How can something thrive when it’s nearly impossible to find other people interested in it to talk to outside of one forum? I remember when many people thought pascal was great and liked to talk about it. Not anymore. Nobody cares.
“What realistic and community-driven steps could we take to grow the Lazarus / Free Pascal ecosystem and make it more welcoming to new developers?”I think that's the right question to ask.
Write killer apps, like e.g. doublecommander which is quite popular in the Linux community and advertises Freepascal at startup.
How can something thrive when it’s nearly impossible to find other people interested in it to talk to outside of one forum? I remember when many people thought pascal was great and liked to talk about it. Not anymore. Nobody cares.
4. For the love of common sense, add a sensible keyword to define static variables. It is _embarrassing_ to "explain" to someone interested in Pascal that static variables are "writable constants". If there ever was a way of making a first BAD impression, that is probably it.
Write killer apps, like e.g. doublecommander which is quite popular in the Linux community and advertises Freepascal at startup.Maybe someone with art skills can make one or more logos “Made with Lazarus”?
And since Double Commander is mentioned... an excellent app, possibly without an alternative for Linux, but am I the only one who finds it too ugly?
A hard core killer app written in FPC. An app that would attract hard core programmers towards Pascal. That's not easy to create.
Yes, a hard core killer app would definitely help. I got one in the back of my mind that I occasionally work on but, other people who have done that app have taken over 30 years to develop it and/or benefit from having a team of superbly knowledgeable and qualified people working on it. That's tough to match and tougher to exceed. Not going to happen but, it's my pipe dream and it's free, what's unfortunate is, it's rather unlikely I'll provide the helpful killer app.
@Martin_fr,
Regarding item 3. I would like to help there.
@440bx@JD
Maybe this will give you some new ideas since you like peeking into Windows Internals. Unfortunately, flamerOn is no longer on this forum and BigChimp passed away.
Lazarus applications with source provided by flamerOn
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=22225.5 (https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=22225.5)
It seems CudaText wasn’t mentioned here, even though it has 2.5 million downloads on SourceForge alone.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cudatext/files/stats/timeline?dates=2005-02-08+to+2025-05-09
This project is written in Free Pascal using Lazarus, which serves as great promotion for the platform.
https://github.com/Alexey-T/CudaText
My pipe dream app which I work on only every now and then is a dis-assembler a la IDA Pro or Ghidra but, more accurate and much more informative.It would be great if the (cross platform) disassembler can be integrated with fpdebug. This is one of the time consuming steps when adding new platform support in fpdebug. Obviously your focus is different from "just debugging", but the disassembler functionality could potentially be shared between the projects.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/new_lazarus_4/
It would be great if the (cross platform) disassembler can be integrated with fpdebug. This is one of the time consuming steps when adding new platform support in fpdebug. Obviously your focus is different from "just debugging", but the disassembler functionality could potentially be shared between the projects.It used to be that writing the core part of a dis-assembler was not a big deal. I'm thinking about the days of the i486. I don't remember exactly but, IIRC, there were only about 140 instructions. The only "difficult" part was dealing with a handful of undocumented functions or undocumented side effects in some instructions. Typical programming bread and butter.
The best thing thst could happen with pascal programming at this point would be to make a better community with the people who still use it and reinstate real-time support like there used to be.Last I heard there are people who use similar real time media (just with a fancy modern alias). So it ain't dead. They just don't wont to play with everyone. Their choice.
I don’t think most people even want to use pascal because they have heard so much bad propaganda about it. Therefore changing the documentation to appeal to people who aren’t coming is a waste of time.
the population of pascal enthusiasts is much much less than when I first started using pascal.
All I get is indifference or hostility if I bring up the topic of pascal.That makes some sense given the way you present some things. For instance...
We all know that official real-time support is gone.This forum provides support about as real time as most programmers would like support to be. I don't want a "chat thing" which is what that sentence seems to be underhandedly peddling.
The compiler itself is thriving,The compiler is being steadily developed but, I don't know that "thriving" is the right word to use for a compiler that hasn't seen an update in about 4 years.
the population of pascal enthusiasts is much much less than when I first started using pascal.I think just about anyone that used a "Turbo" version of Pascal has noticed that too.
Pascal enthusiasts who need real time support have been abandoned.Abandoned ? really ?... has anyone here abandoned you ? I believe that if you ask a technical question, you'll get a reply shortly thereafter.
I’m only bringing this up because believe it or not many people don’t want to delve into projects where the future of support is uncertain. If I were an owner of a company and I wanted to choose a language to write an important application for the business, would it be prudent to choose a platform that for whatever reason is unable to maintain Official real-time support?Official real time support ?... unless you work for a company that pays a pretty penny for priority support, you won't get anything that remotely resembles "real time support". When you purchase a service contract, the best response time you can expect is usually within 4 hours and, that is pretty darn good, not to mention expensive.
I’m glad this forum exists but it could be even better if there were more people using pascal.The number of people involved does help but, what really helps is the people's willingness to help and their level of knowledge. Quantity doesn't imply quality.
As for the idea of pascal enthusiasts all over the place I haven’t come across very many who like pascal outside of this forum no matter how hard I try.Like you, I don't think there are Pascal enthusiasts "all over the place" but, if you go to the right places, you'll find them. Among those places are this forum and the Idera/Delphi forums.
I don’t think most people even want to use pascal because they have heard so much bad propaganda about it. Therefore changing the documentation to appeal to people who aren’t coming is a waste of time.
Documentation is important, it also serves (and will serve) those who use Pascal and Object Pascal. After all, not everyone has all the details related to the compiler, IDe or libraries (RTL, FCL, LCL) in mind. It depends on the frequency of use.
In addition, from time to time it is necessary to fill in the gaps in the documentation and improve its appearance. At home, some changes are also made every few years (painting the walls, repairs, rearranging the furniture, etc.). This is not about complaining, but about specific actions for the general benefit of the community.
Look and feel go a long way... whether it's a website or documentation.
1) Improve the syntax coloring editor in the IDE (Options -> Editor -> Display -> Colors). Currently, if one selects a custom color for something, and wants to set the exact same color for another thing, they have to remember the RGB values because the "Add to Custom Colors" button doesnt work.Never really thought about it...
2) Online tool to create new color schemes, with live preview, saving and sharingWhile it would be nice to have something better than the wiki to share the results, this isn't going to go onto my list (sorry, time restraints)
If the idea got accepted, I would join cosmetics improvements. I do graphics and use a wide range of tools. And I build websites using WordPress, maybe my skills can be used. I like writing short demos, I certainly will join short demos team. I like graphics programming, I see some users regularly posting graphics effects recently, we could form a team.
But if my idea got rejected. It's okay I have more time for myself and I will keep doing what I usually do, greeting newcomers.
I’ve been asking for help with restoring the real-time support team since 2019!
I like your ideas of teams and would gladly volunteer but I don’t see anyone interested and that is a big problem in my opinion.
Handoko Lazarus ide and fpc had good official real-time support in 2014 and It has none. I know there are still enough people who use pascal for there to be real-time support. Even if people could only volunteer for an hour a week it would be far better than NOTHING .
This whole thread has been about Trying. attract people to use fpc but not much focus on the needs of people already using it. I think there are a few issues such as reinstating resources we lost that should be addressed first.
Some People have no time to help with things that would help the community but plenty of time to stop by my thread just to insult my coding style.
A positive attitude is helpful too. Cheer up! On the TIOBE index Pascal was ranked 30th 5 years ago. Since then it's been in an upward trend and now back in the top 10.
https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/delphi-object-pascal/ (https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/delphi-object-pascal/)
Manpower issues is just a nice way of saying that we have lost a lot of people since 2014 and we are unable to provide what was once routine and normal for foss communities.
Real-time support was NOT a dream it was really helpful and more people were there than are ever logged in here."Realtime" is a matter of definition. Many (most) times when I've wanted to answer someone's question on this forum, I find that someone has already done it, and many times - better than me. So the benefit of chat platforms in this case is greatly overestimated.
Wow fpc was started back when pascal was at the peak of popularity. I didn’t know that..
I’m not being sarcastic! I was impressed :oYou talk a lot about Pascal and you have 1400+ posts on this forum, but you don't know the basic history?
When I first discovered Lazarus in 2014 there was a link from forums that led to real-time support with real fpc and Lazarus developers and enthusiasts talking about interesting things everyday. Now I’m supposed to believe that it’s just a made up Fantasy that never happened at all. I’m supposed to not care that such a valuable resource was abandoned?
I didn’t know I was supposed to. Nobody ever talked to me about it before..
Nowadays they/us simply have no interest anymore to lurk in something like that. You can't force anybody to do anything they don't want.Let us set the record straight there.
The no interest part is only due to the behaviour of one single person. Guess who that is and is now whining for more than 3 years about that here on the forums (while repeatedly told not to do so) about the results of that behaviour.
Well, at least the FPC devs had left before that time, because there wasn't really much interest anymore.Yes, I am very well aware PD :)
440bx has gone to at least one thread with the sole purpose of insulting the poster because the poster doesn’t do things like he does.What in the world are you talking about ? Is this about my comment that Pascal doesn't look good in uppercase or some other thing you chose to be offended by ?
The fact that I tried to help has somehow made me into a villain. How is this even possible? It’s pure insanity.It is far from insanity. You seem to be hell bent on "suggesting" (that's putting it rather kindly) that Pascal programmers should be on some chat thing. Personally, I have no desire to be in some sort of chat thing and, by the looks of it, I am not the only one who doesn't find the thought enticing.
I expect no other future besides coding pascal alone after everyone has finished disappearing.
Lainz and JD I’m not interested in other programming languages. It’s all I can do to not forget how to program in pascal. Without pascal I would give up programming.
I'm waiting for this thread to be locked.I think that would be a good thing.