[fpc-pascal] FPC and Lazarus as a main RAD tool?

[Sasa Zeman]

From: "Jonas Maebe" <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be>

> > Since I testing FPC and Lazarus, I'm intersting in using it.
> > However, FPC and Lazarus currently cannot be competition
> > to Delphi/Kylix. But  the most important advantages are daily
> >  updates and upgrades and we hope it
> > will  become worthy competitor one day.
>
> You forgot to add "for my environment and purpose" at the end of that
> last sentence.

FPC and Lazarus are currently not sutable as a main tool RAD (at least on
Winodows). If you have Delphi (7) Studio licensed RAD and developing
commercial applications, you have seen real RAD tool in action:

Advantage of Delphi:

1. User friendly IDE
2. Dynamicaly using components from IDE
3. Incorporated debugger (requre no currently large executable with symbols)
4. Optimized building performace

Advantage of FPC and Lazarus:

1. Daily updates and upgrades
2. Cross platform support
3. Code optimization for targeted processor (main delphi disadvantage on
Intel compatible processors)
4. Easier (C like) pointer manipulation
5. C like operators support

Code translation problem (Delphi to Lazarus):

1. Rudimentar files translation - require too many manul changes on each
file to change basic units and resources
2. Code incompatibilty in some cases (one of it is #4922)
3. Basic component incompatibility
4. Unclear/unsoported full Unicode (UTF-16) component support

It is far from that however, that Delphi is bugfree product, but currently
regarding translation problems, disadvantage of Lazarus IDE and some
incomaptibility/bugs in both, these advantages are not enough to set FPC and
Lazarus as a main RAD, at least on Windows which is still the most used OS
for global puposes.