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Yes, I think this would be a good candidate to build an IDE for education use from. For beginning computer science classes I think a simpler IDE would be more suitable and for advanced courses, the complete environment could be used. I also like the concept of Ingemar Ragnemalm's Lightweight IDE on the Macintosh Platform which takes out a lot of the complexity of Xcode and can easily be used by beginners. It is also supports other languages like Java and C which might be attractive for CS curriculums. Although it runs on Macs, porting it should not be an overly onerous task since it builds in FPC and targets intel core duo cpus. Lazarus runs on at least two platforms if not more. I'm not totally up to speed on it myself. But both LW IDE and Lazarus are working now. It is just a matter of the feasibility of selling the idea to whomever. The educational market I thought might be more receptive for various reasons.

-Richard Ward

Yes, I think this would be a good candidate to build an IDE for education use from. For beginning computer science classes I think a simpler IDE would be more suitable and for advanced courses, the complete environment could be used.

Full ACK. While I am teaching Object Pascal, I start with gedit + fpc in shell. The Lazarus IDE is too much for beginners. But the use of gedit and fpc has some restriktions. No integrated debugging enviroment for example.
I wish there where something like the textmode ide of fpc in gtk and/or win32.

bye
Michael

In our previous episode, Richard Ward said:

beginners. It is also supports other languages like Java and C which might be attractive for CS curriculums. Although it runs on Macs,

I wouldn't do that if simplicity is an objective. It pulls in two additional different styles of building programs, which makes it hard to exploit the advantages of Pascal's autobuilding.

Zitat von Michael Fuchs :

... and no online help and no find declaration.

I wish there where something like the textmode ide of fpc in gtk and/or win32.

There are some plans to create a lazarus for education package, which hides the complex options (packages, frames, inheritance, versions) and add some helpers for newbies (e.g. a simpler compiler options dialog). See
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_for_education

You are welcome to add some ideas.

Mattias

What's the problem with starting with Lazarus directly and teaching your students how to setup a project with a single file:

-start lazarus
-choose File->New...
-select Project->Custom Program
-close the object inspector, because you don't need it