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Mailing lists / fpc-other / 2008-12

Re:Pascal Showcase Project/Education

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Richard Ward
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> 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.

------

I agree the full Lazarus IDE would be too much for beginners. Mattias mentioned i n a later post about plans for a simpler educational Lazarus. That's why I also mentioned Ingemar's LW IDE. Looking over the comments in the Educational Lazarus page, I see that one of the main concerns is that beginning students mostly use only one source file. LW IDE is a nice IDE for this type of project as you don't have to worry about makefiles, a project file or pathnames at all if you are running generic Pascal programs. And even when you start adding units, the mechanics of organizing your files is very simple and still no makefiles or project files. As an added bonus, a source level debugger is in an initial testing release phase. Here is some information on it for those interested - it's about a page long. It is a Mac specific IDE but the design I think is good for the educational market and more.

http://www.ragnemalm.se/lightweight/

***********

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.

----

Actually, the main emphasis is on Pascal and the other language support is thrown in to help with other things since including them supposedly was not that hard. It really does exploit Pascals "unit" interface/implementation framework very well and utilizes it so external makefiles and includes and stuff are not needed. If you have your units all in the same directory, all you have to do is have your main program source file up (no others) , hit build and the IDE automatically directs FPC to compile the units up the chain. Once you get more libraries this gets unwieldily, but THEN, you can specify additional paths in a preferences dialog which is a guide for the compiler. But that is still simpler than a makefile process. But the main point here is for educational use where one can literally create a new text file, type i n a simple

Program  xyz;
begin
writeln('Hello World');
end.

hit run and it compiles, links, executes, and runs like all your old favorite IDE's.

My purpose is not to promote this particular IDE (although I am personally very pleased with it) but just to provide an example of something which can be created in FPC (which it is) as an idea for a possible showcase app which might generate some interest. The FPC source for this IDE is available as well.

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Mark J. Wood
to Richard Ward

And of course, one of the reasons that Turbo Pascal was so popular for educators was the straight forward progression from source to exe (although I seem to recall a linking stage in the early days, I think, but even that's not so bad). It would be good if there was a version of an ObjectPascal that was packaged to meet that need, as you say. I often teach in TP, but it's such a dinosaur. It would be good to have a bridging step.

Mark.

Richard Ward wrote 75 lines
>> 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. ------ I agree the full Lazarus IDE would be too much for beginners. Mattias mentioned i n a later post about plans for a simpler educational Lazarus. That's why I also mentioned Ingemar's LW IDE. Looking over the comments in the Educational Lazarus page, I see that one of the main concerns is that beginning students mostly use only one source file. LW IDE is a nice IDE for this type of project as you don't have to worry about makefiles, a project file or pathnames at all if you are running generic Pascal programs. And even when you start adding units, the mechanics of organizing your files is very simple and still no makefiles or project files. As an added bonus, a source level debugger is in an initial testing release phase. Here is some information on it for those interested - it's about a page long. It is a Mac specific IDE but the design I think is good for the educational market and more. http://www.ragnemalm.se/lightweight/ *********** > 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. ---- Actually, the main emphasis is on Pascal and the other language support is thrown in to help with other things since including them supposedly was not that hard. It really does exploit Pascals "unit" interface/implementation framework very well and utilizes it so external makefiles and includes and stuff are not needed. If you have your units all in the same directory, all you have to do is have your main program source file up (no others) , hit build and the IDE automatically directs FPC to compile the units up the chain. Once you get more libraries this gets unwieldily, but THEN, you can specify additional paths in a preferences dialog which is a guide for the compiler. But that is still simpler than a makefile process. But the main point here is for educational use where one can literally create a new text file, type i n a simple Program xyz; begin writeln('Hello World'); end. hit run and it compiles, links, executes, and runs like all your old favorite IDE's. My purpose is not to promote this particular IDE (although I am personally very pleased with it) but just to provide an example of something which can be created in FPC (which it is) as an idea for a possible showcase app which might generate some interest. The FPC source for this IDE is available as well. _______________________________________________ fpc-other maillist - http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-other

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Michael Fuchs
to Mark J. Wood
It would be good if there was a version of an ObjectPascal that was packaged to meet that need, as you say. I often teach in TP, but it's such a dinosaur. It would be good to have a bridging step.

But if you teach in TP you can easily switch to Freepascal and use the textmode IDE. I would use it too, but I want a GTK/Win32 solution. Is there a chance to easily convert the ide? I presume it is made with Free Vision, FV programs converted to LCL?

bye
Michael

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Tomas Hajny
to Michael Fuchs
Michael Fuchs wrote 10 lines
Mark J. Wood schrieb: > It would be good if there was a version of > an ObjectPascal that was packaged to meet that need, as you say. I often > teach in TP, but it's such a dinosaur. It would be good to have a > bridging step. But if you teach in TP you can easily switch to Freepascal and use the textmode IDE. I would use it too, but I want a GTK/Win32 solution. Is there a chance to easily convert the ide? I presume it is made with Free Vision, FV programs converted to LCL?

Well, it would be certainly possible to migrate ("convert") the text mode IDE environment to GTK/Win32, possibly to LCL even (the LCL path would be probably slightly more difficult, I suspect, but obviously with the advantage of having support for more targets at the end), by different implementation of units video (and possibly units mouse and even keyboard as well) based on the particular interfaces/libraries. However, the main question would be the expected benefits, because it would still behave the same way, just not running within a console any longer but in a GUI window instead (more or less everything would still look the same way it does today).

The other option would be rewriting the whole IDE in (e.g.) LCL from scratch (i.e. re-implementing the same functionality, but not re-using the old code most of the time), but that's something completely different (still doable most probably, but with much higher effort). If you go this route, you end up with a completely different codebase which needs to be maintained independently. Even in that case, the advantages are still not completely clear to me (as long as you mostly want to keep the same functionality and behaviour), though - it would just look somewhat nicer and smoother, but that would be it. If you want a different functionality, it's a different topic, of course, but than it isn't related to the old FP IDE any longer, I guess.

Tomas

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