International Pascal Congress 2023

[Bogen85]

if they can’t even come to IRC channel and socialize which is much easier.

Why would I use IRC? It's not the 80s. Today people use FB/Telegram/Signal groups, Discord and forums.

Exactly. (and no enumerate a full list of contemporaries of the tools you mentioned, that IRC can't go anywhere near their usefulness and practicality)

@Joanna
Using IRC as a litmus test for determining is someone is really interested in Pascal, is only looking at very small percentage of all the current Pascal users and advocates.

And as @domasz pointed out, why would the majority of current Pascal users and advocates even want to use IRC?

With all the communication tools and forums out their that are far more practical to use?
(For them at least, in no way can I speak for everybody).

@Joanna, you are talking about an extremely small percentage of Pascal users an advocates willing to use IRC rather than a contemporary tool that is far more practical to them.

[Bogen85]

Yes I know about social media with proprietary closed source platforms which require you to have a cell phone number to use them.
These platforms are designed for spying on users and harvesting their data. They are not “free”, you are the product. You cannot use or create a client of your choice as you can for irc.

There are many open source alternatives to those.

Your data is sold and or shared with whomever they please and you have consented to this by using their apps.
They also like to censor/deplatform anyone who says politically unapproved things etc.

Valid point.

But what is to prevent an insider in an IRC network from doing nefarious things with your data?
 

Nobody should be using these things ...seriously.
Just because something is “new” does not make it better.

No need to use paste bins for code and image sharing sites for screenshots.
New is much better in that regard.
And quite a few other useful features moving to IRC one loses, and features one becomes dependent on.

We are an open source community are we not? Irc is the only social media that I know of which allows you to write your own client in pascal. If there are any others I would like to know about them.

As I mentioned, plenty of open source alternatives that one can self host.
Just as one would self host an IRC server.

Mattermost, RocketChat, are a couple of those. (there are others)

They are modern and contemporary, and have most of the relevant features those using the closed platforms have grown accustomed to. (code formatting, screenshot pasting, ability to edit/delete ones posts, post/reply persistence without having to rely on each client to do that, accessible via web page and dedicated client, access to a variety of auth methods, github, gitlab, google etc, in addition to just local site account registration, avatars, profiles and a whole lot more).

They are fully open source.

[Bogen85]

In response to this.
“ Why would I use IRC? It's not the 80s. Today people use FB/Telegram/Signal groups, Discord ”

I'm currently not running CP/M, MS-DOS, or some *nix via a serial terminal.

Yes, text only is still good for a lot of applications.
 

Nobody should be using these things ...seriously.
Just because something is “new” does not make it better.

But I also have a rich graphical environment, capable of very powerful interactive user interfaces.

They are very useful for text editing, browsing the web, editing graphical images, creating diagrams, etc.

Just because text only still good for a lot of applications (and I certainly do use it for many) does not mean I have to restrict myself to it for things like emails (yes, still could be useful for some email conversation), forums (why would I still want to use a BBS? If you want to, that is fine), and even chat?

[Bogen85]

I'm seriously considering attending this Congress as well! Sounds like an excellent plan to incorporate into a 2023 summer vacation!

[AlexTP]

IRC? The kind of software means a lot for me. IRC - is a no go for me. Why? I installed my IRC client a year ago and I could not properly register on some IRC channel - I didn't understand the GUI and what fields to fill.

Telegram is another story - modern UI, I can create channel, I can join ready channel, I can post messages easily, I can understand the UI.

[Bogen85]

IRC? The kind of software means a lot for me. IRC - is a no go for me. Why? I installed my IRC client a year ago and I could not properly register on some IRC channel - I didn't understand the GUI and what fields to fill.

Not everyone here was using tools similar to IRC (or IRC itself) back in the 80s and 90s. (Just because I was using those tools back then does not imply I want to or should be coerced into using them now).

Many got into into programming and online communications in a different era.

Or saw no need for IRC even if they were involved in programming in the 90s.

It is not unreasonable to expect people to want to use tools applicable to when they started using computers and programming them.

Telegram is another story - modern UI, I can create channel, I can join ready channel, I can post messages easily, I can understand the UI.

Yes!
Which is the user experience most currently expect. (And by ALL means should be able to expect).

[sketch]

Come to NY USA!

I kinda feel Pascal is more popular in Europe than it is in the US. Especially in Central and Eastern Europe.

Smalltalk is more popular in Europe and South America than in the U.S., too.

[GAN]

...
In response to this.
“ Why would I use IRC? It's not the 80s. Today people use FB/Telegram/Signal groups, Discord ”

Yes I know about social media with proprietary closed source platforms which require you to have a cell phone number to use them.
These platforms are designed for spying on users and harvesting their data. They are not “free”, you are the product. You cannot use or create a client of your choice as you can for irc.

Your data is sold and or shared with whomever they please and you have consented to this by using their apps.
They also like to censor/deplatform anyone who says politically unapproved things etc.
 
Nobody should be using these things ...seriously.
Just because something is “new” does not make it better.
...

I totally agree with you.

[ccrause]

Are there plans to stream the presentations, or make recordings available?

[PascalDragon]

I find it hard to believe that pascal programmers would make a trip to  another country to meet if they can’t even come to IRC channel and socialize which is much easier. Is this some sort of a joke?

The same joke as people who travel to see/listen to a concert of their favorite band when they could quietly see it on YouTube.

That is a very good comparison I'd say.

In response to this.
“ Why would I use IRC? It's not the 80s. Today people use FB/Telegram/Signal groups, Discord ”

Yes I know about social media with proprietary closed source platforms which require you to have a cell phone number to use them.
These platforms are designed for spying on users and harvesting their data. They are not “free”, you are the product. You cannot use or create a client of your choice as you can for irc.

Your data is sold and or shared with whomever they please and you have consented to this by using their apps.
They also like to censor/deplatform anyone who says politically unapproved things etc.

I agree with all the platforms except for Signal. While they do require a cell phone number (they are looking into alternatives) the apps and the server are Open Source and they have security first as their motto and thus feature end-to-end encryption and such. They literally can't sell your data, because it's only available in clear text on the client side neither can they censor or deplatform anything.

Also nowadays I'd probably go with a protocol like XMPP or Matrix, both Open Source.

[BobDog]

Joanna.
I have a mobile phone, old type, phone only, not a smart phone.
I am 74 years young today.
I really am stuck in the mud about many things in life, progress is a nasty word really. During my span we have seen a collapse in the natural world, regional wars all over the place, an impending nuclear war, kids walking around tapping at smart phone keys . . .
And this thing about huge corporations wanting to change the world order comes up again and again, and so called DATA about our person.
Maybe you are right, but communication is a thing humans indulge in, we are social animals, and that is hard coded into our species, like it or not.
Even writing things here exposes us to people we don't know or maybe don't want to know.
I don't really want to be a hermit so I take a little leap of faith now and then, take a little gamble in the communications world.
This jaunt to Spain is causing much chatter, if it is genuine (and I hope it is), it would be a great chance for forum members to actually meet one another, face to face. I hope there won't be any trouble.

[domasz]

I guess I’m surprised that the creators of fpc and Lazarus are not the ones arranging an event.

I am glad creators of FPC and Lazarus are not arranging events but coding.
For example people behind Wikipedia spend most of the donated money on arranging events and that's why they constantly beg for more.

[Martin_fr]

I wonder what the actual number of people who use fpc is..

Well on Sourceforge
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/Lazarus%20Windows%2064%20bits/Lazarus%202.2.0/lazarus-2.2.0-fpc-3.2.2-win64.exe/stats/timeline?dates=2021-11-09+to+2022-10-25
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/Lazarus%20Linux%20amd64%20DEB/Lazarus%202.2.0/lazarus-project_2.2.0-0_amd64.deb/stats/timeline?dates=2021-10-21%20to%202022-10-25&period=daily
Add other Linux distro, and Mac.

We have over 100k downloads for Lazarus 2.2.0. Add downloads from mirrors, and people using git. (The fpcupdeluxe thread has many users, so likely a lot of people using that)
Then add people who use FPC without Lazarus.

[Bogen85]

That’s a lot of downloads but I suspect some of the downloads are from people who aren’t pascal programmers that just want to collect/analyze the code for some reason.

That many people have that much time to spend analyzing tools they don't use?

If it was just for analysis purposes then using gitlab (and previously subversion) would have been the more likely place they would have downloaded from, and the numbers for those were not covered in the numbers given.

I wonder how many people are chatting in the forums on an average day.

Using forum participation or chat participation is also a very poor metric.

For users of any language or tool you are only going to get an extremely low percentage of users that ask questions online or participate in chat. But that will vary, depending on saturation of the language. Pascal has been around for many decades. A lot of questions have already been asked, and there is a lot of documentation available online.

If it were a valid metric than every tool and language is greatly exaggerated as far as actual number of users.
The number of users asking questions in forums or in chat as just a tip of the iceberg.

But from my own experience there are many tools and languages I use that I've never asked questions online or participated in any sort of chat. (unless somehow asking a search engine is the same as asking a question online, and I don't consider it that to be the same).

And the same goes for many of my technology peers.

And on the ones where I have asked a question online, that participation is extremely low compared to my actual usage of that tool or technology. There are tools and languages I've used almost day for years at work, and never once had to actively participate in an online forum or chat to get an answer. And as before, it seems to be the same for most of my technology peers that I've worked with.

The vast majority of my pascal questions, including things specific to free pascal, I'm able to find the answers online, without asking in a forum or in chat.

Many people also watch you tube videos to learn things. If you go to youtube and search for pascal programming you will get a lot of tutorials people have made on how to do things in pascal.
Videos are not for everyone as a far as learning tool, but for many they are.

As far as I can tell, in using Pascal and in using other technologies and tools out there, pascal is not somehow unique in requiring only forums and chat to get help.

And as far as the forums go, most of the time I don't need to ask new a question. Someone else already asked it, and somebody else already answered it. So no need for me to ask again. I do ask about things where I can't find concrete answers for, but that is by far the minority of my questions. As I've stated, for a majority of my questions I ask a search engine, and it finds the answer I'm looking for, after I sift out the results that don't directly apply to what I'm looking for.

But back to original reason why I made this reply,  from my perspective as far as showing usage, downloads are far better metric than forum participation or chat participation.

[Bogen85]

Bogen85 just because you wouldn’t waste your time downloading things you aren’t using doesn’t apply to everyone. Maybe the downloads are being done automatically.

Assuming that what you say is true about most people using software don’t want to come to forums or irc to chat.. 100k downloads from genuine users  would represent quite a few people and that’s not even counting all of the additional people like me who don’t upgrade regularly.

Assuming all the downloaders are real people who use fpc Even if only a minuscule 1%/.1% of them want to be sociable in forums or irc that would still be 1000/100 people active everyday.

Ok, I'm basing not just on me, but on how most of the technical peers I know and have worked with for over 30s years tend to operate in regard to the tools and languages they use. And I've worked in a variety of industries and locations, so my sample set is not just tied to one narrow segment of technologists.

Free Pascal and Lazarus are just one of many packages on SourceForge. With all the languages and tools available on SourceForge they would be doing that with as well, that is a lot of analysis going on (automated or otherwise) if you are correct, which I find implausible.

As stated before the 100K downloads does not reflect all the users getting fpc/lazarus from packages provided by their Linux distribution or BSD flavor.
Many (most I know) Linux or BSD users are not to bother going to sourceforge to download.

If they do need to custom build, they will go to `git`.

What I'm saying is, the number of sourceforge downloads is also a tip of the iceberg thing.