<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>There is fpdoc, and the FPC docs are quite ok. The problem is contributors.</pre>
</blockquote>
<font face="monospace">In my experience (and in that of the people
I brought along, as well as already existing devs around me),
no, they aren't OK. They're passable at times, yes, but they
aren't what I would call "good". I have been slowly going
through the FP docs and improving this as I go on my private
fork, once I get more time and go through everything I'll send a
PR. This is one way people who might otherwise be scared of
compiler code can contribute. Actually, there should probably be
a call to action regarding contributors and tell people how to
help either team (FP or Laz). I am sure there are people on the
forums who would be more than glad to help, but are intimidated
by the thought of dealing with compiler code, not knowing they
can contribute with bug reports or docs.</font><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Or because we spread ourselves too thin. Having dreams of an ivory tower
that somehow restores equilibrium ( new developers > old developers) is
easy. Making the economics work is much harder.
Attempting to whipold and tired Lazarus developers into submission to
work on vscode plugins IMHO it doesn't make sense. In short, I think the
new IDEs developers must come from the new developers ranks, those who
actually believe in it.
</pre>
</blockquote>
</p>
<p><font face="monospace">I mentioned that, in the previous
quotation you used. We can't expect people that are already
working on the compiler and Lazarus to also work on VSCode
extensions and whatnot, that's absurd for plenty of reasons.
Nothing good can come out of overworking the current team, so
this is a call to the community (that should be made on the
forums too, I am sick of repeating the same message over on the
"Unofficial" Free Pascal Discord server) to help.</font></p>
<p><font face="monospace">We all have to realize that nobody will
implement these things for us, and complaining is easy when
you're just a bystander unwilling to contribute. I have
discussed these things with the Discord server and have started
a GitHub org for this purpose (strictly speaking focused on
Object Pascal as a whole, but it's a cover-up to work on things
related to Free Pascal for now). But this shouldn't be a one man
project, it should involve /everyone/, so the CtA in the first
paragraph is even more important.<br>
</font></p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Stefan-Iulian Alecu</pre>
</body>
</html>