We are starting to use Lazarus at my work!

[Martin_fr]

"if the shoe fits" ... Well, or if it doesn't, then don't put it on.

Translation:
@all => everyone, not just the few who posted, but everyone. That is all, who plan to reply here, and may accidentally (or even not so accidentally) cross that line.


To rephrase:

To all who plan to respond a kindly reminder in advance: Please ensure your response will be within the guidelines of the forum, and not drift into political debate or similar.

Thank you.

In simple English:

@all: Please regard the forum rules and leave out political debate. Thanks.

(Yes, I know it can be said even more simple)

[JuhaManninen]

> Please regard the forum rules and leave out political debate

Yes, that's a reasonable request.
However I was reading posts under Gnome project. There a similar reasonable request caused quite unbelievable reactions and debate. I will not repeat them here obviously, but that is the world we are living now. It is good to recognize it as an open source developer.

[440bx]

Yes, that's a reasonable request.

Yes, it is a very reasonable request, next time you consider opening the door to the "politics" you peddle, keep it in mind.

[gidesa]

One of the main developers of the C# programming language were Anders Hejlsberg.  Before works in Turbo Pascal and Delphi. Then worked for microsoft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

For me, C# it's a bad copy of Delphi. The only reason, which C# is more popular than Delphi, is  "A powerful gentleman is Mr. Money "

Yes, I know about Hejlsberg. Poor Anders, a so sad career end... :-)
Indeed, C# is not a copy of Delphi. It has no procedural programming.

[marcov]

I didn't say that writing a large application with Lazarus is impossible.

I say that is just less convenient and/or less productive than other alternatives.

Have you written a large application with C# & Windows Forms?

Yes. And I still preferred Delphi, and now at least partially use Lazarus for those. I have to admit at the time there was a lot of stress due to Microsoft repeatedly declaring winforms dead and pointing you to WPF. That made it really uncomfortable to massively invest in Winforms.

Or C++ & Qt?

I only work for Windows, so things like QT are a bit overkill. A complexity that you don't need.

But note: this is normal. Microsoft / Qt Group have dozens of well-paid developers working full-time.[/b] Lazarus has a few working in their free time.

That is a fact, but the conclusion from that fact is less clear cut. I.e. what does it really buy you ?

The effort is very commendable, but reality is what it is.

The reality is that people have been warning of Delphi/Lazarus being a dead end for over 25 years now. Most of the alternatives listed back then are now either dead or went through massive incompatible changes, while I'm mostly still on my original(2003 era, pre .NET 2.0) code, i.e. my original investment. I do have to note that my code is not very string processing in nature, so the unicode change of Delphi didn't hit me very hard.

That is a brutal truth wrt return on investment that naysayers often overlook. Specially if they harp on about long term stability.

[n7800]

This is my first post on the forum, so I would also like to thank all the contributors to the project who made the Lazarus and FPC projects possible. Thanks!

Thank you, that's great to hear! I also thank the developers, and as a contributor, I'm pleased to be part of the project ))

One realistic problem you could encounter is a situation where you need to use a specific library that isn’t written in Pascal — but such issues can arise with any language. Most of the time you can build then a small Interface app (with socket communication or something) to the other App.

Free Pascal has many bindings for popular libraries, regardless of the language they're written in. The word "library" usually refers to DLLs, but as far as I know, it's even possible to link "other code" (native) into your executable file.

For example, I use my own VLC-based video player and a small CEF-based browser almost every day.

There are tools for creating such bindings that can create them almost automatically. In fact, this is a completely natural feature for any native programming language. Limitations are more likely to arise from licensing ((

[valdir.marcos]

By writing a popular program, and embedding a Pascal interpreter for user-written scripts running in the program, you are probably causing some people to use Pascal.

Does PascalScript, or BAScript, or Kor, or BriefC would help you?

BAScript - Simple scripting interpreter
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,73485.0.html

[LV]

By writing a popular program, and embedding a Pascal interpreter for user-written scripts running in the program, you are probably causing some people to use Pascal.

Does PascalScript, or BAScript, or Kor, or BriefC would help you?

BAScript - Simple scripting interpreter
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,73485.0.html

Maybe Lape? Lape is a scripting engine with a Pascal derived syntax for Free Pascal and Delphi.
https://github.com/nielsAD/lape

[VisualLab]

OK, Qt has good design. I wish it was made with a better language.

And many of these elements of good design are achieved with additional tools (e.g. moc), because as it turns out, the wonderful C++ has some limitations.

[VisualLab]

Linux is the kernel and appears to be well maintained.
The situation with X11 and Wayland is peculiar. It seems the X11 project maintainers actively try to kill their project. At the same time Wayland is being pushed by main Linux distros, especially those funded by big companies.
Some projects like Gnome and also X11 have become political. They refuse a patch if its author does not follow their political (woke) agenda. This is a scary direction.
X11 was forked (XLibre) by its active contributor. The fork was publicly criticized a lot.
This is a "battle test" or "acid test" for the GPL. IMO the politically infiltrated projects deserve to be forked. Their political decisions inevitably impair their quality in the long run. Users can vote by abandoning them and moving to a fork.

This is the real consequence of applying the so-called "Unix philosophy." In technical fields, an engineering approach should be applied, meaning we establish specific (strict) technical assumptions before starting a project. No "beating around the bush", no babbling about some philosophies. Such nonsense could be spread by some coach on self-fulfilment or the search for happiness in life. There's no place for that in technical fields. Otherwise, chaos, disarray, arguments, etc., will creep into the project. And we see this with Linux distributions – chaos, arguments, bad ideas, flawed implementations, style over substance. But if Torvalds wanted his own Unix implementation, he got it. Only that it is not a system for desktops or SBC (i.e. for a small part of the population it is - work "with gritted teeth"). That's why Linux will never be widely used on the desktop. And I don't mean a platform for running a web browser that someone's mother, grandmother, cat, or canary are perfectly capable of operating).

This is a rather new phenomenon. What happened?
Those same political agendas are pushed in all western society with lots of money. Have the same sponsors infiltrated those FOSS SW projects by paying money? I don't know. The maintainers may also truly believe in those agendas and repeat them for free. Useful idiots so to speak.

FPC project has serious management issues but fortunately they are not political. Kudos for that!

I will omit the (valid) comments about idiotic political trends (which disgust me). I want to draw attention to the issue of freedom to use software. Once upon a time, quite a few years ago (2000 - 2005, but also earlier), you could easily "tinker" with Linux, although it was more clunky back then. Then, gradually, this changed. For about 10 years now, many elements of this OS have been either removed or blocked. Out of concern for the user, of course. Because "this <<ordinary>> user is definitely retarded in some way." An approach worthy of the greediest corporations. And I remember the days when Linux was supposed to be an oasis of freedom and liberty. What happened?

[LeP]

And I remember the days when Linux was supposed to be an oasis of freedom and liberty. What happened?

What's happening?
Simple, everyone does what they want, including the code maintainers. And even those who orchestrate it all. That's what free software wants. Everyone can do something, everything and its opposite.
It's happened in the past, it continues to happen, and it always will.

The close bond between those who maintain the code and those who orchestrate it all (if different from the maintainer) means that there are still various interests... what's the difference with the various interests in commercial software?
Ideals, limits, and frenzies of free software versus the money in commercial software?

So far, the commercial companies I've trusted, those who sell the components I use, which cost thousands of euros (Delphi included), have never let me down. And I'm talking about decades of collaboration.
I've seen too many customers abandon the path of commercial software and abandon themselves to the exhilaration of free software.
And I've seen too many customers turn back, spending a lot of money to rebuild what they'd lost.
I have a few customers (a couple of hundred), and of these, a few dozen have gone down the free software route and have since switched back. It's true that some have switched to and continue to use "free software" solutions, but they are very few.

[marcov]

This is a "battle test" or "acid test" for the GPL.

Why? To my best knowledge X was always under a BSD/MIT like license, so I don't see what GPL has to do with it.

[JuhaManninen]

Why? To my best knowledge X was always under a BSD/MIT like license, so I don't see what GPL has to do with it.

Oops, I should have written: ... "battle test" or "acid test" for FOSS licenses. They all allow forking.
My impression is that many FOSS projects became political around the same time. Or maybe I didn't notice earlier. They all chose the same ideology and repeat the same claims, for example an explicit claim that open source is political by definition. That sounds scary to me!
Why they chose the same ideology at the same time? ... OK, I will not speculate further.

Once upon a time, quite a few years ago (2000 - 2005, but also earlier), you could easily "tinker" with Linux, although it was more clunky back then. Then, gradually, this changed. For about 10 years now, many elements of this OS have been either removed or blocked.

What was removed or blocked? I honestly don't know, I haven't studied the sources so deeply.

[dbannon]

....Once upon a time, quite a few years ago (2000 - 2005, but also earlier), you could easily "tinker" with Linux, although it was more clunky back then. Then, gradually, this changed. For about 10 years now, many elements of this OS have been either removed or blocked. ....

Really ?  I remember when you would rebuild the kernel of a new Linux, to include the modules you needed and still fit under a size limit. But plug-able modules and expanded limits has killed that need. But you can, still, easily download the kernel source and tools to rebuild it your self. As for the non-kernel things, its your box, add or remove as you want. Want to set to not ask for a root password, sure thing (ie Raspi OS). Want to install a non-Wayland desktop, yep, I suggest Mate. Want to run a whole lot of server things on an old and tired bit of hardware, go for it !

Just what is blocked in your case ?

Davo