Rainer Stratmann via fpc-pascal said on Wed, 16 Oct 2024 01:07:58 +0200 >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?
First of all, Joanna on #fpc (and other fpc related IRC channels) has blown off over 100 potential fpc users, including myself. I'm learning Ada now, and liking it a lot. Second, fpc is neither fish nor fowl: It has way too much "stuff" to be an easy to learn or use language, but that "stuff" isn't useful to most non-Lazarus users. The solution to this problem is to publicize the hell out of the -M tp mode, which brings it back to Turbo Pascal 5.5, and then publicize it as a quick way to program relatively safely. It's quicker and easier to develop than C (or that horrid C++) and it's certainly safer than C or C++. Hammer these things home. Look at the posts on fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org . 90% of them are of no use whatsoever to somebody wanting an easier and safer C. It seems to me to be a discussion of a neverendingly growing set of arcane library functions for edge case usage. The solution would be a fpc-bas...@lists.freepascal.org , and publicize the hell out of it. Seriously, the Pascal stuff discussed fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org is every bit as complicated as Ada, but without the extreme safety of Ada. Make and publicize fpc-bas...@lists.freepascal.org . Lazarus and Delphi are more complicated than they need to be. One time the fonts on my Lazarus application became unusably huge, I couldn't fix it, nor could the people on #lazarus find a way to fix it. Also, on Delphi and I assume Lazarus, it's very non-intuitive how to put your own libraries in directories other than the default. I lost a very nice puzzle application because my directories got overwritten. HTH, SteveT Steve Litt http://444domains.com _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org https://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
