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

[tsiegel at softcon.com]

I'd like to point out that the main reason for using Lazarus is for ease 
of use when programming, keeping track of source files and the like.  
Unfortunately, Lazarus is not very user friendly to screen reader users, 
and (as far as I know), it never has been.

That eliminates a small but significant number of users right out of the 
gate.

Another problem is the fact that these days, nearly everything is 
pushing online, connected systems, and this kind of app is a nontrivial 
exercise on FPC.  I struggle with this every time I want to make an 
application that talks to other servers, because (as mentioned above) I 
can't use lazarus, and there are precious few examples of this kind of 
thing that comes with the FPC install.  There are a few examples of 
tcp/ip code, but they are overly simplistic, and don't really show the 
whole server/client dynamic most folks are looking for these days.

I'd wager that's a large part of the reason why fpc isn't getting more 
use.  Even those of us that want to use it for development struggle to 
do relatively simple things if we're not using lazarus for our 
development environment.

Sometimes, folks just want to integrate their pascal development into 
their current tool chain, and there's nothing wrong with that, but not 
using lazarus knocks off a large portion of the capabilities that can be 
showcased when someone new starts using fpc for their development.  We 
really need more sample/example code showing how things are done w/o 
lazarus to pick up the slack.  I think that more than anything else 
would go a long way to helping adopters stick with fpc as a development 
environment.

Also, I see very few (if any) examples of how to generate GUI apps when 
using fpc commandline compiling, (again, without lazarus in the mix).

This also makes for complications.  I almost always have to use 
powerbasic on windows, and java on other platforms if I want a decent 
gui, since there are very few tools for generating Graphical interfaces 
if you're not using the default development environment, (fpc is not the 
only culprit on this one).

With java it's easy, I just use the grid layout, and poof, it's all 
handled for me, I don't have to worry about where to put things on the 
screen.

I don't know how to mix java with pascal, like I do with C, I can 
generally generate the gui with java, then use another language for the 
backend items.  I have no idea how this can be done using fpc.

Generally though, I avoid gui entirely on platforms other than windows, 
since powerbasic makes gui generation simple, just by creating elements, 
and placing them anywhere I like.  I know this can be done on fpc, but 
again, zero examples are included with the distribution, and any 
searches I've done all turn up lazarus code for doing these kinds of 
things, which is not ideal.

That's my take on it all, from a different perspective,  Feel free to 
use/ignore as is your want.