[fpc-other] Re:Pascal Showcase Project/Education

[Richard Ward]

>> For beginning computer science classes I think a
>> simpler IDE would be more suitable and for advanced courses, the
>> complete environment could be used.
>
> Full ACK. While I am teaching Object Pascal, I start with gedit +  
> fpc in
> shell. The Lazarus IDE is too much for beginners. But the use of gedit
> and fpc has some restriktions. No integrated debugging enviroment for
> example.
> I wish there where something like the textmode ide of fpc in gtk and/ 
> or
> win32.

------

I agree the full Lazarus IDE would be too much for beginners. Mattias  
mentioned i n a later post about plans for a simpler educational  
Lazarus.  That's why I also mentioned Ingemar's LW IDE.  Looking over  
the comments in the Educational Lazarus page, I see that one of the  
main concerns is that beginning students mostly use only one source  
file.   LW IDE is a nice IDE for this type of project as you don't  
have to worry about makefiles, a project file or pathnames at all if  
you are running generic Pascal programs.   And even when you start  
adding units, the mechanics of organizing your files is very simple  
and still no makefiles or project files.   As an added bonus, a source  
level debugger is in an initial testing release phase.   Here is some  
information on it for those interested - it's about a page long.   It  
is a Mac specific IDE but the design I think is good for the  
educational market and more.

http://www.ragnemalm.se/lightweight/


***********

> beginners.   It is also supports other languages like Java and C which
> might be attractive for CS curriculums.  Although it runs on Macs,

I wouldn't do that if simplicity is an objective. It pulls in two  
additional
different styles of building programs, which makes it hard to exploit  
the
advantages of Pascal's autobuilding.

----

Actually, the main emphasis is on Pascal and the other language  
support is thrown in to help with other things since including them  
supposedly was not that hard.  It really does exploit Pascals "unit"  
interface/implementation framework very well and utilizes it so  
external makefiles and includes and stuff are not needed.   If you  
have your units all in the same directory, all you have to do is have  
your main program source file up (no others) , hit build and the IDE  
automatically directs FPC to compile the units up the chain.  Once you  
get more libraries this gets unwieldily, but THEN, you can specify  
additional paths in a preferences dialog which is a guide for the  
compiler.   But that is still simpler than a makefile process.   But  
the main point here is for educational use where one can literally  
create a new text file, type i n a simple

Program  xyz;
begin
writeln('Hello World');
end.

hit run and it compiles, links, executes, and runs like all your old  
favorite IDE's.

My purpose is not to promote this particular IDE (although I am  
personally very pleased with it) but just to provide an example of  
something which can be created in FPC (which it is) as an idea for a  
possible showcase app which might generate some interest.   The FPC  
source for this IDE is available as well.