[fpc-pascal]The state of FPC (was: Synapse for FPC)

[Matt Emson]

> You may not be alone but you are in a very small minority. I have been
> coding in Delphi since 1.0 and can never think of any reason why I had
> to look at the Delphi code to do my own coding. They only time I had to
> dig into it was when I wanted to determine how Delphi did something that
> I wanted to match in the LCL.

Having been a consultant for many years, this is the *only* way to work
imho. I walk onto a site that I have never been to before and I must
understand their source code immediately. I think that taking your approach,
I would never get anything done. It's laughable to be honest. Your mindset
is one of a deskbound office worker, not someone who has to pick up the
pieces when the lead developer leaves (for example) and no one else
understands his code. This is what the real problem is. I'm trying not to
make this personal, but some of you FPC guys should look at the real world
sometimes.

> With your practice how do you use third party tools? In most cases they
> do not include any source to look at.

You buy the version with source. I've never come across a vendor that will
not sell you the source for a price. This covers your back when said vendor
(e.g. Turbo Power) go out of business and don't opensource *all* of their
products (if at all.) What would you do, start again from scratch??!??!

> How would you use 'C' libraries or
> ActiveX or code in Visual Basic. It is an interesting thing to do to
> look at the original source but to use it for your coding practice seems
> very strange to me.

I use the Pascal import Unit and curse M$ for creating a standard that so
many vendors abuse.

As for VB; sir you insult me to assume I even consider using a toy to get
real work done :-P


> As MVC already stated in most cases FPC users don't even install the
> source so what would they have to look at in the first place.

More fool them.

> As was also stated you are using the mind set of a single platform
> development tool. FPC is not a single platform development tool and can
> not be viewed in that fashion.

But all the source is seperated isn't it ? It doesn't all reside in a single
dir? Last time I looked you had a Units/Win32, Units/Linux etc. Maybe this
has been extended by now?! How on earth is concatenating the include files
into a platform specific unit and putting it in the platforms source dir
going to ruin cross platform development? You are finding excuses for the
sake of it. No offence, but it sounds a lot like "father knows best" to me.

> This can be talked about back and forth for a long time but I think it
> is safe to say that this isn't *AN ISSUE* this is *YOUR ISSUE*. You are
> free to use a different tool that is more to your liking.

I do. Every day, man ;-) I'd use FPC if it was friendlier. I'd really like
to; I'd like to contribute too, but I always get such negative feedback from
the developers. No offence again.

Why don;t you make it more democratic and put up a poll.

Matt