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

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 16 Oct 2024 at 00:16, Rainer Stratmann via fpc-pascal
<fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>
> At the Lazarus Congress in Cologne in October 2024, it ended up being very
> interesting.

Promoting the event better might help! I did not know about it at all.

> Why are no new users coming to Lazarus/Freepascal?

Pascal is not trendy any more. It should be but it isn't.

> How can we get new, younger users to come to us?

Some more visible high-profile Linux apps implemented in it would
certainly help. If they are some, get them to state that they are.

If there are not, then maybe it needs some.

One of the highest-project single Kylix (Delphi for Linux) projects I
ever saw languishes in unmaintained obscurity: XPde.

https://kylixapps.narod.ru/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/xpde.berlios/

Picking that up, porting it from Kylix to Lazarus, and simply sharing
the result, without updating anything, would be a good start, IMHO.

> - Linux: All relevant files (executable files, configuration files, source code,
> etc.) are scattered all over the Linux system. This is very complicated again.
> If Lazarus/Freepascal were a Linux system program it would make sense. But it
> is NOT a Linux system program. The chance that it will be used by several
> users on a multi-user system is close to zero.

Good gods, no! No no no.

Keep it plain and stock.

Saying that, the macOS version is a bombsite and needs to be fixed. I
have an old version and it's so complicated I do not know how to
upgrade it.

But, if you want a simpler and better distribution/packaging model,
then why is neither FreePascal nor Lazarus on either the Snap or
Flatpak app stores? It should be. You should fix that.


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