[fpc-devel] Systems fair

[Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho]

On 12/4/05, L505 <fpc505 at z505.com> wrote:
> Actually, then, I should more so compare FPC to something like python or perl rather
> than GCC. Because GCC was available years ago when FPC was not. Whereas perl an
> python are newer. I think *part* of the reason perl is popular is because of all the
> websites out there saying "perl is so great because I did this and that with it". Of
> course there is a problem comparing a compiler with a scripting language, since
> scripting languages are used more for sysadmin.

There are way more Pascal projects then Python or Perl projects. The
only thing being that the majority of this projects are created with
Delphi and not Free Pascal. Things like Skype and Age of Wonders
computer game were created with Delphi.

The comparison to Perl and Python is valid only in the Linux
community. On Windows I don´t see these two languages, ever. The
competition is with .NET and Windows is still a much greater market.

What I think is happening now is Borland has being doing wrong steps
for quite some time (like abandoning their own project of a framework
in favor of .NET). Of course there are many factors on that, like
Microsoft constantly buying their best programmers and buying pieces
of Borland Capital. Delphi is slowly losing space, and this could be
occupied very well by Lazarus, and unless they hear about Lazarus
first, I bet those developers are going to Java if they wish to build
multi-platform apps.

On the Open Source world things are different. It is more of a
meritocracy. On the technical part there is also a large room for FPC
and Lazarus, specially for building GUI applications, but I think
people won´t pay much attention to it unless there is a very large
open source project using FPC. Something as big as Firefox, Open
Office or KDE, because this projects draw lot´s of attention to them.
KDE for example is a major propelent of Qt. It even includes a Qt IDE
in it´s packages!

--
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho