---- On Tue, 15 Oct 2024 19:07:58 -0400 Rainer Stratmann via fpc-pascal
<mailto:fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org> wrote ---
At the Lazarus Congress in Cologne in October 2024, it ended up being very
interesting. An important question came up.
Why are no new users coming to Lazarus/Freepascal?
Why do we find it so difficult?
How can we get new, younger users to come to us?
The most fundamental reason more people are not adopting Pascal as a
programming language is because in the mid-1990's Pascal lost out to Java as
the initial language that was taught in university settings. Because that was
the last place Pascal was widely used, it quickly became obscure. Also, C was
always thought to be the pinnacle of achievement. That is, if you could program
in C you were considered elite. That continues today, although those promoting
Rust are making a commendable and stalwart effort to have it accepted into the
Linux kernel.
Today, Python is probably the most widely used programming language. Its appeal
is based on ease of learning and relaxed rules that increase ease of use. While
it is as severely flawed language from a strict design viewpoint, it has taken
over.
So, faced with this situation, what can be done? Short of a massive and
expensive marketing effort, not much, except to remove obvious attributes that
hinder adoption. One such attribute is the messy, cluttered look of the IDE. An
IDE redesign with a cleaner, simpler, and visually appealing presentation would
help enormously. It looks like that is what is being proposed here.
I have always found that the self-contained nature of Pascal/Delphi executables
is a big advantage over other language systems. Just copy the file and run it,
even on a system that has never seen a Pascal/Delphi executable before. If we
could do that with the IDE/compiler it would be magic! The install process is
far from that goal right now.
Doug C.
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