to improve things themselves if they can. I know I had to. That is what opensource is for.

[Bogen85]

We have a right to exist and program in pascal do we not ? It’s time to have some self respect. I could care less how many other Programming languages people know/use, but if they aren’t interested in learning and using pascal why would they go to pascal support places?

Because they might be using some program they like that is written in Lazarus or free pascal, and they are trying to work with the maintainers of said program (or some other pascal programmer that could help). They might not have the kind of attitudes of free pascal you want. However, they are trying to improve an existing tool they find a lot of value in.

Whatever we can do to help existing Free Pascal projects do well, we should.

Of course we should not tolerate hostile and silly/careless behavior (recent bans highlighted in this thread are examples of that).

So we may get people coming for help or wanting to know more about Free Pascal and Lazarus, who just doing to for one purpose, and one purpose only.

A means to an end to improve the software they are using.

This is not hypothetical. There are likely users of CudaText who could care less about Free Pascal. But since CudaText is written in Lazarus, and let's be honest, Lazarus does have some Qt5/6 and Gtk2/3/(4?) related issues. This is not a knock on Lazarus, it takes time and resources to track down and find the cause of the issues, and to come up with fixes for them.

Someone might come to the forums (and have recently related to CudaText) or to IRC and not even share what particular tool written in Lazarus or Free Pascal they are using.

They might not be the happiest people (and some of that might be from issues they are having with those tools).

But as long as they don't go overboard (hostile/silly/careless) we should still accept them and try to help them, because to not do so:

• Reflects poorly on the Free Pascal and Lazarus projects those tools come from.
• Reflects poorly on the Free Pascal and Lazarus community as a whole.

To dismiss outright just because they do not fit your picture is not good.

While you could care less how what Programming languages others use, that caring less can cause communication problems if you don't like how they are asking the questions.

If they are coming for help only for a means to end (to help them understand and/or improve an FPC/Lazarus based tool they are using) they might be slightly biased about Pascal if they don't know much about it and have their own favorite programming language that they will be thinking in when they are inquiring about Free Pascal or Lazarus.

That don't have to share what tool they are using, or why they need to have help getting over some obstacle. Of course the more they share, the easier it is to help them.

Forums and IRC should serve everyone legitimately needing help with FPC/Lazarus. Even if they don't like FPC and Lazarus, as long as they don't become hostile/silly/careless (and due to that, get banned).

Those types of people may make suggestions or ask why things are done a certain way in a manner you might not appreciate. But if we can help them, and if we can find reasonable ways to accommodate suggestions would improve FPC/Lazarus and projects that use them, we should help them.

It’s best not to lose focus on what we are trying to accomplish. I believe that the forums and irc exist for the purpose of helping people utilize the free pascal compiler which is written in pascal language....

Agreed, and that is the point I'm trying to make.

... and intended for pascal programmers.

Once again, we need to be careful on the "intended for pascal programmers". As they may have zero desire to be a Pascal programmer once they have gotten past the problem, as I've already pointed out. They might not even desire to be Pascal programmer to get past the problem, but to be able to discuss the issue with the tool maintainers (or some other pascal programmers that can help them).

If they need help, they need help. If they already hate Pascal and don't get the help they need, they may hate Pascal even more as a result, and spread that hate among their peers. We don't want that.

Obviously some won't be able to suppress their hatred enough to be able to adequately engage to get the needed help.

Oh well, impossible to help everyone...

Or course it is easier to just help people who love Pascal and want to only program in Pascal. But we don't want to be an intolerant community that shuns all we consider to be "outsiders".

You may want to just have people in the Forums or IRC who love Pascal as the end all be all computer programming language and only program in Pascal. If that were to be the criteria, as I already pointed out, many many valuable contributing members of the Forums would have to go. And it would be a rapidly dwindling community.

[440bx]

Because they might be using some program they like that is written in Lazarus or free pascal,

This is a nitpick but... a Pascal program is neither written in Delphi nor in Lazarus, it is written in Pascal.

That "mixing" becomes a problem because it underexposes the use of Pascal in programming.  Borland took this problem to its zenith by calling their Pascal compiler the same as their development environment, both named Delphi.  Fortunately, Lazarus and FPC make it clear they are separate and it would probably be a good thing, for both pieces of software, for their users to maintain that distinction.

[Bogen85]

Because they might be using some program they like that is written in Lazarus or free pascal,

This is a nitpick but... a Pascal program is neither written in Delphi nor in Lazarus, it is written in Pascal.

That "mixing" becomes a problem because it underexposes the use of Pascal in programming.  Borland took this problem to its zenith by calling their Pascal compiler the same as their development environment, both named Delphi.  Fortunately, Lazarus and FPC make it clear they are separate and it would probably be a good thing, for both pieces of software, for their users to maintain that distinction.

Yeah, I should have said something like "written utilizing Lazarus or free pascal" (or something to the effect...)

Or yeah "written in Pascal"...

I understand your point.

[Bogen85]

They might not have the kind of attitudes of free pascal you want. However, they are trying to improve an existing tool they find a lot of value in.

Or maybe not even a tool they like...
But one they have to use at work, or in some community they have chosen to be a part of.

[440bx]

Yeah, I should have said something like "written utilizing Lazarus or free pascal" (or something to the effect...)

Or yeah "written in Pascal"...

I understand your point.

I'm pleased you understand the point I was making because, it certainly wasn't, and isn't, my intention to pick on you (or anyone else for that matter) but, I believe that confusing/mixing the development environment with the language has been detrimental to the language (Pascal in this case) and, I've seen "written in Lazarus" a bit too often already, for that reason, I thought I 'd mention it after reading your post.

All that said, I strongly believe that Lazarus, in addition to FPC, should be given the credit it earns in making development easier and faster.  I'm just not sure how credit to both can be given clearly without muddying the waters between the two.

[dbannon]

Yes, I think we all should make a point of telling people that any app we distribute was made with FreePascal/Lazarus if possible. I still hear questions like "Pascal ? is that still a thing?".

Here is the small splash screen that comes up when a user starts my app, tomboy-ng, most users set it to not show after that first start but once is enough.  I'd prefer a slightly less confronting image but there it is !

Davo

[Joanna]

Because they might be using some program they like that is written in Lazarus or free pascal, and they are trying to work with the maintainers of said program (or some other pascal programmer that could help). They might not have the kind of attitudes of free pascal you want. However, they are trying to improve an existing tool they find a lot of value in.

If that is the case they need to find the people who actually created the application before complaining about it.
Actually we have had trolls/{people who think we are their servants} come to both platforms with some program written in pascal/ delphi repeatedly demanding that we fix it right away. This is just another style of trolling whether it’s intentional or not. I’m sure everyone remembers the troll demanding to compile a program with windows dependencies in linux not so long ago.

Fake help requests often ensnare what few good people are still active and wastes their time and frustrates them, making them less likely to try to help in future. We have had a troll that kept coming to irc with different accounts asking the same exact question should he use oop. No matter what people said he would manage to turn it into an argument, filling the chat with drivel and annoying people who didn’t understand that he was a troll.

There is maybe the scenerio where someone Who hates Pascal has been hired to translate legacy pascal code to another language. We have no obligation to help someone who is being paid to get rid of pascal, it’s in our best interests to go in the opposite direction. People who hate pascal poison the chat with their negativity. We have no obligations to be punching bags for everyone who is unhappy that pascal still exists.

Another possibility is someone has some fancy old code they want to redo using pascal thats great but this also means that they need to know pascal language!!

I often try to help people who don’t know pascal by giving them link to good online book on pascal. Not a single one has ever thanked me nor read the book. Do you want to know why? Because they are not interested in using pascal, they are there to troll.

[440bx]

hmmmm.... I certainly don't support trolling and given that trolling in this forum is usually fairly quickly dealt with, I don't see the necessity to have a thread about it (or hijack this one for that purpose.)

Honestly, I think the last two (2) posts post above this one should be, either in a separate thread of its own or in the IRC channel thread.  IMO, this "drama" _does not_ belongs in this thread.

ETA:

changed "last 2 posts" to "post".

I removed my reply.

I noticed... <chuckle>

[Kays]

The result of the [poll] isn't surprising to me.

Possibly due to hindsight bias. FYI a similar poll has been conducted 9 years ago: What’s the age of Lazarus users?

[…] I'm more interested in what can we do to gain new users, any suggestions? […]

[…] The important question is WHY did most schools stop teaching pascal ??and how to reverse this trend? […]

Money. It’s always money. Well, we can’t dish out cash like Mirco$hit or create jobs requiring Pascal skills, but that’s the main venue to go. Simply “being better than competitors” (e.g. lightning-fast compilation time has been mentioned) is insufficient. Marcov already wrote that:

[…] How to get Pascal back in the curriculum […] Get a gigonormous multi billion company to sponsor and advocate it and make it sexy for at least half a decade Forget about doing it on a dime. […]

In Germany, HR get their dick hard by seeing certificates of any kind. Do we got some kind of certification program? Maybe it’s about time. M$ does issue certificates for their abominations.

I’m not sure if the decision to teach pascal is even up to teachers. Wouldn’t it be the school administration? […]

Yes/no. Instructors are (usually) assigned a curriculum that outlines the educational objective. In my state the high school CS curriculum is really just a 20-page document describing following skills: structuring and modelling, forming algorithms and implementing them, cooperation and communication, creative creation and problem solving, data and their structuring, operation on data and algorithms, computer science systems and the models they are based on, opportunities and limitations of informational processes and systems. At no point it mentions any specific programming language.

I am in one of the oldest categories, 67 years old.

I could tell by the profile pic.

[…] D.O.B. fields in the profile […] I did pull the data that is available […]

Thank you. It’s a larger sample size. I prefer to have some visuals though:

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. [ 0, 10)  ▏               2.96 ‰
2. [10, 20)  ▎               5.92 ‰
3. [20, 30)  ███▍           75.52 ‰
4. [30, 40)  ██████████    237.04 ‰
5. [40, 50)  ██████████▉   256.3  ‰
6. [50, 60)  ████████      189.62 ‰
7. [60, 70)  ██████▎       148.14 ‰
8. [70,      ██             80    ‰
9.           █              N = 675 users
10.     100)  ▍              █ ≘  16 users

[Joanna]

  Money. It’s always money. Well, we can’t dish out cash like Mirco$hit or create jobs requiring Pascal skills, but that’s the main venue to go. Simply “being better than competitors” (e.g. lightning-fast compilation time has been mentioned) is insufficient.

Well money is certainly involved in paying to influence people To do things not in their best interest. Some people in this forum say improving pascal compiler is the most important thing to do. Let’s make amazing software in pascal to show the world how good it is! I certainly have nothing against programming in pascal as it is only thing I use besides a bit of sqlite but there is more to the story than this.

Even if you build the amazing app the fact that it’s in pascal and pascal is a great language will probably fall on deaf ears. We are dealing with people who have been brainwashed to think that pascal is a dead language. Many in the community may very well be excellent programmers but are in denial about the fact that our community is under attack by people who will do everything they can to discourage the use of pascal.

Outside of this forum do we have any public relations at all? People like to do things when they seem popular. Often it seems that members of pascal community squabble amongst themselves or people pretend to be interested in pascal just to spy on us or do surprise attacks to make us look bad. This is a sad state of affairs.

We need to make pascal more fun.
I Really don’t know how to overcome the hurdle of having some very rich enemies that want us gone. I do what I can to try to help. I wonder if there could ever be a programming project that people in forums could do together besides the compiler itself of course.

[lainz]

I contributed doing this website some time ago:
https://packages.lazarus-ide.org/

I think FPC can compete with any language, but a lot of marketing should be involved, and seems that part is not of much interest.

For example check python website, it has this cool part:

Use Python for…
More
Web Development: Django, Pyramid, Bottle, Tornado, Flask, web2py
GUI Development: tkInter, PyGObject, PyQt, PySide, Kivy, wxPython
Scientific and Numeric: SciPy, Pandas, IPython
Software Development: Buildbot, Trac, Roundup
System Administration: Ansible, Salt, OpenStack, xonsh

That kind of links are in my opinion really usefull to have in the main website. I will not do it, but since we're talking about it here I can't loose the opportunity to share this small idea...

[marcov]

I contributed doing this website some time ago:
https://packages.lazarus-ide.org/

I think FPC can compete with any language, but a lot of marketing should be involved, and seems that part is not of much interest.

FPC is a community driven project. Just look at the names on the python sponsoring page: https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/

Comparing FPC to super large scale projects like Python is pretty pointless.