International Pascal Congress 2023

[Sergio MT]

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

No, there is not stream presentations or recordings plans except for special activities of the event, and that's on purpose. In my experience as a researcher, I have observed that a community, regardless of the field of research, must have a physical meeting. People have to come together, meet in person and establish real links for the community to be strong. I am trying to create what I believe will help create a strong community. It's not just about listening to a talk, it's about people getting to know each other personally so they can feel part of the community, people getting to know each other personally behind the projects and facilitating the possibility for people to create collaborations.

Pity, I would like to see what others are doing with and to Pascal.

 I don't know your personal circumstances, but if you can come, do it, because this event is not only about hearing talks, but it is also designed to create community. If it works, it will be repeated again; but we need it to work this time.

Best regards,
Sergio

[ccrause]

I don't know your personal circumstances, but if you can come, do it, because this event is not only about hearing talks, but it is also designed to create community. If it works, it will be repeated again; but we need it to work this time.

Best regards,
Sergio

For me, travelling to Europe is a hassle (need Schengen visa, 10 hour flight,  relatively expensive). I understand your reasons for an in person event, and that recording or streaming presentations adds extra IT admin, so if it isn't available then it is fine.

[ccrause]

...
The event will serve as a meeting point for all players in the software industry working with Pascal, and we’re aiming to boost the Pascal community into becoming an innovative and cutting-edge community again.

To achieve these goals, we’ll offer a variety of activities at the event so that people can get the most out of their attendance. You’ll be able to attend courses, technology presentations, and talks by keynote speakers, as well as participate in a challenge for the community.

Do you have any themes in mind?  Such as language standardization (Delphi seems to be the de facto modern standard, with some good innovations but also some less popular ideas), cross platform operability, language extensions for microcontrollers, etc.

[Sergio MT]

I have some questions for Sergio MT

Does your college currently teach classes in pascal or delphi ? If so can you please provide link to the class description on the university website.

I’m also curious if you ever taught any pascal classes or written any programs in pascal?

If you have no prior experience with pascal what caused you to become interested in it and want to create an event ?

For me, travelling to Europe is a hassle

As if long plane flights and visas were not enough there are now all sorts of Covid related restrictions aren’t there?
Additionally I believe the cost of flying has gone up and number of flights have gone down.

Maybe it might be convenient for people who can get there by train.

I have been programming in Pascal for a long long time. I  even used Turbo Pascal 7.  I use Pascal when I can choose it

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sergio-Miguel-Tome

My current project.

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/898052

I am using Delphi for it.

You can send me a private message if you want to know more about me, but the news is about the event not about me

The universities in Spain stopped teaching Pascal around 10 or 15 years ago.  It is a pity because for me it is one of the best languages. I created this event because I think this is going to help the Pascal Community to be where it must be. Thanks to this event I am getting several of my colleagues are interested in Pascal again. They were thinking Pascal died. Also, students are interested in Pascal because of the event although they have not studied Pascal in their subjects.

Best regards,
Sergio

[PascalDragon]

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

No, there is not stream presentations or recordings plans except for special activities of the event, and that's on purpose. In my experience as a researcher, I have observed that a community, regardless of the field of research, must have a physical meeting. People have to come together, meet in person and establish real links for the community to be strong. I am trying to create what I believe will help create a strong community. It's not just about listening to a talk, it's about people getting to know each other personally so they can feel part of the community, people getting to know each other personally behind the projects and facilitating the possibility for people to create collaborations.

Pity, I would like to see what others are doing with and to Pascal.

 I don't know your personal circumstances, but if you can come, do it, because this event is not only about hearing talks, but it is also designed to create community. If it works, it will be repeated again; but we need it to work this time.

The pandemic should have shown that the ability to take part online is important as it provides accessibility and inclusivity. We currently have the same issue with a social club which is doing its annual meeting in person instead of at least hybrid and that at a location that's relatively hard to reach for a significant number of the members. On the other hand, another social club I'm part in does hybrid meetings to allow for people from far away can participate as well. And then there's events like the Chaos Communication Congress which streams (and records) all sessions for years already, because they know that not everyone can come, but many are interested.

[Sergio MT]

Do you have any themes in mind?  Such as language standardization (Delphi seems to be the de facto modern standard, with some good innovations but also some less popular ideas), cross platform operability, language extensions for microcontrollers, etc.

Everything is already organized; I have been doing meetings for almost two years with the keynote speakers. I even communicated the creation of this event to the professor Niklaus Wirth at the beginning, and he gave me his support.  There are many topics, so I have had to choose among all but there will be different topics.  All will be revealed at the right time 

Best regards,
Sergio

[aydın]

My 15-year-old son @aydın and my 9-year-old son Akif.  Also, the people I know try to do everything with pascal.

Yes, thanks for introducing me to Pascal and Lazarus, Dad.

[PascalDragon]

You say your project is in Delphi have you considered porting it to lazarus? Lazarus has a Delphi mode which can use files from delphi. I’ve never tried it myself though but it shouldn’t be too difficult.

It depends on whether the application uses third party components and how easily they can be ported to Lazarus.

[Sergio MT]

The universities in Spain stopped teaching Pascal around 10 or 15 years ago

So pascal has not been taught in Spain for almost one generation. Do you have any idea why it was gotten rid of? Or what replaced it?

They were thinking Pascal died. Also, students are interested in Pascal because of the event although they have not studied Pascal in their subjects

A lot of people want pascal to be gone and do everything they can to discourage people from using it. I’ve encountered quite a few of these people.

If your students are interested in pascal why not have them come download Lazarus and give it a try. I believe the forums also have a Spanish section for people not fluent in English.

You say your project is in Delphi have you considered porting it to lazarus? Lazarus has a Delphi mode which can use files from delphi. I’ve never tried it myself though but it shouldn’t be too difficult.

I know the answers to your questions, but I lack time to explain all this, although I can explain you in Salamanca if you come.

I organize sometimes workshops and I show both, Lazarus and Delphi, to them.  For the community is better that both exist.

Best regards,
Sergio

[Leledumbo]

I’m curious if the development of Lazarus follows delphi or if judgements are made what is better for the future of Lazarus? I’ve noticed a lot of properties in classes that don’t do much I guess they are for compatibility with delphi maybe?

It has its own roadmap, but keeping Delphi compatibility (at least at language level) somewhat a priority. Delphi is pretty bad in keeping backward compatibility, so it's kinda hard to follow their post XE implementations. LCL is still closely resembling VCL instead of FMX, for instance.

[Joanna]

Backward compatibility is definitely important to keep programs from breaking.

I’ve never used Delphi. Allowing all Delphi programs to compile with Lazarus seems useful, however ...
 Do the makers of Delphi ever implement new features you don’t like that you don’t want to ever be part of Lazarus? If so what do you do?

[PascalDragon]

The pandemic should have shown that the ability to take part online is important as it provides accessibility and inclusivity.

Pascaldragon I kind of have mixed feelings about so many things being done remotely. It’s good that people can work remotely from home without commuting and chatting with people from around the world is a lot of fun..but the end result i think is alienating people from the people who live near them in real life. There are no community events anymore and people don’t know the people in their neighborhoods. Covid only worsened this phenomenon.

Hybrid events allow people to participate that couldn't participate at all beforehand. Sure, there might be less people that meet in person, but in my opinion the community as a whole benefits. See the Chaos Communication Congress for example: they are streaming and recording their sessions for years already and yet the congress is still sold out very soon each year. I've been there only once (in 2019) and otherwise I relied on the recordings. I've also used the recordings when I'd been there, cause there were interesting sessions that ran in parallel.
In short: hybrid events allow for more accessibility and that far outweighs the negatives in my opinion.

I’m curious if the development of Lazarus follows delphi or if judgements are made what is better for the future of Lazarus? I’ve noticed a lot of properties in classes that don’t do much I guess they are for compatibility with delphi maybe?

In general both Lazarus and FPC incorporate Delphi compatibility though not everything is copied (for example no one wanted to reimplement FMX for Lazarus yet) and when possible without sacrificing that compatiblity things are improved upon (e.g. in FPC anonymous functions can also be assigned to normal function pointers, method pointers and nested function pointers in addition to function references depending on what they capture while in Delphi only function references are supported).

Do the makers of Delphi ever implement new features you don’t like that you don’t want to ever be part of Lazarus? If so what do you do?

Not Lazarus, but FPC or the language: inline variable declarations. *shudders*

[Thaddy]

Not Lazarus, but FPC or the language: inline variable declarations. *shudders*

Shivers. Separation of declaration and use is a core feature of Pascal. Totally agree.

[domasz]

Not Lazarus, but FPC or the language: inline variable declarations. *shudders*

I didn't know this was possible! It might be very useful when porting code from C-based languages but I strongly believe such code should only be possible in a special "compatibility"mode, eg. {$MODE C} and not part of regular code base.

[Thaddy]

It is only possible in very recent versions of Delphi. I hope it does not make it into FPC.