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.