[fpc-pascal] What to do to get new users

[Steve Litt]

Rainer Stratmann via fpc-pascal said on Wed, 16 Oct 2024 01:07:58 +0200

>At the Lazarus Congress in Cologne in October 2024, it ended up being
>very interesting. An important question came up.
>
>Why are no new users coming to Lazarus/Freepascal?
>Why do we find it so difficult?
>How can we get new, younger users to come to us?

First of all, Joanna on #fpc (and other fpc related IRC channels) has
blown off over 100 potential fpc users, including myself. I'm learning
Ada now, and liking it a lot.

Second, fpc is neither fish nor fowl: It has way too much "stuff" to be
an easy to learn or use language, but that "stuff" isn't useful to most
non-Lazarus users. The solution to this problem is to publicize the
hell out of the -M tp mode, which brings it back to Turbo Pascal 5.5,
and then publicize it as a quick way to program relatively safely. It's
quicker and easier to develop than C (or that horrid C++) and it's
certainly safer than C or C++. Hammer these things home.

Look at the posts on fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org . 90% of them are
of no use whatsoever to somebody wanting an easier and safer C. It
seems to me to be a discussion of a neverendingly growing set of arcane
library functions for edge case usage. The solution would be a
fpc-basics at lists.freepascal.org , and publicize the hell out of it.
Seriously, the Pascal stuff discussed fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
is every bit as complicated as Ada, but without the extreme safety of
Ada. Make and publicize fpc-basics at lists.freepascal.org .

Lazarus and Delphi are more complicated than they need to be. One time
the fonts on my Lazarus application became unusably huge, I couldn't
fix it, nor could the people on #lazarus find a way to fix it. Also, on
Delphi and I assume Lazarus, it's very non-intuitive how to put your
own libraries in directories other than the default. I lost a very nice
puzzle application because my directories got overwritten.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

http://444domains.com