Lazarus
Miscellaneous => Other => Topic started by: paweld on February 17, 2023, 07:32:50 am
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Roadmap for FPC and Lazarus was posted on blaisepascalmagazine.eu - link to the publication: https://www.blaisepascalmagazine.eu/roadmap-for-fpc-and-lazarus/
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My fist question is -> why is this information not posted first on the pages of the foundation https://foundation.freepascal.org/ or the wiki pages https://www.freepascal.org/future.html ?
Must we read such a information in a paid magazine ? Did the magazine give the roadmap for the developers ? Or is it a sponsor an say you have to follow the path.
Sorry, i did not understand the policity.
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Yes good question af. It seem to be mainly about Lazarus and a pretty motley list IMHO.
From a Policy point of view, a very worrying approach. When an organisation looses its way, first thing it forgets are just who is important to them.
Davo
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It's new for me too. I assume it is the foundation's roadmap, not the projects themselves.
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It's new for me too. I assume it is the foundation's roadmap, not the projects themselves.
But nothing to see on the foundations page. I have checked this before i made my post
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It's new for me too. I assume it is the foundation's roadmap, not the projects themselves.
But nothing to see on the foundations page. I have checked this before i made my post
It seems like group of 2 or 3 pascal/lazarus developers come together made roadmap for themself. They already working to achieve the goal.
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It's new for me too. I assume it is the foundation's roadmap, not the projects themselves.
But nothing to see on the foundations page. I have checked this before i made my post
This is a bit ironic, since Detlef is both the editor of the Blaise Pascal Magizine and also the chairman (https://foundation.freepascal.org/about/about) of the Foundation.
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Its simple I am working on it. I cant do everything at once.
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Other than that, what do you think of this roadmap? Fresnel seems to be quite an important and nice news (and a better debugger, too) for the FPC/Lazarus world. The rest seems a bit meh to me. You think?
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Other than that, what do you think of this roadmap? Fresnel seems to be quite an important and nice news (and a better debugger, too) for the FPC/Lazarus world. The rest seems a bit meh to me. You think?
Agreed. Fresnel does seem to be the most important.
As far as the rest, yeah, I agree with you.
As Marcov pointed out, this is the Foundation's roadmap, not the roadmap of the FPC/Lazarus projects.
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The problem with Fresnel is that you get drawing freedom but on top of LCL with native widgetsets ? That doesn't make entire sense IMHO.
Also it is very massive, how quick can it be usable?
IMHO the debugger is the only FPC/Lazarus project, the rest are 3rd party addons.
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@af0815: also I didn't find this information on the foundation's website, so I decided to post a link.
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IMHO the debugger is the only FPC/Lazarus project, the rest are 3rd party addons.
But is presented like an "official" roadmap without any synchonisation with the foundation. Or is the foundation a dead horse ? Because 3rd party addons should presented as 3rd party roadmap and not as a roadmap for fpc & lazarus 16/2/2023.
my 2 ct
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IMHO the debugger is the only FPC/Lazarus project, the rest are 3rd party addons.
But is presented like an "official" roadmap without any synchonisation with the foundation. Or is the foundation a dead horse ? Because 3rd party addons should presented as 3rd party roadmap and not as a roadmap for fpc & lazarus 16/2/2023.
my 2 ct
I know and agree. But I don't have much hope as the whole pas2js has also been pushed under the FPC umbrella, despite being only sideways related.
Most of these seem to be selected in the hope of attracting anonymous masses rather than improve life for the people actually using the project's fruits.
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Nobody mentioned such roadmap on devel mailing list, also this is first time I heard about Fresnel, whatever it is.
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IMHO the debugger is the only FPC/Lazarus project, the rest are 3rd party addons.
So how come the Fresnel repo is in the Lazarus group of gitlab? :-[
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IMHO the debugger is the only FPC/Lazarus project, the rest are 3rd party addons.
So how come the Fresnel repo is in the Lazarus group of gitlab? :-[
Same reason that pas2js is in FPC? :-) Overlap of developers.
I do want to stress that the comment on Fresnel was just a first impression(a bit of a qtquick copycat, probably for pas2js benefit). If you want to react to that assessment and point out what is wrong, I'd be happy to learn.
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So how come the Fresnel repo is in the Lazarus group of gitlab? :-[
This is a question for
"Mattias Gaertner authored 3 months ago"
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I know and agree. But I don't have much hope as the whole pas2js has also been pushed under the FPC umbrella, despite being only sideways related.
Most of these seem to be selected in the hope of attracting anonymous masses rather than improve life for the people actually using the project's fruits.
That’s not a good thing when this happens, I’ve seen it before and the results weren’t good.
AI seems to be the latest hype. AI is definitely not a panacea. I do like the idea of being able to control the colors of all controls... but on the other hand Lazarus IDE is already quite complicated adding too many more features to it could become counterproductive.
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This road map looks like a bunch of loose ideas (except for one point).
Re. 1. Adding the ability to change colors and shapes for all widgets is OK. Although it's not a matter of life and death. However, the idea of using CSS for this purpose is pure fantasy and utopia (and additionally: idiocy). CSS is bloated and causes huge memory and CPU overhead. Adapting existing code to support CSS (Gtk, Qt, WinAPI, Cocoa) is a lot of work. Also, CSS was developed for HTML formatting, not for styling controls in operating systems. It is the complete opposite of what developers of windowed applications need. You can try to develop something similar to styles in Delphi. But that will also take a lot of work. There is still the question of how to handle CSS in Lazarus. Because CSS are human-edited text files, they may contain errors. There is known such a commercial (and very expensive) HTML and CSS editor. It's Dreamweaver. Does he always do well with CSS code? The last time I used it was about 12 years ago. And as I remember, there were problems with it (not that I consider this program to be bad, it's just that it's quite a complicated issue). Unless these files will not be modified by a human, but by a graphical editor. But that still requires Lazarus expansion and a lot of work (time, people).
Unless the originator of this roadmap has in mind creating a brand new portable library. This is complete fantasy and delusion. Just look at how much work it took to create such libraries as FireMonkey or JavaFX (I won't mention Qt, because it's years of work for a battalion of programmers). Yes, a cross-platform library for Lazarus and FPC would be useful. But this topic has been discussed many times before. And creating something new that uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript is a dead end. That's why there are still people who choose Lazarus, because it allows you to build windowed applications without trendy shit like Electron and node.js. Trabants in the GDR were also popular, but the quality was worse (but at least they were simple to build unlike WebKit).
Re. 2. As above (in 1).
Re. 3. Web-Assembly is desirable.
Re. 4. Hmm…
Re. 5. Lack of details as to the intentions of the originator of the road map.
Re. 6. That would indeed be useful. But... it will take at least a few years to achieve the capabilities of open source engines (OGRE, Torque3D, Irrlicht), provided that the project is developed regularly by at least 4-5 people. So it's work for years.
Re. 7. This is the most important point. And that should be in the first place.
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AI seems to be the latest hype. AI is definitely not a panacea.
What is being referred to in the "roadmap" might not to be in regard to the recent ChatGPT and related use of AI.
4. Create a tool for coupling any AI or Neural network to demonstrate step by step the Algorithm behind the AI and test it line by line.
That likely (I could be wrong) has little or nothing to do with the "buzz" around AI for the past few months. (well, longer, last few years, but much more so in the past few months)
Using programming languages to work with AI neural networks predates Pascal as a programming language, it is not the latest "hype"...
While many (even on this forum) may use and benefit AI related tools, I don't think any on this forum have called them a panacea. They are tools like any other tool, and can be effective if one knows how to (and wants to) use them.
I agree it (the recent "buzz") is not a panacea, but I would caution those who want to downplay it as "hype" or the "latest fad" that will soon be over and replaced with something non AI related. Certainly many aspects of it are hyped. While very powerful, it is also extremely flawed.
If you are saying that not every Pascal user will benefit from 4. Create a tool for coupling any AI or Neural network to demonstrate step by step the Algorithm behind the AI and test it line by line.
then I completely agree.
It would only help those doing that kind of AI work, which is not necessarily related to the latest "buzz" you are seem to be referring to. (But I could be wrong about what the author of #4 means)
But this is a discussion of what is in this Foundation's roadmap for Free Pascal and Lazarus.
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Roadmap for FPC and Lazarus was posted
Adding more incomplete features will just consume more resources at the expense of quality/trust. But the same could also be said for FPC, so this is nothing new...
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On the official roadmap of the foundation, you can read
Complete Gtk3 Widgetset
Year: 2020
Status: Planned
Tags: Lazarus,Widgetset
Complete the GTK 3 widgetset.
Mattias Gaertner looked into what still needs to be done, but no actual development has been done
now we have 2023 and it is looking the foundation activities are blocked by other 'roadmaps' and 3rd party stuff.
This is not a problem, but should tranfered in the correct contex. The looking to 'normal' developer of this situation is not the best.
Or is fresnel is the new gtk3 ?
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Roadmap for FPC and Lazarus was posted
Adding more incomplete features will just consume more resources at the expense of quality/trust. But the same could also be said for FPC, so this is nothing new...
This is the implicit contract we should accept when using/contributing to these projects (FPC/Lazarus): A project is developed/maintained by volunteers. The core team consist of volunteers who donate their efforts to the wider community in exchange for personal reward. In most cases this reward is simply implementing something that is of personal interest.
Nobody will volunteer for a task if there is no reward - for example fixing GTK3 support: if the knowledgeable developers are not actually interested in this platform, why should they invest their time & effort? Note that there are bounty systems (e.g. the bounties page on wiki (https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Bounties) or the FPC / Lazarus Foundation (https://foundation.freepascal.org/donations)) where a user can offer a reward (typically money, but could be anything really, such as new hardware) to try and convince others to invest effort in implementing a fix or feature.
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Roadmap for FPC and Lazarus was posted
Adding more incomplete features will just consume more resources at the expense of quality/trust. But the same could also be said for FPC, so this is nothing new...
This is the implicit contract we should accept when using/contributing to these projects (FPC/Lazarus): A project is developed/maintained by volunteers. The core team consist of volunteers who donate their efforts to the wider community in exchange for personal reward. In most cases this reward is simply implementing something that is of personal interest.
This ok and accepted and not in discussion.
But why decide the "core team" to make a "Freepascal and Lazarus foundation" and you can see the roadmap not there first. And for gtk3 why nobody of the foundation write -> no maintainer <- . It is ok, you read the information in a paper, but it should presented first in a official place, or is the Blaise Pascal Magazine the official speaker for Lazarus and Freepascal ? Maybe i have overseen this.
For me is the point -> who speaks for the official roadmap.
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Roadmap for FPC and Lazarus was posted
Adding more incomplete features will just consume more resources at the expense of quality/trust. But the same could also be said for FPC, so this is nothing new...
This is the implicit contract we should accept when using/contributing to these projects (FPC/Lazarus): A project is developed/maintained by volunteers. The core team consist of volunteers who donate their efforts to the wider community in exchange for personal reward. In most cases this reward is simply implementing something that is of personal interest.
Nobody will volunteer for a task if there is no reward - for example fixing GTK3 support: if the knowledgeable developers are not actually interested in this platform, why should they invest their time & effort? Note that there are bounty systems (e.g. the bounties page on wiki (https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Bounties) or the FPC / Lazarus Foundation (https://foundation.freepascal.org/donations)) where a user can offer a reward (typically money, but could be anything really, such as new hardware) to try and convince others to invest effort in implementing a fix or feature.
In fact, it seems the direction is to bring the FPC world to javascript. A sort of quartex pascal (https://quartexdeveloper.com/) closer to the pascal world than to the js world?
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This road map looks like a bunch of loose ideas (except for one point).
The debugger point, yes. The second and pdf builder point are not really detailed but since the second point has "webform" support in the details I'm not hopeful.
The PDF builder point is even strange with "4. PDF BUILDER DEVELOPING creating readable text excerpts for quick search in a large PDF’s" as description.
Your message pretty much echoes my feeling in more detail. Directionless copycatting to get fancy headings, but probably spreading yourself to thin, and the results limited. Web rendering models are fundamentally different.
You know what they say about promising unicorns, in the end it turns out to be an old toothless nag with a carrot glued to its forehead.
p.s. I have zero use for web technologies at the moment as I mostly work embedded not in business software. But if I had (and my previous job was) I already had chosen a platform over a decade ago.
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That's why there are still people who choose Lazarus, because it allows you to build windowed applications without trendy shit like Electron and node.js.
I couldn’t have said it better. I want nothing to do with anything that resembles web programming.
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No need to panic. :)
1-3 will be done via packages, in fact you can already install package Fresnel and Pas2JS in main. Think about it as a new LCL independent widgetset, which can coexists with the LCL framework, it's just another option not a replacement. I'm not so sure though about the roadmap timeline, in my opinion it will take more time.
4 This is important, AI will play a big role in the future. Even in his infancy, ChatGPT is a scary thing.
5-6 Interesting
7 Hand down the most important one
Also a stable Docked/Anchored IDE, with native support for dark theme(s) would be a good thing. Younger developers run away just by looking at the IDE.
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That's why there are still people who choose Lazarus, because it allows you to build windowed applications without trendy shit like Electron and node.js.
I couldn’t have said it better. I want nothing to do with anything that resembles web programming.
Many developers may fit into your category.
However, are you going to discourage developers who might be working on some electronic appliance that has no display, and the only graphical interface is a web page, from using Lazarus and Free Pascal?
By saying, "oh, your use cases do not fit mine! go away!"
Don't worry, I'm exaggerating, I know you would never say that! :D
True, said developers that do things that don't fit your use cases may not be the majority of developers that use FPC and Lazarus, but they do exist and should not be shunned.
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However, are you going to discourage developers who might be working on some electronic appliance that has no display, and the only graphical interface is a web page, from using Lazarus and Free Pascal?
That is not the right question. The questions are more "should sparse resources be expended on that scenario at the cost of the primary goals ?" and "Can you actually bring some value proposition to such targets that appeals to more people than just the niche of the niche crowd that will try everything if it is just Pascal, even desperate me-too attempts ?"
Talk of ChatGPT is easy, but keep in mind it requires a fairly recent videocard with 4GB to just somewhat run, and a server farm with a several times that to train. It will be a corporate plaything for a long time.
Which is another problem with the roadmap: lack of detail or links to articles that address such concepts.
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Also a stable Docked/Anchored IDE, with native support for dark theme(s) would be a good thing. Younger developers run away just by looking at the IDE.
I like this idea very much. Will the form editor also be docked like in Delphi? One window for the entire IDE definitely makes work easier. I would also suggest: separating the view tree of controls from the proper object inspector (as it is done in Delphi) and adjusting the width of the divider on the right side. I have marked the details in the attached screenshot.
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That's why there are still people who choose Lazarus, because it allows you to build windowed applications without trendy shit like Electron and node.js.
I couldn’t have said it better. I want nothing to do with anything that resembles web programming.
Many developers may fit into your category.
However, are you going to discourage developers who might be working on some electronic appliance that has no display, and the only graphical interface is a web page, from using Lazarus and Free Pascal?
It depends on what kind of electronic device it would be. If it was based on a board such as Raspberry Pi (generally some SBC), then you can communicate with such a device via a web browser (e.g. routers used every day at home). But you don't need Electron for that (works client side). In turn, putting node.js there would probably load the CPU of such a device too much. Of course it can be done. However, it seems to me that it would be better to use some simpler library, even written in C or Pascal. Things would be different if the device was based on a microcontroller. Then using Electron or node.js is not an option (too little RAM, Flash program).
My aversion to "applications" written in Electron and node.js (more generally: with the use of scripting technologies) comes from not very pleasant experiences in using them. It was similar when many years ago I tried to use desktop applications written in Java (mainly CASE programs for creating UML diagrams). The only program written in Java that I still use today is NetBeans. It's not perfect, it has occasional jams, but it still works quite well. On the other hand, pseudo-applications written with the use of scripting technologies work incomparably worse than those created in Java or C#. A book could be written on this subject. But it won't change anything. People are stubborn. They prefer to "crochet" in JavaScript or Python, rather than learning another solution, if only to have a comparison of the possibilities of individual solutions. It just takes time. Instead, it's easier for them to find a large group of people who will say "dude, our XYZ language is the best, don't waste your time on some old stuff" ("confirmation effect").
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That's why there are still people who choose Lazarus, because it allows you to build windowed applications without trendy shit like Electron and node.js.
I couldn’t have said it better. I want nothing to do with anything that resembles web programming.
Many developers may fit into your category.
However, are you going to discourage developers who might be working on some electronic appliance that has no display, and the only graphical interface is a web page, from using Lazarus and Free Pascal?
... Then using Electron or node.js is not an option (too little RAM, Flash program).
I was primarily responding to the nothing to do with anything that resembles web programming.
I too have an aversion to Electron and node.js applications.
There are many good Web UIs on low resource devices that are not JavaScript heavy client-side (or server side, and might not have any JavaScript server side).
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Let's just say it straight - Electron is shit. It's just Chrome packed together with some code. Requires lots of CPU, GPU and RAM.
Apps written in Lazarus are super fast compared to Electron-powered craps.
Let's not ruin Lazarus.
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Let's just say it straight - Electron is shit. It's just Chrome packed together with some code. Requires lots of CPU, GPU and RAM.
Apps written in Lazarus are super fast compared to Electron-powered craps.
Let's not ruin Lazarus.
Ok, maybe I did not make it clear enough...
... Then using Electron or node.js is not an option (too little RAM, Flash program).
I was primarily responding to the nothing to do with anything that resembles web programming.
I too have an aversion to Electron and node.js applications.
I have an extreme aversion to Electron and node.js applications.
They are extreme crap, and proper native GUI app (like one gets from Lazarus) beats them hands down. You get no disagreement from me there.
As far was ever this vague and not fully defined Fresnel thing is, if it can help with the server side of Web UIs and not pollute both client/server with node.js and any resemblance to Electron on either side, it might be of interest to me. If it pollutess both side to make the end result feel like an Electron app, then not something I'd be interested in.
I saw the CSS parts mentioned. That is ambitious. Not sure if something like Fresnel could pull off that off without polluting both sides (client/server) to make them the crap we have a strong dislike of.
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Thank you so much! Great to read!
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It's new for me too. I assume it is the foundation's roadmap, not the projects themselves.
But nothing to see on the foundations page. I have checked this before i made my post
The editor of the magazine was a bit over-enthusiastic to publish this roadmap that he and a member of the FPC and Lazarus teams each thought of, but hadn't yet finalized. Though even if this would be published on the Foundation's site this roadmap doesn't have any final say in what we devs work at, cause we simply work at what we're interested in. And if no one should be interested to work on some point that the foundation mentions... well... though luck. 🤷♀️
Re. 6. That would indeed be useful. But... it will take at least a few years to achieve the capabilities of open source engines (OGRE, Torque3D, Irrlicht), provided that the project is developed regularly by at least 4-5 people. So it's work for years.
That point will be dropped in favor of existing game engines written in Pascal (e.g. Castle Game Engine).
But why decide the "core team" to make a "Freepascal and Lazarus foundation" and you can see the roadmap not there first.
The foundation wasn't a decision of the team as whole, but of a single member plus the editor from the Blaise Pascal magazine.
For me is the point -> who speaks for the official roadmap.
There is no official roadmap at least for FPC, cause we don't operate in that way.
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I’m no expert in all the new trendy programming languages. The gist of what I’m trying to say is that we should not feel inferior if fpc doesn’t have a lot of “modern” features and be desperate to imitate “modern” Things in hopes of getting more users.
I have extensive experience of this happening in gaming wherein the Developers of the game I liked tried to make it 3D like World of Warcraft. But failed miserably. Then they decided to make it item based like Diablo and turned it into a treadmill of collecting better and better items instead of the roleplay game it started as. The result was not only failing to lure players from other games, but also losing all the people who had enjoyed the game as it was originally. I don’t want the same sort of thing to happen to fpc, although thankfully I can just refuse to update if it does.
Bogen85 referred to the idea that some people might need something related to machines which can’t be done with fpc. My solution would be to redesign the machines so that they can be programmed in fpc :D
Anything that takes us in the direction of replacing other languages with fpc I’m in favor of. I would like to create a website using only Lazarus/fpc.
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Bogen85 referred to the idea that some people might need something related to machines which can’t be done with fpc. My solution would be to redesign the machines so that they can be programmed in fpc :D
Did not mean to imply that. Many low end machines can already run FPC. And they could serve up a lightweight web UI app. (That can already be done now). So no need to redesign them and add extra hardware just to run a GUI on them.
Not sure about all the Fresnel "promised features" could aid in something like that, without turning it into something undesirable like domasz and I already discussed.
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Anything that takes us in the direction of replacing other languages with fpc I’m in favor of. I would like to create a website using only Lazarus/fpc.
I'm not aware of any decent web servers written in free pascal.
A free pascal app could certainly serve up web pages and web apps and one could likely do a whole website.
However, it would likely need to sit behind an nginx, apache, or some other reverse proxy in order to perform adequately.
It is possible. If not internet facing the front end proxy might not be needed if the usage was low.
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I'm not aware of any decent web servers written in free pascal.
Well Hopefully some folks more skilled than I am can take the initiative to make one ;) it would certainly help promote fpc.
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So, putting aside the offensive announcement itself, we seem to have some problems with the actual projects identified, mostly because they are not necessarily project that we, as individuals, support ? Just what was announced ?
Fresnel is already under way, a big risk, maybe a big payoff. Docked and dark colors works for many people already. Web Dev honestly is not my thing but I agree its important, but so is Mobile Apps, but that did not rate a mention ?
PDF Builder ? I have just finished adding PDF capabilities to my app using fpPDF, it needed an ugly workaround with fonts but its fine for my purpose.
Gaming Engine ? What about Castle ?
We have a great debugger already, "ultimate" is a silly term. "AI" is just a buzz word.
I think the magazine needed to fill a page in a hurry and made an phone call without explaining how the information was to be used. Be careful when talking to journalists.
Davo
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I'm not aware of any decent web servers written in free pascal.
IMHO, this one is very decent.
https://github.com/synopse/mORMot2
https://github.com/eugeneilyin/mORMotBP
https://synopse.info/files/html/Synopse%20mORMot%20Framework%20SAD%201.18.html#TITLE_278
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IMHO, this one is very decent.
https://github.com/synopse/mORMot2
https://github.com/eugeneilyin/mORMotBP
https://synopse.info/files/html/Synopse%20mORMot%20Framework%20SAD%201.18.html#TITLE_278
+1
I haven't used v1. Now tinkering with v2. It is fast and full of features.
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It's new for me too. I assume it is the foundation's roadmap, not the projects themselves.
But nothing to see on the foundations page. I have checked this before i made my post
The editor of the magazine was a bit over-enthusiastic to publish this roadmap that he and a member of the FPC and Lazarus teams each thought of, but hadn't yet finalized. Though even if this would be published on the Foundation's site this roadmap doesn't have any final say in what we devs work at, cause we simply work at what we're interested in. And if no one should be interested to work on some point that the foundation mentions... well... though luck. 🤷♀️
...
For me is the point -> who speaks for the official roadmap.
There is no official roadmap at least for FPC, cause we don't operate in that way.
Thanks for clearing the points.
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Many developers may fit into your category.
However, are you going to discourage developers who might be working on some electronic appliance that has no display, and the only graphical interface is a web page, from using Lazarus and Free Pascal?
By saying, "oh, your use cases do not fit mine! go away!"
Don't worry, I'm exaggerating, I know you would never say that! :D
True, said developers that do things that don't fit your use cases may not be the majority of developers that use FPC and Lazarus, but they do exist and should not be shunned.
I actually tried to make something like Qt Quick's clone for Pascal with BESENScript but failed and I make something like JSON, and I give up at the end. They're Here (https://github.com/kirana-a2district/samarinda-ui) and Here (https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,59355.msg442468.html#msg442468).
In the end of the day, I'm ended up using Qt Quick and C++ instead of Lazarus, FPC, and Object Pascal. :D
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Anything that takes us in the direction of replacing other languages with fpc I’m in favor of. I would like to create a website using only Lazarus/fpc.
They are unlikely to be replaced. It is important to show people that Pascal or Object Pascal are not worse than many other solutions. Depending on the features that are taken into consideration, Pascal may be slightly inferior to the C language or have an advantage over it (similar to Object Pascal and C++). All because there is no perfectly optimal tool. Everyday practice shows that it cannot be done, sometimes you have to make some compromises (of course there are people who believe that it is possible to create an ideal programming language after all - it's a utopia). Added to this are the needs, preferences and habits of the user.
As for the popularization of Pascal - there have been many discussions on this topic. And usually the conclusion was that most people do not want to compare and check different solutions themselves, but prefer to believe in "the only right truths" revealed to them by the media, corporations or gurus they know. Because it's easier that way, you don't have to make too much effort (laziness). If it were otherwise, there would not be so many people in the world who believe in miraculous diets, secret medicine men or the only right views: utopian (secular) or fantastic (religious). For fanaticism, so far, no one has invented a cure. I once read a theory (but I don't remember where) that fanaticism could be useful to humans (as a species) for survival in times when people lived in caves or led a nomadic lifestyle (hunter-gatherers). But if we look through the history of mankind from the last 2000 years, it turns out that it was the skeptics who, by challenging the sacred findings and taboos, checking and analyzing various problems, contributed to the development of humanity. And all sorts of fanatics incredibly hampered the development or even set back individual populations in development (I do not give examples, because an argument will break out). So it seems to me that attempts to popularize Pascal "crash" on a kind of IT fanaticism. How to deal with it? How to show people that there is another world somewhere, that they can get out of their musty, cramped and dingy basement?
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I saw the CSS parts mentioned. That is ambitious.
That's why I wrote about it. In my opinion, CSS3 is very extensive. Of course, as for the purposes of formatting web content, it is desirable.
My doubts are related to the fact that once (2004 - 2010) I was developing my own project that was supposed to allow you to create a website in Delphi. In the first step, I created a set of classes that mapped server-side HTML elements (including forms). In the next one, I started creating classes responsible for CSS. In the next stages, I planned to add classes that were supposed to handle typical complex elements of web pages, such as: main menu, accordion. The whole thing worked with the Indy package. The server application used data modules (TDataModule). Components could be combined in the Object Inspector or in source code. Many components had their own property editors. There was one main component of the site manager, which contained a tree structure of pages (nodes). Components generating HTML code could be connected to these nodes. The manager parsed the URL and selected the appropriate node to generate the HTML code. The whole thing supported HTML in various versions 4 and partly 5. It was possible to select the HMTL version globally. Before sending, the HTML code was stored by the manager in a TStringList object. Once generated, the HTML code was sent back to the web browser. This part worked as I intended (tested locally). Unfortunately, I'm stuck on CSS, which CSS is very complex. Additionally, the CSS implementation concept I chose was not very well thought out. Other disadvantages of this design: HTML rows are created by concatenation (+) of strings and only then added to the list, no possibility to combine HTML components with database components. I tried to come back to this project. In the meantime, CSS3 came out. For such a project to make sense, this version of CSS would have to be implemented.
I experienced firsthand the complexity and time-consuming implementation of CSS. Of course, window applications (GUI) are different from web pages. Nevertheless, the implementation of CSS into the GUI is a lot of work to be done.
But maybe this project will be a good idea :)
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Visual lab your posts are always delightful to read :)
As for the popularization of Pascal - there have been many discussions on this topic. And usually the conclusion was that most people do not want to compare and check different solutions themselves, but prefer to believe in "the only right truths" revealed to them by the media, corporations or gurus they know. Because it's easier that way, you don't have to make too much effort (laziness).
I agree with the part of most people being lazy and gullible. I guess that pascal programming has been relegated to a niche of hobbyists who have enough spare time and inclination to pursue it for fun. It’s not possible to get a job programming in pascal anymore is it? As a result our only hope is to create applications and try to promote them ourselves. To be our own bosses. Maybe it’s better this way if it were not for people who don’t use pascal going out of their way to bother us.
It’s annoying to be in a minority who is never taken seriously outside of a small group of people who Also program in pascal.
As for skeptics challenging things, a lot of those skeptics suffered horrible consequences. Challenging established customs and taboos is not always a good idea. Sometimes those things exist for very good reasons because of behaviors which led to disaster in the past.{usury comes to mind}
If history is anything to go by, it seems like humans basically like to make the same mistakes over and over again on larger and larger scales.
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Maybe it’s better this way if it were not for people who don’t use pascal going out of their way to bother us.
Yes. This applies to other programming languages as well (but to a lesser extent than Pascal). For example, C# was promoted by Microsoft with a huge amount of money pumped into promotion. The promotion was carried out in two ways:
1) exaggerated praise of the features and capabilities of the C# language and tools prepared for it,
2) harassing and merciless combating other solutions in various ways.
In the initial phase, this concerned the Java language. As of recently, a C# based solution is probably slightly better than a Java based one. But it used to be the other way around. It took many years for C# (and its companion tools) to become really useful. In addition to Java, of course, Microsoft also suppressed other competing solutions, including Delphi (Object Pascal), because it was definitely much better than C# for many years (despite Delphi's known shortcomings). But the goal was not to provide better tools, but to dominate the market. Quality was not that important (i.e. much lower in the hierarchy of objectives). Moreover, Delphi is still better than C# when it comes to windowed (and probably mobile) applications as well.
There's a different fight going on right now: Python versus Java (and partly C# as well). However, in this case, it is difficult to identify a corporation directly involved in such a fight (maybe Google to some extent, although this is uncertain). Here the attackers are whole herds of poor programmers who know only Python (or some other languages like C++, but they couldn't handle them). Such people have no idea about other languages, so they are not able to properly assess the pros and cons of individual solutions. It is obvious to anyone who has dealt with these languages that Python is no match for Java (despite Java's many shortcomings). But for Python users, it doesn't matter. The goal is to "fight the enemy". It is not enough for them to promote their own solution (which is quite poor). Again: dominating, not improving your own solution.
To sum up. Object Pascal was trampled into the ground because it threatened competitors. Now, other solutions are being trampled into the ground level. And at the same time, various fanatics make sure that the trampled one does not get up again. If someone tries to raise their head above the stepping level, they are stepped on again. It's not out of pure malice. This is calculation. The less competition, the easier it is to master a certain area. This does not mean that users of other solutions should give up. We have to fight this pathology.
As for skeptics challenging things, a lot of those skeptics suffered horrible consequences. Challenging established customs and taboos is not always a good idea. Sometimes those things exist for very good reasons because of behaviors which led to disaster in the past.{usury comes to mind}
That's true. Many people were persecuted or murdered. But again: this was most often due to the fact that it threatened someone's interests. But if it wasn't for the skeptics, who knows where people would be now. Maybe they would still live in a cave and shit in some corner of it, because whoever went to piss outside the cave at night would be eaten by a saber tiger or wolves :)
Yes, there were also those who, by undermining certain social arrangements, harmed society (thieves, murderers, paedophiles, slanderers, etc.). But they were not skeptics, they were scumbags.
If history is anything to go by, it seems like humans basically like to make the same mistakes over and over again on larger and larger scales.
Maybe because those who have already learned something leave. And the others who come do not want to learn from other people's mistakes (laziness and greed). I guess it always was. According to biologists, humans are just slightly smarter animals. There are differences between them, but that's just variability within the species. It's just a pity for those who are less animal and more human. The events of the last decade have painfully reminded us of this fact.
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Maybe because those who have already learned something leave. And the others who come do not want to learn from other people's mistakes
Sometimes the Original reasons for doing things are forgotten and someone comes along and says why go though this complicated process of preparing this food? Because that’s they way it has always been done... The skeptic skips a few steps and has to learn all over again that it’s Because the food is poisonous if not prepared correctly.
To sum up. Object Pascal was trampled into the ground because it threatened competitors. Now, other solutions are being trampled into the ground level. And at the same time, various fanatics make sure that the trampled one does not get up again. If someone tries to raise their head above the stepping level, they are stepped on again. It's not out of pure malice. This is calculation. The less competition, the easier it is to master a certain area. This does not mean that users of other solutions should give up. We have to fight this pathology.
I think most people No matter how brilliant they may be at programming are ill prepared for these types of attacks and are often either in denial/unaware that the attacks are happening ,have the misconception that they can somehow reason with the attacker and convince them to give pascal a Fair chance or just get emotionally manipulated into either getting in an argument or rage quitting.
The thing that surprised me the most is that people seem to be incapable disengaging and putting the attackers on ignore or leaving them behind. Maybe it takes a special type of training to deal with attackers that most people don’t have. It definitely doesn’t help that the attackers have big money supporting them.
As for technology I don’t think it was the skeptics that changed things it was being bested by people with other ideas. For instance nations who believed the earth was flat didn’t get to plunder the new world and get rich. Countries that were too oppressive discouraged creativity and fell behind in technology and then got conquered.
This is probably analogous of what will happen to countries/businesses that use inferior software at some point.
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This is probably analogous of what will happen to countries/businesses that use inferior software at some point.
That is silly Joanna.
What I have learned over some 45 years experience is that there is no perfect software. And no perfect hardware for that matter.
Note that "inferior" is one of the most powerful spells from Harry Potter... Be careful!
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Maybe because those who have already learned something leave. And the others who come do not want to learn from other people's mistakes
Sometimes the Original reasons for doing things are forgotten and someone comes along and says why go though this complicated process of preparing this food? Because that’s they way it has always been done... The skeptic skips a few steps and has to learn all over again that it’s Because the food is poisonous if not prepared correctly.
To sum up. Object Pascal was trampled into the ground because it threatened competitors. Now, other solutions are being trampled into the ground level. And at the same time, various fanatics make sure that the trampled one does not get up again. If someone tries to raise their head above the stepping level, they are stepped on again. It's not out of pure malice. This is calculation. The less competition, the easier it is to master a certain area. This does not mean that users of other solutions should give up. We have to fight this pathology.
I think most people No matter how brilliant they may be at programming are ill prepared for these types of attacks and are often either in denial/unaware that the attacks are happening ,have the misconception that they can somehow reason with the attacker and convince them to give pascal a Fair chance or just get emotionally manipulated into either getting in an argument or rage quitting.
The thing that surprised me the most is that people seem to be incapable disengaging and putting the attackers on ignore or leaving them behind. Maybe it takes a special type of training to deal with attackers that most people don’t have. It definitely doesn’t help that the attackers have big money supporting them.
As for technology I don’t think it was the skeptics that changed things it was being bested by people with other ideas. For instance nations who believed the earth was flat didn’t get to plunder the new world and get rich. Countries that were too oppressive discouraged creativity and fell behind in technology and then got conquered.
This is probably analogous of what will happen to countries/businesses that use inferior software at some point.
I should have specified it. Depends on what you mean by skeptic. Besides, indeed, sometimes doubting is not enough. You also need to be curious and willing to solve the problem. Or at least the willingness to check other existing solutions in order to get an answer to the bothering problem. Anyway, it seems to me that moderate skepticism (but not pessimism or total denial) is the first step in looking for an answer / solution to a problem.
For some people, this may be one of the factors to try to learn a few other programming languages - what are their advantages and disadvantages. Of course it costs money (mostly: time). But I think it will pay off (at least it did for me).
Thanks to this, it is easier to compare the deficiencies and annoyances that languages (i.e. tools related to them) have. For me, examples of C and C++ annoyances are: preprocessor (actually: macros), headers to some extent (but you can live with it), undefined behavior, build system (especially CMake). Fortunately, Visual Studio alleviates the problems associated with creating headers and the build system in C and C++ (yes, I'm lazy and I like the IDE a lot). But these languages also have advantages, for example: a lot of libraries, generated machine code is fast.
On the other hand, when it comes to C # or Java, one of the disadvantages (for me) is that the program written in them, after compilation, runs in the VM. But someone else might not mind at all.
The situation is much worse in the case of scripting languages. For me, languages like JavaScript, PHP and Python were a big disappointment. While you can still cope with PHP (but it can "spoil your blood"), JavaScript and Python cry out to heaven for vengeance. Except that for now there is no escape from JavaScript (web browsers). Fortunately, Python is not coercive.
Of course, everything depends on the needs and expectations of the user of the tool. I really like the convenience, transparency and ease of use. But not at such a high cost as it is implemented in the above-mentioned scripting languages.
As for the popularity of Python, it seems to me that only a small percentage of people who use it have a real knowledge of programming and how computers work. They are probably more script users who have some urgent work to do (e.g. data processing). And they do it the way they can: Python + bits of scripts from the Internet. And the media hype reassures them that they do everything according to art. And they don't need those unnecessarily long-winded, maliciously over-complicated programming languages that require compilers. Just like people who believe in ads like: "He learned this one strange trick. Now he's raking in the big bucks. Professional programmers hate him" :)
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Except that for now there is no escape from JavaScript (web browsers).
Is there a way to have a web browser written in fpc that does not use javascript?
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Except that for now there is no escape from JavaScript (web browsers).
Is there a way to have a web browser written in fpc that does not use javascript?
Whats a web browser without Javascript today. You can't open most of the websites without JS.
If you mean a desktop "web application" (like. Html and css only) without Javascript is another thing. Say accessing the Dom from Pascal. Possible is. Hard to believe it will be done.
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Whats a web browser without Javascript today. You can't open most of the websites without JS.
That is what I was thinking, you can technically have a website without javascript but it doesn’t look very good.
Isn’t there a way to achieve what javascript does using pascal? Or would it require the web browser used to be written in pascal? Sorry I don’t know much about web programming.
If your web browser was written in pascal and it visits a website using a webserver written in pascal would that work?
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Depends on what you mean by skeptic. Besides, indeed, sometimes doubting is not enough. You also need to be curious and willing to solve the problem. Or at least the willingness to check other existing solutions in order to get an answer to the bothering problem.
One think I’ve noticed often in the media is that things that are definitely problems are discussed in such a way to steer people in a direction that not only doesn’t prevent the problem from reoccurring but makes more problems.
What might at first seem like curious skeptics Trying to improve things are more often than not people in search of profiteering. Creating “problems to solve” out of thin air under the guise of altruism. One example is the invention of margarine to solve the “problem” of butter? Butter was not a problem to begin yet people somehow were convinced it was and switched to margarine.
It makes be want to question The motivations of all would be skeptics 8)
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Whats a web browser without Javascript today. You can't open most of the websites without JS.
That is what I was thinking, you can technically have a website without javascript but it doesn’t look very good.
Isn’t there a way to achieve what javascript does using pascal? Or would it require the web browser used to be written in pascal? Sorry I don’t know much about web programming.
If your web browser was written in pascal and it visits a website using a webserver written in pascal would that work?
You can use pas2js to write the code that modifies the website and add interaction with Pascal. Then that is compiled into Javascript. And that can be run from any browser even mobile.
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Except that for now there is no escape from JavaScript (web browsers).
Is there a way to have a web browser written in fpc that does not use javascript?
As Lainz already mentioned, of course you can. But that's a gigantic amount of work. The sheer number of different types of parsers is a lot of work, of which the most commonly used are: HTML, CSS, SVG, XML and of course JavaScript (this is probably the most extensive). Parsers only. In addition, there are huge DOM containers, one for each open web page. Next, the 2D and 3D content rendering subsystem (WebGL). AJAX support should also be present. You also need to remember about the communication module with the server, which supports various protocols: HTTP, FTP, etc. This is only part of it. And there is probably much more. At the source code level of such a web browser, JavaScript itself is not needed. All you need is a compiler of the language in which the browser code will be created.
The opposite situation is a server-side application. I mean a computer program that generates content (a web page) and sends it to the client (i.e. a web browser). It can be a DLL/SO library cooperating with an HTTP server (e.g. Apache, nginx) or an independent website containing an integrated HTTP server (as an object of a specific class). JavaScript is not needed here either. Just generating HTML content is no problem. But if it's supposed to be aesthetically pleasing, it would have to be formatted with CSS. The CSS code can also be generated or send previously prepared CSS files. But for the content to be interactive, such a website would have to be able to generate JavaScript code on the fly or send JS files already created.
To sum up: JavaScript is needed as part of the content of a web page because it is used by the browser. The website generator doesn't need JavaScript for anything. It is the web browser that needs it, and only if the content is to be interactive (in the broad sense of the word).
There is a bizarre opinion in the media that a website should not or cannot be created in languages compiled to machine code. According to this opinion, a website must be created using: Java (JSP, JSF, servlets, etc.), C# (ASP.NET), PHP, Ruby, Python or JavaScript (node.js). And this is not true. This can even be done in pure assembler. I am a bit surprised that no one (meaning: company) has created a library to support websites in C++ so far. Such a well-equipped library (large collection of classes) would be unbeatable by any VM or interpreter-based solutions. The same could be done in Object Pascal. It's just a matter of cost (time). Moreover, it would be a very strong argument in favor of ecology. No one is saying out loud yet that some of the server's electricity is wasted unnecessarily on grinding intermediate code. Anyway, then the servers would not have to be so extensive in terms of hardware (CPU, RAM, etc.). The best example is Facebook. They started to create it in PHP and then they found themselves in a... Instead of doing various flips (HipHop), perhaps they would be better off if they invested this money in such a solution. And this is not the only such case (Instagram, Twitter).
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There is a bizarre opinion in the media that a website should not or cannot be created in languages compiled to machine code. According to this opinion, a website must be created using: Java (JSP, JSF, servlets, etc.), C# (ASP.NET), PHP, Ruby, Python or JavaScript (node.js). And this is not true. This can even be done in pure assembler. I am a bit surprised that no one (meaning: company) has created a library to support websites in C++ so far. Such a well-equipped library (large collection of classes) would be unbeatable by any VM or interpreter-based solutions. The same could be done in Object Pascal.
Could it be that people want access to the code that is running the website for some reason? This seems like not such a good idea to let unknown people inspect the code for your website.
If nothing else the compiled code would take up a lot less space and work faster. Wouldn’t it be great if this forum was on a website written in fpc :D
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Except that for now there is no escape from JavaScript (web browsers).
Is there a way to have a web browser written in fpc that does not use javascript?
You don't need a browser, you can use a text formatter to display html. If you wanted you could add css to it. Plan 9's htmlfmt(1) accepts the protocols
^(https?|ftp|file|gopher|mailto|news|nntp|telnet|wais|prospero)
It is made up of dat.h (50 SLOC), html.c (331 SLOC), main.c (71 SLOC), util.c(120 SLOC)
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has created a library to support websites in C++ so far. Such a well-equipped library (large collection of classes) would be unbeatable by any VM or interpreter-based solutions. The same could be done in Object Pascal. It's just a matter of cost (time).
2 out of my 3 jobs were using websites created by Delphi code. One was Indy https webserver based, the other using commercial components "WebHub" which could run under both IIS and Apache.
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has created a library to support websites in C++ so far. Such a well-equipped library (large collection of classes) would be unbeatable by any VM or interpreter-based solutions. The same could be done in Object Pascal. It's just a matter of cost (time).
2 out of my 3 jobs were using websites created by Delphi code. One was Indy https webserver based, the other using commercial components "WebHub" which could run under both IIS and Apache.
I remember that at least since Delphi 5 you could create your own service. It used the Apache server at the time. I also tried to create a set of my own classes. But I'm stuck on CSS.
I have a question: did you use CSS and JavaScript? If so, how was it resolved? Were CSS and JS generated on the fly, buffered after generation, or maybe sent from previously prepared files?
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I remember that at least since Delphi 5 you could create your own service. It used the Apache server at the time. I also tried to create a set of my own classes. But I'm stuck on CSS.
I have a question: did you use CSS and JavaScript? If so, how was it resolved? Were CSS and JS generated on the fly, buffered after generation, or maybe sent from previously prepared files?
The first (Indy) one didn't have any. It was a simple system to do olap like analysis on a database loaded into memory.
The second (webhub) one was a template system pretty much. Manual prepared html/css and js with markers replaced by output of delphi code. The webmonkeys did the layout, we provided the actual content :D
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I just tried Fresnel demo and playing with it by adding BESEN for lulz I guess. Pretty interesting idea. O:-)
But, I think this is pretty ambitious project. :D
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Video presentation (very poor sound quality)
https://www.blaisepascalmagazine.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mattias_Fresnel_V2.mp4?_=1
(https://www.blaisepascalmagazine.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mattias_Fresnel_V2.mp4?_=1)
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roadmap - video presentation: https://www.blaisepascalmagazine.eu/roadmap-for-fpc-and-lazarus/
edit: corrected link
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roadmap - video presentation:
Thank you for sharing this recording. I hope more videos will be shared!
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did not see anything in the video presentation about CI / CD
too bad ...