Delphi Community Edition vs Lazarus for Begginers

[cpicanco]

I am afraid to disagree paule32. I need Lazarus, for sure. It is great for me.

Yes.
Nobody, or me said, that Lazarus is not a good Thing.
What I need/would to say was:
You need fun to enjoy learning, and programming DSL - The issue is not the DSL (Domain Syntax Language - the short name for "something" programming Language).
The issue is, that you don't have to the capitalism, and profit in mind nothing at all.

Sorry, my bad. It wasn't my intention to put words in your mouth. I agree 100% when you say that you don't have to persue profit to learn, to socialize, to be excellent with each other. I think that the same applies to the FPC compiler and its devs. They are awesome.

[paule32]

Sorry, my bad. It wasn't my intention to put words in your mouth.

nope - No Problem.
All of Us are Human's.
Human's can make mistakes, over-hear, over-read Things
Human's can make Human's :-)
Human's can can learn about the History.
Human's can communicate together.

And Communication is ALL what we need - we can learn by each other.
Each of Us have advantages.
Each of Us have disadvantages.

We are Human's, than need Human's

From Baby till the Grand Ma/Daddy...

God secure you (whatever a God it is - the 100% God's over all is a Illusion)

[Thaddy]

and Danes should be able
1. invade England Scotland and Ireland.
2. write compilers.
3. bacon. ..not to eat, but to export.

[marcov]

As the title of the thread says, what IDE would you recommend to begginers for a smooth and mostly trouble free experience?

It would depend quite on what you would do, but I would default to Lazarus. Though that is partially also that while I work 40 hours a week in Delphi, I no longer use delphi at home and thus no longer know the exact border conditions for the current CE. (and even quite some work codebases are now Lazarus/Freepascal). 

I'm therefore not exactly familiar with the exact border conditions of the current Delphi CE, but sufficient to say I stopped using it due to limitations (64-bit) and annoyances (reregistering if you reinstall your PC, half of the time it fails).

My rationale is, having read some versions releases logs of lazarus, that last releases have some bugs on the components that could discourage beginners or may get on the way of fast learning the basics, if so, there's a version that the community consider as "rock stable"?

There is no absolute definition of "rock stable", and even if it were, it is the question if Delphi would actually would be it.

Finally, there's the community edition of delphi which I guess would be the "natural path" for begginers, but I might be wrong and could be that this version of delphi it's so crippled that may not be worth it?

And specially over time. In the past there have been periods they stopped offering it, or did not package some features (non 32-bit Windows targets or , not being able to install components etc.

The question is if you want to risk finding yourself in a dead end in a few years with the community edition. So I would suggest starting with Lazarus unless you have real specific hard reasons not to. (like activex applet development, or something with mobile that IS supported in the community edition) or because of specific components.

But even then I would think hard and long.

You can use the Delphi CE Version for commercial, too.
But the marge is only 5.000 Dollars for one year.

Note the license says your company turnover, not turnover from you using Delphi. So if you are in a big company that makes money, you can't use it in a small department.

[440bx]

Disclaimer: I don't have the community edition and as long as Idera (or whoever the owner is today) doesn't greatly relax (read: eliminate) the conditions to use it, it's rather unlikely it will ever meet my computer's keyboard.

OTH, if the owner would just make a very stripped down package consisting of only the compiler, the debugger and only a very small part of the VCL (only the implementations of Windows common controls, nothing else) without any of the current limitations then that would be really interesting.  I'd say even sell that for $49.99, I'd gladly invest that little in a good compiler, debugger and basic online support (can't expect much for that kind of money.)

They would actually make money that way instead of earning a fair amount of "not so good will" because of all the limitations/insecurities/problems associated with their current offering.

These people about 24 years ago started to repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot, they haven't stopped and the gun is still pointing at their foot... I have to give them credit for their very high pain threshold (but I wish it weren't that high because it deprives programmers of a good compiler at a reasonable price.)

Delphi CE could easily be the "deluxe" version of Lazarus and FPC if they had a reasonably priced offering.

In the meantime, Lazarus keeps on getting better, Lazarus' debugger has really improved quite a bit and is quite capable now. FPC is fast, generates reasonably good code (but still needs some improvements) and, as far as support, the forum participants here do a really good job.  For a beginner, I believe FPC and Lazarus beats what is available in the Delphi side of things (except for availability of components.)

[lainz]

I tried Delphi Community and it don't include sources. Really hard to code without sources like we have with Lazarus.

[wp]

I tried Delphi Community and it don't include sources. Really hard to code without sources like we have with Lazarus.

You must be doing something wrong, it comes WITH sources. Just CTRL+click on the word "TForm", for example, and Delphi will open the source file (Vcl.Forms.pas, here)

[lainz]

I tried Delphi Community and it don't include sources. Really hard to code without sources like we have with Lazarus.

You must be doing something wrong, it comes WITH sources. Just CTRL+click on the word "TForm", for example, and Delphi will open the source file (Vcl.Forms.pas, here)

Maybe they included the source in newer versions. But it did not include the sources when they released it the first time. I'm not using it since it was first released.

Edit: downloaded and yes it comes with sources, cool that they have added it.

[VisualLab]

To learn Pascal, you don't need Lazarus or Delphi.
All what you need is "Turbo Pascal" or "fpc"

As for FPC, I agree. But TurboPascal is too old today.

The other things will be become later - Again: you don't need a GUI IDE.

The IDE's GUI makes learning and working incredibly easy. Saves time. Yes, you can use a bare compiler on the command line, just like you can live in a shack in the forest and eat berries and roots. But it's art for art's sake (to pass the time). And I guess that's not what learning programming is about.

[VisualLab]

and Danes should be able
1. invade England...

Again?

[TRon]

The IDE's GUI makes learning and working incredibly easy. Saves time. Yes, you can use a bare compiler on the command line, just like you can live in a shack in the forest and eat berries and roots. But it's art for art's sake (to pass the time). And I guess that's not what learning programming is about.

Learning (pascal) programming is also not about using the convenience of a GUI editor. You can name it shack in the forest but all I need is text editor and FPC. It is the most efficient way of coding. All else (features that an editor/IDE brings) is just distraction. imho ofc 

[VisualLab]

The IDE's GUI makes learning and working incredibly easy. Saves time. Yes, you can use a bare compiler on the command line, just like you can live in a shack in the forest and eat berries and roots. But it's art for art's sake (to pass the time). And I guess that's not what learning programming is about.

Learning (pascal) programming is also not about using the convenience of a GUI editor. You can name it shack in the forest but all I need is text editor and FPC. It is the most efficient way of coding. All else (features that an editor/IDE brings) is just distraction. imho ofc 

Convenience (or rather: ergonomics) makes work more efficient and faster. It is only a means to achieve an end, not an end in itself. But yes, there are people who do not need support with advanced tools.

[KodeZwerg]

All else (features that an editor/IDE brings) is just distraction.

Learning does also include using documentation, like pressing F1, that can't be a distraction. Also just my opinion =)

[TRon]

Convenience (or rather: ergonomics) makes work more efficient and faster. It is only a means to achieve an end, not an end in itself. But yes, there are people who do not need support with advanced tools.

Indeed the topic is a shift to ergonomics. A good editor is able to bring you that. But as an illustration have you ever tried using the designated IDE to work with new features from trunk ? How code-tools is bugging you because it doesn't understand the code you wrote and issues errors ? Ofc. I can turn it off.. (distraction). The (by default) automatic filtering of the output messages (again distraction) and there are a few others.

Learning does also include using documentation, like pressing F1, that can't be a distraction. Also just my opinion =)

Any good editor is able to designate a shortcut key to invoke a help file (or search for a certain keyword in the help). You can also just have the help files open for your convenience. I was more talking about other distractions such as illustrated above.

There are a few basic things that can make things more ergonomic and that is syntax highlighting, code completion, I do like folding, quick switching between interface and implementation headers and being able to just press a key to invoke compilation but other than that... just distraction. Though the code-completion of the lazarus IDE is more sophisticated than most other editors offer (because their lack of understanding/knowledge of the language). I guess i can always fall-back to using the fp editor in case I want to be ergonomic

[lainz]

The license for community edition last a year?
And then what?