Why isn't Lazarus / Free Pascal more popular?

[JD]

I am working for a big company and we are using Dewesoft data acqusition and digital signal processing systems. Their software seem to be written in Delphi (although of course they will use external libraries for the signal processing and such). The systems are very fast, versatile and powerful; while not targeting the mass consumer, they have gained quite a market segment in the industry. So I am not THAT pessimistic.

That is quite interesting and encouraging. The best database management tools (in my humble opinion) dbForge Studio and Navicat suite are written in Delphi. They look good and are fast and responsive even when handling lots of data. All is not lost. There is still cause for optimism.

[PascalDragon]

And guess what? The LCL supports the Amiga GUI library. And FPC supports the ZX-Spectrum.

So where are wrong the opponents of “Joanna from IRC” who say that Lazarus is only for old people?
They are right then.
Then Lazarus is a toy for nostalgic for Pascal and ZX-Spectrum retirees who are bored on retirement and therefore write Pascal programs for a rusty ZX-Spectrum while listening to Boney M / Led Zeppelin / Frank Sinatra / ...  music on a tape recorder.
 

And young people are not allowed to be interested in these platforms? For example I had revived FPC's M68k code generator - which had fallen into disrepair before the 2.0 series - when I had been 24 back in 2012.

[CM630]

This is from 2018:
https://lazarus.lazarus.freepascal.narkive.com/ZzTPJ4DB/how-do-i-export-ide-options-to-a-file-to-be-used-by-another
I think that nothing changed  :'(

[VisualLab]

No. You unnecessarily attribute to me faith...

Strange, you wrote before you didn't graduate from any university,

Really? What should I write now? Because if I write the truth, you'll get offended. So - read my post again, but this time with understanding.

but you fight so hard for evolution.
My wife, for example, is a medical doctor with a university degree, but for some reason she (and some of her other colleagues) is not a fanatic about classical evolutionary ideas either.

You don't understand (or maybe you have a troublesome character and that's why you persistently try to impute something to me, but with little success). I am not a fanatic about anything (I have no such needs). You're giving an anecdotal argument (i.e. none). You and your wife can have any opinion about evolution. I don't care, because I neither gain nor lose from it.

And I have studied physics seriously and that is why I doubt many official modern approaches in physics.

A very respectable field of science. It's your business how you approach this field, it's none of my business (I don't lose or gain anything from it).

But you don't. By the way, religious fanatics do similar things. They never doubt 
Again I won't ruin your faith. Believe in your “blind evolution” or whatever to your heart's content

Why are you writing this nonsense? You don't know anything about me.

On the other hand, Java (as well as C#) is not suitable because of the VM and garbage collector.

Java is used everywhere precisely because of its safety and because of the availability of a garbage collector.
Space projects (satellites and robots) are already running in Java. Java works well in embedded solutions. It is right because of its great safety and garbage collector.

If this is true, it does not speak well of those who act this way. But it may be true for some cases. In the history of space exploration (space probe equipment, etc.) there have been various stupid ideas and mistakes (e.g. using SI and imperial units in the same program). This is a stupid idea precisely because of the garbage collector.

But except for legacy projects and hobby crafts you can hear about Pascal only in some specific scientific circles. And that is only probably because the professors are old and used to Fortran and Pascal in their youth.

Fortran is still used because of its libraries for numerical computations. As for Pascal - if it is useful to someone, why wouldn't someone use it?

Therefore, Java has a much better chance then Pascal of making it into a language for implant development, though only at the top level of the technology stack.
And at the bottom level of that stack, I think there will be the same C (without the pluses) or some other modern so-called “cross-assembler”

I hope that won't happen. If someone had a heart monitoring implant and the program was jammed by the garbage collector, that person could die. The same may be true with other implants. I doubt that the company that manufactured the implants would use Java (or anything like that). The boards of such companies know very well that law firms are just waiting for them to stumble. The lawyers would gladly rake in big bucks in cases against the manufacturer of such implants.

For now, Pascal has a better chance of repeating COBOL's fate. But this means that you still have enough to sit on support until retirement if you have a popular commercial project.

Once I specialize in palmistry, astrology, fortune telling from tea leaves and fortune telling from chicken tripe, I'll let you know what Pascal's future holds

[VisualLab]

Visual lab I have a different interpretation of Idiocracy.
The film is kind of a psyop. They declare that since smart people decided not to have children look what we’ve got. The whole notion is preposterous. Why would intelligent people who know that they are not immortal decide that children are not important? Do they not know the basics of biology or are they so selfish that they don’t want the responsibility of waste of time? This is hardly smart.

The message of movie is that having children is for idiots. As flawed as the idiots were at least they were alive. The same could not be said for the “smart” people who were extinct.

No. The film has a plot as simple as the construction of a flail. This means that:

• gradually, over time, the society of developed countries becomes increasingly stupid (this was a message directed mainly to the inhabitants of the USA),
• a bland average person from earlier centuries turns out to be an outstanding individual against the background of the society of fools from later times.

There are no references to having children. In this film, everything "revolves" around laziness, stupidity of people, lack of reflection on their own lives.

[VisualLab]

I don’t know why that tiobe index is so important.

It is significant because many people (especially young ones) are guided by this list. So they will judge the "power" and importance of Pascal as a programming language according to it.

How can they know who is using pascal?

Because in reality this list does not provide any information about the number of real users of Pascal (or other languages). Only naive or mindless people think so. To some very rough extent, perhaps this list is plausible. But this is just speculation, on the principle: let's write down all the mentions of the most popular clothing and make a list out of it. And it will turn out that people like underwear (panties) or socks the most. And they like hats and gloves the least. And why? Because that's what came out from "serious statistical analyses" of the popularity of clothing

There are better ways to go about it. How about looking at  how many people come here and actually participate? 17 online at moment. Not very many considering how many accounts there are.
The unofficial Real-time support has about 60 online but most don’t talk much so hard to know if they use pascal. I don’t really trust the fpc download statistics it could be bots doing it. I use pascal because I prefer to be good at just one language and nobody can order me to use others. Pascal does everything I need it to and if there are no libraries I will make them myself instead of whining 

Take into account that many people only read this forum. Often they are not even registered. Others use forums in their native languages. You need not "beat yourself up in your mind" with nonsense written by some people, as if "Pascal left this world last Saturday" No, not yet. Do your own thing, i.e., program in Pascal. That's what I do.

[Joanna]

Visual lab the modern idea of what makes people smart is being able to    memorize a bunch of materials made by strangers without questioning it. If you’re able to prove that you memorized it by taking tests you are considered smart and given credentials that people will judge you by. No credentials and many will consider you unqualified. Actual talent is irrelevant. Many employers will reject you if you don’t have credentials. There are very few people who seem to be able to determine things by observation and asking questions. There is a big psychological block against anything that doesn’t follow whatever the current dogma is.

In response to your post, I would argue that most people in developed countries already are stupid. Look at what they are allowing to happen. It’s kind of obvious. At first they allowed the government to confiscate Children  6 hours a day for in doctrination. Then they went with the both parents should work idea of taking away the mother from the children’s lives after school day. Now we have to progressed to children are a burden there is Really no need to create them at all.

The film idiocy makes fun of people for the wrong reasons. It’s the education system making people dumber it’s not a genetic phenomenon. Modern people are the same genetically as the people who believed the world was flat and women could fly through the night on broomsticks.

[440bx]

Going back to the OT for a change...

First, the reason Lazarus isn't more popular is because it is tied to the fortunes of Free Pascal.  IOW, Lazarus cannot be more popular than the one language it supports.   This is unfortunate because when it comes to IDEs, Lazarus, while not perfect, is much better than most.

Second, the reason FPC/Pascal isn't more popular is because the language isn't designed to be excellent in any specific area.  Therefore it is good in many areas but, it is usually surpassed in most, if not all areas, by other languages. 

The demise of Pascal as a language started when Borland tailored Delphi to compete with Visual Basic.  Bad, really bad choice.  Pascal should have targeted C with a vengeance and, IMO, it should target C/C++ with a vengeance, at least feature-wise but, that's not happening.  As a result, Pascal stays overshadowed by other languages.

No amount of support, snail-time or real-time or documentation is going to change that. 

The one thing the language has over most, if not all others, is compilation speed and a superb IDE but, that's not enough.  Until the real problems are addressed Pascal will not become more popular.

The forum regulars are well aware of the limited manpower there is developing the compiler.  It really doesn't help matters not to see a release in about 4 years. 

[Joanna]

440bx I’ve never judged fpc project by the number of releases. I just use it and don’t update very often. I’m glad that they fixed the bug where hidden controls in a flowpanel were taking up space. That was annoying.

The good thing is that it’s open source so if you don’t like something you can change it instead of waiting for someone to update it, make your own updates. Have you?

Maybe we should stop worrying about being popular. People seem to gravitate towards the stupidest things when it comes to popularity. Why do you think that is? For instance staring at the tv {Idiot box} has been more popular than hiking,outdoor Games,folk dancing Arts and crafts etc. maybe the reason pascal is unpopular is because good things Don’t seem to be good at being popular.

[Lenny33]

If this is true, it does not speak well of those who act this way. But it may be true for some cases. In the history of space exploration (probe equipment, etc.) there have been various stupid ideas and mistakes (e.g. using SI and imperial units in the same program). This is a stupid idea precisely because of the garbage collector.

When they want to use Pascal instead of C/C++, Java and other languages (even HTML, JavaScript & Pthyton are used to display information on monitors in Musk's rockets) in new space developments,
you will be remembered and called to ask for your expert opinion on why it was necessary to do so from the beginning

I hope that won't happen. If someone had a heart monitoring implant and the program was jammed by the garbage collector...

Don't worry too much about the garbage collector.
First of all, it's already done so that it doesn't slow down even on loaded apps.
And secondly, all this Java may be at the top of the technology stack. And at the bottom, the good old C (or something similar) will still be running in separate threads.
But definitely not FPC.

Regarding your personal belief and disbelief in “blind evolution” based on the books you have read, I am not commenting any further.

[Lenny33]

And young people are not allowed to be interested in these platforms? For example I had revived FPC's M68k code generator - which had fallen into disrepair before the 2.0 series - when I had been 24 back in 2012.

Well yes, there are people of different ages who are interested and make money from antiques or ancient artifacts.
Do you want to promote Lazarus/FPC with these capabilities in 2025?
It is necessary then not to draw a cheetah on the Lazarus emblem but "junk man" or a cave painting depicting a mammoth hunt

IMHO The truth is that many of those who are still using Pascal don't want to change anything (I even can see it from this forum and others).
I listened to different interesting ideas how theoretically Pascal could be updated even 20 years ago.
But even then these ideas met strong resistance from grandfather Pascalists (40 and up).
I know that some oldfart hardly perceive even, for example, generics.
They just want everything to remain the same as it was 20-30 years ago, but at the same time they want Pascal to remain in the trend.
But it doesn't work that way.

Even from this thread, I am once again convinced that Pascal (Lazarus or Delphi) is unlikely to be used in new commercial projects.
But of cause no one in the business world is interested in what kind of IDE you will be hobbying on for old ZX-Spectrum.

And as a free tool for creating cross-platform crafts for yourself or for the opensource community Lazarus is a great tool.
But without serious business support and without new serious business projects - it will stay that hobby way
and then there is no reason to ask 1000+1 times why it is not so popular as someone would like it to be.

[440bx]

IMHO The truth is that those who are still using Pascal don't want to change anything (I even can see it from this forum and others).

Yes, there are some users like that.

I know that some oldfart hardly perceive even, for example, generics.

Only one (1) time I saw a good use for generics in one of my programs but, I found a better solution.  As a result, I am yet to use generics once.  I guess it might be useful when developing libraries, which I rarely do.  All that said, I don't care one way or the other about generics.  If they are useful to someone, please be my guest.

They just want everything to remain the same as it was 20-30 years ago, but at the same time they want Pascal to remain in the trend.
But it doesn't work that way.

No, there are plenty of small features I'd like to see in the language but, they are usually not "popular" features, therefore I am out of luck.  I don't believe the majority of users want everything to remain the same as it was decades ago.  Not true.

Even from this thread, I am once again convinced that Pascal (Lazarus or Delphi) is unlikely to be used in new commercial projects.

Likely to be true but, the reason isn't because users don't want the language to evolve.

[Joanna]

Take into account that many people only read this forum. Often they are not even registered.

Visual lab I think there is too much optimism when it comes to things we want to believe are true. While it’s possible for anyone to read the forums while not being logged in which is by all means good. The majority of the “guests “ are not humans they are bots that have no interest in ever writing a pascal program. When it comes down to the actual number of people who actually use pascal here that are still around, the statistics are quite dismal. It’s not difficult to look at the posting history for forums to determine which accounts are actively posting about code.

[dbannon]

This is from 2018:
https://lazarus.lazarus.freepascal.narkive.com/ZzTPJ4DB/how-do-i-export-ide-options-to-a-file-to-be-used-by-another
I think that nothing changed  :'(

Its easy. After you have built Lazarus with, eg, "make bigide", you make sure that the --pcp= line in lazarus.cfg is pointing to the old config (or, perhaps, a copy of the old config), "make useride".

That will build your new lazarus with the old config. When you start it up, it will update the config to new standard. I imagine this will not work if there is too big a gap between Lazarus versions but has always worked for me.

Davo

[lainz]

Lazarus and FPC is not easy as python or Javascript these are more popular by that reason.