Hello,

I'm thinking for a long time now about how to make the usage of FPC and Pascal more main stream. I'm thinking more in the approch of how Rails made more Ruby developers etc, and not in any other means. I think that if Pascal will have a lot of libraries in one area, that will make it easier then anything else existed, it might gain more usage and popularity.

I think that the grid and cloud computing in the grid area can be a good place to start it.

What do you think ?

Ido

http://ik.homelinux.org/

ik wrote

I think that if Pascal will have a lot of libraries in one area, that will make it easier then anything else existed, it might gain more usage and popularity.

I thought FCL is exactly that. It contains lots of libraries and header translations etc..

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

But it is not unique. For example Boost and QT for C++ provide a lot more general support then FCL.
I'm talking about making a unique set of tools that provide an easier way to do things in specific field that there are not many tools, or they are poorly made or just require too much work to do things.

Ido

http://ik.homelinux.org/

ik wrote

But it is not unique. For example Boost and QT for C++ provide a lot more general support then FCL.

Lets see what FCL gives us (the very short list):

* built-in XML handling
* built-in full DOM support
* built-in database support (SqlDB and many RDBMS to choose from)
* built-in graphic file loading/saving support (png, jpg, gif, tiff, etc...)
* built-in unit testing framework
* built-in JSON support
* built-in web development support (cgi and more)
* Apache module support
* built-in netDB support
* built-in CHM support
* built-in code generation support (as used by Lazarus Data Desktop app)

...etc. These and many more are all in pure object pascal and included with the compiler. Something C/C++ and other compilers don't. You have to pay a fortune for Qt, just to get some of these features (like database support). Free Pascal gives this as standard for free. AND I haven't even mentioned the features included in the RTL (various collection class, string handling, thread management, etc...) or the Lazarus LCL or fpGUI or MSEgui or AggPAS. All pure object pascal goodies.

Object Pascal developers sometimes forget how good (easy) we have things! :-)

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

I'm using a lot of Perl, Ruby and PHP, and they include all of these and a lot more.
Tools for a language are not the way to do things.

If you take Rails for example, it allows you to work only on connecting tools in order to do the task you want to do. You do not need to work hard in order to do web based applications. Ruby came out in 1995, but rails was the tool that gave it a push, not the libraries or the language ability (I really love Ruby).

I have DOM and XML support, but how does it help me to have easier way to work in order to build tools ? How unique is it from using GNU XML in C or C++ ? They also have native support.

But if you can show me that by taking this units I can work less and do a lot more, then we have something to talk about, and I don't think you can.

Ido

http://ik.homelinux.org/

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys <

ik wrote

But if you can show me that by taking this units I can work less and do a lot more, then we have something to talk about, and I don't think you can.

Then take a look at the result output formats in FPCUnit. I would show you other XML units, but unfortunately it is closed source.

Other built-in classes that come to mind. TIniFile (and Lazarus TXMLPropStorage class). They make saving settings etc a no-brainer. Even the TStringList class is a blessing for reading files and running through each line (compared to C/C++). I can't commend on Ruby, PHP etc. as I don't use them. Free Pascal does everything I need, even for web applications.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

Graeme,

The difference of what we talk about is, that you present a lot of tools that using them I can make a framework.
What I'm talking about is an existed framework to make it more usable, and make things easier.

lets take Rails (or even Django in Python) they take a lot of tools and combine them into a one big tool that is a framework that allow you to develop web based applications.
It has XML parser, JSON and yaml parser etc.. It have templating support and all of the tools that arrive with Ruby and Python can be used here as well.

One of the biggest problems of Lazarus for example, is that is not unique enough, and it does not allow me to use different languages inside, unlike QT designer or Glade, Lazarus is one of many tools, and personally (that's why I keep getting ignored this days) I think they are doing things wrong in the road they take.

If you build enough tools to do (for example) a clud computing tools using FPC (not only database briding of master slaves etc..). with the whole ability to compile, work and create things for working with grids and cluod computing then it will be easier to work with FPC for specific path and continue from there.

Ido

http://ik.homelinux.org/

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys <

OK, now I see what you mean...

lets take Rails (or even Django in Python) they take a lot of tools and combine them into a one big tool that is a framework that allow you to

I haven't looked at fpWeb for over a year, but I believe good improvements have been made to it, allowing XML, JSON and template based web development.

Other than that, there is also Morfik (http://www.morfik.com) which is a big tool for web development (using FPC) - apparently very good - but I haven't used it yet.

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys <

I think dynamic languages are much better in web development. However on system base solution, I think languages such as Pascal are much better at that then dynamic languages.
That's why I think taking over the grid boom, before everyone else will have frameworks for that, and competing will be almost impossible.

Ido