Who are the Pascal lovers ?

[d.ioannidis]

Hi,

I've tried to introduce Lazarus to my 16yo son and he was utterly confused from the abundance of detached windows and amount of properties. Unfortunately educationlaz package doesn't work any more.

Introduce him using a Laz version with docked installed. That is not cluttered.

I did. It helped a bit but not much. BTW the docked form editor works in recent versions (still have some issues though), where the educationlaz doesn't. IMHO it will be worth the effort to fix it.

I'm a bit minimalist and this setup ( see image ) not only works for me great but also helped to introduce Lazarus / Free Pascal to persons that are using VS Code with relative success .

regards,

[mika]

I've tried to introduce Lazarus to my 16yo son and he was utterly confused from the abundance of detached windows and amount of properties. Unfortunately educationlaz package doesn't work any more.

Introduce him using a Laz version with docked installed. That is not cluttered.

I did. It helped a bit but not much. BTW the docked form editor works in recent versions (still have some issues though), where the educationlaz doesn't. IMHO it will be worth the effort to fix it.

You have to hide information because learning is possible only when someone almost know. You have to understand the background knowledge. Have to give out new stuff bit by bit.
There is mindset of programmer - the way you think to solve given task. Then there is Pascal language you using to tell to computer what to do. And only then there is Lazarus as tool to do that effectively.
Even naming variable or function is a skill one have to learn. Ideally you want to get to the point where self learning is possible. For that is necessary to know how to make an input and how to output information, fixing typos, fixing errors, reading code, using help, searching for examples.
Most important, you have to create motivation. This is a hardest part if there is no motivation to begin with.

[Weiss]

from the poll and the data gathered by @Martin_fr, it can be seen that programmers under the age of 30 that use FPC is _less_ than 10 percent of the entire population.

Next, we don't know at what age people of the higher age groups picked up Pascal. What if half of those aged 40+ picked it up in the last 10 or 20 years?
In other words, if those who picked up Pascal in the last 10,20 or 30 years where spread across all age groups, then the older a group, the longer that group had to accumulate members.


    There are to many unknown factors to take anything from those numbers.

this is loaded. Representation by age group will mathematically favour older group, by accumulation. I am 55.  I arrived at Pascal in last 6 months, from c#, fortran, basic, octave etc. Therefore, I tend to think it doesn’t matter what language you were introduced to programming. It is the syntax, special tools, libraries that bring people in.

Developing language with extensions and code base is what will keeps the language going.

[VisualLab]

Young people need advice. Indeed, youth heeds the emotions rather than reason, and emotions and desires are blind; they do not consider the consequences

Totally agree. This can be seen in the flood of popularity of "technologies" such as: Electron, node.js (JavaScript) or Python. Most of them lack curiosity about how it works from the inside. Naive belief that it is the same solution as any other (which is not true).

What's worse, people who set themselves the goal of encouraging young people to programming and electronics promote these poor solutions. This can be seen in the flood of books or websites focused on the subject: "JavaScript + RPi" or "Python + RPi".

People related to Arduino did it much better. When you compare it with the RPi Pico, you can see that the people from the RPi Foundation "flew away". They fell into two extremes: a messy SDK in C or an interpreter that needs to be "stuffed" into a microcontroller.

[lainz]

Today I searched for how to edit excel with android, and I get at least 4 youtube videos with tutorial about it. How many videos are for lazarus?

Just a few picked from the top of my search window
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jJ1FNfLwuU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VPvQ_dXMhw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1YOaMQHMUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wA3p2JqmvI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW2s1IaiL_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcE0Zelr8r0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk3xjW4G-kw

How to edit excel with fpc lazarus videos?

[PierceNg]

Lazarus is a fine IDE, but Visual Studio Code has mind share. This is the VSC Pascal extension I've installed, though I haven't used it much: Omni Pascal. It is last updated Feb 2022.

There are a few others, just search for "pascal" at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com. This looks interesting: Pascal by alefragnani, last updated Jul 2022.

Castle Game Engine just announced an LSP and recommends Pascal Language Basics by Anson Yeung for VSC, last upated Sep 2021.

From commercial vendor TMS, from the wiki's In the News/de page Aug 2021, machine translated from German: "TMS WEB Core Visual Studio Code is a framework that relies on a graphical designer, the Object Pascal programming language, and Visual Studio Code."

No idea who among the above Pascal extension developers are here on this forum.

From a marketing attracting-more-people perspective, I think a good VSC story will help Free Pascal / Lazarus. For a start, I've created the wiki page for Visual Studio Code.

[Bogen85]

Lazarus is a fine IDE, but Visual Studio Code has mind share. This is the VSC Pascal extension I've installed, though I haven't used it much: Omni Pascal. It is last updated Feb 2022.

There are some of us that find Lazarus "too much" (for what kind of code we work on). For me CudaText (Which is a Lazarus app) gives me everything I need.

Not everyone working with Free Pascal is doing GUI programming.

[PierceNg]

Not everyone working with Free Pascal is doing GUI programming.

Me neither. And despite the word visual in its name, VSC is just a programmer's editor.

[alpine]

Attracting youngster's attention needs a GUI.  But Lazarus is a way too much for a starter. And it may sound silly but the old-timer look (which I'd prefer BTW) is not contributing for the recruition.

Underestimating of the "fashion" trend is what repels the teenagers, mine is tending to reject everything that can't be switched to dark mode.

Look at VSC - (at a first glance) clear looking, more than a hudred color themes,  half of them light ones, the other half - dark ones, hints and completion helpers popping everywhere, zillions of extensions, most of them crap, ... and after you used it a few hours -  you find that the pop-up stuff is preventing you from writing, the text is being formatted without your will, and you're annoyed that instead of helping you, the VSC actually standing on your way.

But it looks clean, attractive and colorful, and so it gained a lot of traction.

Today I searched for how to edit excel with android, and I get at least 4 youtube videos with tutorial about it. How many videos are for lazarus?

Right! They must be much, much more. Nowadays the way of doing things is to put the youtube video on the left monitor and to repeat what was seen on the right one. To read is boring.

And it should be really cool to get attention.

[Seenkao]

Rus:
  Вы не получите должных ответов данным опросом. Вся молодёжь, которая даже заходит на форум, зачастую не будут заглядывать во все топики, которые их не интересуют.
  Это относится не только к молодёжи. Это относится ко всем.

  Молодёжь так же не будет ползать по форуму в поисках ответа. Не будет искать ответ на вики-FPC. Да, они стремятся получить ответ как можно быстрее. И не будут стараться чтоб искать этот ответ.
  Думаю, что не мало молодёжи использует FPC/Lazarus. Но этого не достаточно. Большинство просто пройдут мимо, потому что им что-то не понравилось. Так происходит и с другими ЯП и другими IDE.
  Большинство хотят результат. И чем раньше, тем лучше. И желательно без усилий.

  Мы не должны привлекать всех. Мы должны привлекать заинтересованных. Мы должны информировать людей, которым интересно программирование, что есть FPC/Lazarus. Мы должны создавать больше обучающих программ. Больше уроков по разработке.
  Но не просто создавать! Информировать людей о том что у нас это всё есть!

  Если вы считаете, что литература не важна, то вы очень сильно ошибаетесь. Я не могу найти должной литературы по Pascal, не говоря уже о FPC/Lazarus. Литературы нет, почти нет. А новой литературы не сыщешь днём с огнём.
  Проблема не в том что новые ЯП продвигают. Это мы не занимаемся продвижением того, чем мы пользуемся. Если бы было больше литературы в общем доступе, то человеку было бы интереснее и проще разобраться с использованием FPC/Lazarus.

  Я периодически выкладываю видеоуроки по работе с Lazarus. Но этого мало. Потому что я лично с Lazarus очень мало работаю. Я работаю в основном с нативной частью, а не визуальной. Мои знания пригодятся только для отладки и для простых визуальных программ.

  Подумайте об этом! Вполне возможно у вас есть возможность написать ещё одну книгу. Выложить ещё десяток-два уроков, видеоуроков. Это очень сильно поможет в продвижении Pascal в общественных массах.

  Успехов всем!
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Eng (google translate):
  You will not get proper answers with this survey. All young people who even visit the forum will often not look at all the topics that they are not interested in.
  This does not only apply to young people. This applies to everyone.

  Young people also will not crawl around the forum in search of an answer. Will not search for an answer on the FPC wiki. Yes, they strive to get an answer as quickly as possible. And they will not try to look for this answer.
  I think that quite a few young people use FPC/Lazarus. But this is not enough. Most will just pass by because they didn't like something. This happens with other languages ​​and other IDEs as well.
  Most want results. And the sooner the better. And preferably effortlessly.

  We don't have to involve everyone. We must involve interested people. We should inform people who are interested in programming what FPC/Lazarus is. We need to create more educational programs. More development tutorials.
  But don't just create! Inform people that we have it all!

  If you think that literature is not important, then you are very much mistaken. I can't find proper Pascal literature, let alone FPC/Lazarus. There is almost no literature. And you will not find new literature in the afternoon with fire.
  The problem is not that new PLs are being promoted. We are not promoting what we use. If there were more literature in the public domain, then it would be more interesting and easier for a person to understand using FPC/Lazarus.

  I periodically post video tutorials on working with Lazarus. But this is not enough. Because I personally work very little with Lazarus. I work mostly with the native part, not the visual part. My knowledge is useful only for debugging and for simple visual programs.

  Think about it! You may well have the opportunity to write another book. Lay out a dozen or two more lessons, video lessons. This will greatly help in promoting Pascal to the public.

  Good luck to everyone!

[Joanna]

The last thing we need to do is divide people up by age. I didn’t take the survey for that reason.

The important question is WHY did most schools stop teaching pascal ??and how to reverse this trend?

As if the lack of universities and employers supporting pascal isn’t enough, outside of this forum people are constantly attacking and trying to discredit pascal. It’s a rare thing to meet someone new who uses Pascal.

[Thaddy]

Are you the Joanna who contributed so much to the Delphi community and left in what I can only describe as anger?
If that is the case, my wife outside - no she is reading this too -.
Anyway I hope you enjoy the nice things about Pascal.
Thaddy

[Joanna]

The other joanna isn’t me,I’ve never used Delphi.
Pascal is the only language I am reasonably good at and I am very frustrated that it is not popular. I am not interested in the treadmill of trying to keep up with every trendy new language that comes along.

Professional programming has become like the fashion industry, constantly  churning out apps in new languages that are “better” than Last year. The result is the digital equivalent of clothes that crumble in your closet when someone else decides you need to buy some new clothes.

[michalis]

Castle Game Engine just announced an LSP and recommends Pascal Language Basics by Anson Yeung for VSC, last upated Sep 2021.

Note that links in this post don't work (you accidentally have http://"https:// in URLs).

The proper link to Castle Game Engine news post about our Visual Studio Code recommendations and LSP server is this.

The core of that is our Visual Studio Code manual page. The recommended LSP server there is distributed now with Castle Game Engine and is useful with all editors supporting LSP (at least VS Code, Emacs, NeoVim actually tested).

As for us recommending Pascal Language Basics -- I found it to be a great extension for VS Code to "just have syntax highlighting" in Pascal. I deliberately didn't want code formatting / jumping that comes with some other Pascal extensions, as the LSP server is doing a great job here already (making code completion, "Go To Definition", "Go To Declaration" and related functionality working nicely).

[440bx]

It's difficult to figure out what is needed to make Pascal a more popular language but, it's unlikely the list would include putting down programmers that use/prefer other languages.