I give up. No IDEs can satisfy me.

[Edson]

Lazarus IDE is powerful, but it always has an outdated feeling to me. There are people working on Pascal / Free Pascal language plugins on modern IDEs like Jetbrain IDEs or Visual Studio Code, but they are all not perfect. There are plugins to modernize Lazarus like AnchorDocking or IDE Scout etc., but they are also not perfect. Errors can easily happen and crash the IDE with plugins uncontrollably as well. I can deal with Git with just command lines, but some other IDEs provides better view for things like git blame and git merge internally, I ended up sometimes needing to open Lazarus and another IDE / Git Tool at the same time which I feel awkward. In the end, with the dying of Pascal language itself, I had barely hope on any significant support on Lazarus would appear on any other IDEs. Lazarus IDE would be the only option relevant. It's sad.

As I see it's the real opinion of something disappointed of  Lazarus IDE, and in some way, I understand his point of view.

I've used several IDE and I know Lazarus is a good tool but I am not going to fall into the fanaticism of saying it is the best. It has a lot of tools and good features (like the Synchro Edit that I don't find neither in Visual Studio or VSCode) but anyway I have the feeling of using an old machine in comparison when I use VS or VSCode.

I know that Lazarus is maintained by volunteers and it is difficult to achieve fast changes in a short time, but accepting the weaknesses of Lazarus will be a good starting point.

[VisualLab]

I've used several IDE and I know Lazarus is a good tool but I am not going to fall into the fanaticism of saying it is the best. It has a lot of tools and good features (like the Synchro Edit that I don't find neither in Visual Studio or VSCode) but anyway I have the feeling of using an old machine in comparison when I use VS or VSCode.

I know that Lazarus is maintained by volunteers and it is difficult to achieve fast changes in a short time, but accepting the weaknesses of Lazarus will be a good starting point.

If you compare popular IDEs for various programming languages, created by volunteers (especially from scratch), Lazarus probably comes out the best. Comparing Lazarus (open source) with IntelliJ IDEA (commercial) is pointless. Behind the latter is a large group of well-paid programmers. A separate issue is that it is written in Java, so it requires a fairly powerful computer to work properly. Similar to NetBeans (which has been open source again for a long time now). This is clearly visible in the case of computers such as RPi. Lazarus works quite well on it (and I use it on RPi 3B). However, working with NetBeans on this computer is cumbersome (because of the JVM). The second of the mentioned IDEs, i.e. VSCode, is a nightmare monster made of HTML, CSS, JS (and probably some MS blobs). It works tolerably on a powerful computer. In addition, it lacks many important (for me) functionalities that Lazarus has. And even though it's free, it's developed by a corporation, not an open source community. For script kiddies, it's enough

NetBeans itself is quite a decent IDE, I've been using it for many years on my (quite powerful) personal computer (earlier, when I had a "weaker" computer, working in NetBeans was tiring). Incidentally, the decision-makers at Microchip probably had a similar opinion, because they chose this IDE as the basis for their MPLAB IDE X, while other companies chose Eclipse as the basis (e.g. STMCubeIDE, MCUXpresso-IDE, Mountain Studio). Eclipse is much more annoying and confusing to use than Visual Studio (classic, not Code). Many years ago I made several attempts at Eclipse, because I needed a more advanced editor for PHP, JS, etc. And NetBeans turned out to be much more convenient than Eclipse.

Either way. There's no point worrying about some inexperienced and naive kid (yes, some can be even 35 years old and have the mind of a teenager - a "soy latte brain"). He was trolling a bit, in his childish imagination: "he was screwing up the boomers." Like a little dog (Pražský Krysařík) who jumps at the feet of passers-by and barks loudly. And when he stomps, he runs away scared and yelps

As I see it's the real opinion of something disappointed of  Lazarus IDE, and in some way, I understand his point of view.

Honestly, his statement did not contain a well-articulated point of view (no specifics), only a naive verbal taunt mixed with tearful complaining. That is why he was perceived as a troll (a rather inept one at that).

[MarkMLl]

If you compare popular IDEs for various programming languages, created by volunteers (especially from scratch), Lazarus probably comes out the best.

How well do the other IDEs- irrespective of whether they're commercial or not- compare when it comes to form designers etc.?

other companies chose Eclipse as the basis (e.g. STMCubeIDE, MCUXpresso-IDE, Mountain Studio). Eclipse is much more annoying and confusing to use than Visual Studio (classic, not Code). Many years ago I made several attempts at Eclipse, because I needed a more advanced editor for PHP, JS, etc. And NetBeans turned out to be much more convenient than Eclipse.

I've similarly had several shots at Eclipse over the years, with varying degrees of success depending on who packaged it: by and large there were too many ways to do the same(-ish) thing with no indication of which should be favoured.

However I was pleasantly surprised by one set up for a series of WCH RISC-V chips, which was very nicely implemented and... well, just worked.

MarkMLl

[Chronos]

Perhaps somebody can create a new IDE for Pascal which could be more modern and better in various ways. To prove that it can be done

There are some alternative Pascal editors/IDEs like:
https://cudatext.github.io/
https://github.com/t-edson/P65Pas

And even Python IDE written in Delphi https://github.com/pyscripter/pyscripter from which one can get an inspiration.

But maybe it is not worth the effort and it is better to let it die...

[marcov]

Incidentally, the decision-makers at Microchip probably had a similar opinion, because they chose this IDE as the basis for their MPLAB IDE X,

I spend quite a lot of time in MPLAB X, but 9 times out of 10, if I try to shut down, I get a prompt that threads are still running and if I want to terminate them, usually update threads, sometimes parsing threads. After nearly a decade of use they can't seem to fix that.

Anyway, Lazarus, as any IDE has its issues, but what always surprises me  in threads like this, is that people make such a big deal out of minor annoyances and care more for what is modern than what works.

My personal pet peeve (after Martin recently fixed AVX2 register view) is tool tips and properties in the debugger.

As for Pascal dying, I'm already hearing that for 25+ years, but all the alternatives in the first half of that period have changed so much that they would need recoding, (due to language or library changes) but I'm still using 1997-2003 codebases in Pascal today.

[MarkMLl]

Anyway, Lazarus, as any IDE has its issues, but what always surprises me  in threads like this, is that people make such a big deal out of minor annoyances and care more for what is modern than what works.

I broadly agree, and suggest that people are inclined to underestimate the complexity of writing an editor- let alone an IDE- which consistently "does the right thing".

If anything does let the project down- and please note that the last thing I want to do is sound like I'm criticising Martin- it's paucity of documentation. With Rust- in particular- in the ascendant, if we could just say "another language? Sure we can handle that... and with some help we can interface the LCL." we'd be in a far stronger position; after all, even if people are uneasy with Pascal we can point to Emacs' using Lisp and emphasise that as an ALGOL-derivative Pascal is far closer to the mainstream.

MarkMLl

[Joanna]

I don’t want lazarus “modernized” whatever that means ,I like it the way it is. Nobody should even take the demands of people who don’t use pascal seriously. It’s kind of childish the way non pascal users say I’m not going to use fpc until ____________! There was one troll who even demanded that fpc compile with a c compiler.

[Martin_fr]

I don’t want lazarus “modernized” whatever that means ,I like it the way it is. Nobody should even take the demands of people who don’t use pascal seriously. It’s kind of childish the way non pascal users say I’m not going to use fpc until ____________! There was one troll whe even demanded that fpc compile with a c compiler.

Except that the OT didn't actually say that. (And it shouldn't require any deeper language skills to see that).

And the regrets he voiced are those of many, and those many should not be simply dismissed. Nor would the fulfilment of those desires mean to force others to use any new additions.

And it is somewhat droll to bring up the entirely unrelated actions of some random troll, when the topic is about entirely valid points.

[marcov]

If anything does let the project down- and please note that the last thing I want to do is sound like I'm criticising Martin-

Neither am I, nor any of the other devels. The remark about values in tooltips while debugging is just what I notice most when comparing with Delphi, which I still spend a lot of time in.

it's paucity of documentation. With Rust- in particular- in the ascendant, if we could just say "another language?

Sure we can handle that...

No, I don't think we can. Moreover it doesn't make sense as per developer motivation, why would a Pascal devel make a IDE for Rust. Just because it is popular or chase after some "market".

If so, I'd chase after a language that is mature enough to make its own IDE.

and with some help we can interface the LCL." we'd be in a far stronger position; after all, even if people are uneasy with Pascal we can point to Emacs' using Lisp and emphasise that as an ALGOL-derivative Pascal is far closer to the mainstream.

"if you build it, they will come" logic, but that nearly never works out, in the sense that there get more developer hours back than the time put in.

[JanRoza]

Why is all those calls for modernizing the IDE?
Does the IDE do what it should do as a tool?
Why turn this into a beauty contest, this is not a fashion show.
Lazarus is a highly usable IDE that delivers what a Pascal developer needs, so why not look at what is missing and is highly needed (personally I don't miss anything) and spend the scarce time of the Lazarus developers on that?
Just my 5 cents worth opinion. 

[korba812]

It's funny, but after working with BSD*BDS 2006 for two years, I noticed that Lazarus at that time was a more stable IDE than BSD*BDS. That's when I moved all my projects to FPC/Lazarus. Of course Lazarus is not perfect, however, I can improve it myself, unlike the competition.

edit: I meant BDS (Borland Developer Studio)

[Curt Carpenter]

In some respects, you can feel sorry for the newer generations of programmers:  they can't really appreciate the magic in the tools they have since they've never lived without 'em.  Yet they too will look back fifty or sixty years from now and wonder how anyone got along with just a keyboard, a monitor and whatever IDE they can remember using back in their good old days.

[440bx]

In some respects, you can feel sorry for the newer generations of programmers: 

I feel sorry for them (and even more sorry for myself.)

Some programmers have never experienced the power and convenience of having SoftICE at their fingertips.  Have never experienced what a genuinely capable text editing engine is.  Gone are the days of having people like Andrew Schulman, Sven Schreiber, Matt Pietrek and Geoff Chappell (Geoff is still around doing great stuff) and others taking the O/S apart (DOS and Windows) and writing incredibly useful books about them.

Now, you got to do all the hard work yourself with tools that are so inferior to SoftICE that it breaks your heart to see how far _backwards_ we've gone.

MS got sued by the DOJ for what it did in Windows 9x to cripple competing web browsers.  Windows 10 is _orders_ of magnitud worse and it's not even on the radar anymore.

One of the things that makes Lazarus a really good IDE is that, it's not one of those toys that seeks to dazzle the user with nice looking yet utterly useless features (IDEs like that are literally less than a dime for a dozen nowadays.)

My $0.05 on sale today for $0.01  and if you order now... <chuckle>
 

[hcoenen]

Well.....

As a newcomer with about equally as much posts i'd like to chime in. I read the OP's complaint several times now and all i seem to be getting is this:

The look and feel of lazarus ide is outdated.
I tried anchordocking etc. to make it look a bit more modernized. the components for this don't work / satisfy me
I tried other ide's (which look modern) with plugins for pascal language integration and the plugins don't work /satisfy me.

Therefore pascal totally sucks and i give up (and i get a bit of an aftertaste of "and so should you" but this might be just me)

I happen to agree on the fact that the lazarus ide looks like an older generation application.
For me that is totally fine, works and i like it as-is and a lot, i like it for functionality, not for bling. Opinions may, of course, wildly differ.

As discussed, lazarus, like every ide, has it's pros and cons. the OP however does not seem to go in detail about what exactly the problem is. except the modern looks, could you define modern?
this can mean anything.

Sure packages/components can be a pain in the general backside but besides anchordocking..... i'm really unsure where the OP is aiming at.

A bit of clarification might go a long way

[silvercoder70]

Modern vs Dated can be as simple as color and font selection. I personally do not like old the Yellow/Blue combination/color scheme but others might. Syntax highlighting? Auto-completion? Too many settings to change? Things look new with the right coat of paint.

There are some things about the form designer that could be better. But it also works.

In some ways I might say it is more robust than Delphi IDE.

Add in the extensions to VSCode and it slows down.

I seen MPLAB die when trying to run program in debug mode.

I would sometimes like to be able to use something minimal (vi?) but I don't know the commands so I use something else... like an IDE and accept it for what it is. Also keep in mind that vim was released in 1991.

Somebody once said ... you can have looks or functionality, but you can only choose one.

Fwiw... I come from the days before mice and appreciate what is there.