[fpc-pascal]Free Pascal - general commet / suggestions

[Paschal Mushubi]

Hi
I have been looking for a language to replace my reliance on C++
and FP seems like it could fit the bill but I have a few questions for 
you veterans.
I develop in C++ not because I love it, am not even that good at it, but 
because I can find free easy to use
libraries to accomplish a lot of what I need to do which is usually 
developing Oracle
database apps.
Unfortunately I can't find the libraries (units) I am looking for. Has 
someone tried to mimic the STL for example?
If I knew FP well I could write a unit that does this 
http://otl.sourceforge.net/otl3.htm#toc for example.
or develop a generic database access layer like Perl DBI. Shouldn't 
effort be put in developing Internet aware libraries targeting the web 
instead of the traditional desktop? Any Internet site developed in FPC. 
That wouldn't be a bad advertisement.
I have browsed the site http://www.freepascal.org but I get the 
impression that a lot is going on that is not well directed effort in my 
opinion. Do you really need to support all these platforms? Including 
DOS for God's sake. Looks like everyone and their brother is trying to 
develop yet another IDE. Sorry if I sound negative but I really would 
love to see FP succeed because it is a beautiful language. You get ease 
of use without sacrificing power. Produce more units to accomplish 
modern computing tasks.
How can I help? Let me know if you need someone to test your database 
access layer or may be a hash_map implementation.
Not another IDE please, or another Windows rich edit control :-)
Or may be these units exist I just haven't searched hard enough. If so 
please give me directions.


Thanks.

p. mushubi