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

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 16 Nov 2024, Hairy Pixels via fpc-pascal wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2024 at 3:13:26 PM, Nikolay Nikolov via fpc-pascal <
> fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>
>> If you know nothing about the language, the main page explains to you
>> quickly what's the point of the language, and gives you example code, so
>> you can immediately see how it looks like. There are relatively large
>> and easy to find buttons/links for:
>
>
> Some here are not appreciating just how fickle people are these days. It’s
> not 1995 anymore and there are literally dozens of languages you can choose
> from so if it’s not clear what language looks like within 30 seconds
> browsing a web page people will click away and go to the next one.
>
> I saw this video recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFFcCLzOOyw)
> where this person goes over a list of languages he considered before
> choosing Odin for his projects (Free Pascal not included sadly). Notice the
> web pages and resources he reviewed in his process. The FPC web page
> doesn’t even have anything to view in terms of code snippets. People are
> going to click away for sure.

The website is due for an overhaul. After 3.2.4 is out, this subject comes
back on the table.

That said, the Free Pascal website is not about the pascal language.

It is about the compiler. The GNU compiler or LLVM C compiler also do not
contain code on their website. Not that I would recommend their sites, but
these tools are used massively.

By contrast, there is only one Python. There is only one Rust, Ruby whatnot.
Their compiler/interpreters *are* the language, so there it is logical and
suitable to present the language on their site.

But my plan is to include a 'Try it out now' page with the pas2js compiler
(or the fpc webassembly compiler) embedded.

Michael.