Subj : Compiler for Pascal
To : Sean Dennis
From : mark lewis
Date : Thu Apr 08 2010 04:45 pm
ml> FPC and Lazarus is really the only thing going these days that's
ml> free... everything else costs $$$...
SD> Not true. You can find Delphi 7 Personal floating around and legit
SD> keys if you look hard enough on Google
yeah, i forgot about Delphi Personal... i have a version around here somewhere
but never really figured it out... i've done RAD stuff in the passed but it was
waaaaay back in the past and was actually more like an add-on for dBase
III/IV...
SD> (I have my own key I generated long ago on
SD> Borland/Iniprise/Embarcadero/whateverthehelltheycallthemselvesnow's
SD> website). The key (no pun intended) is you can only do freeware
SD> stuff with D7P.
yeah... that's another reason why i don't use it... i do some commercial apps
from time to time...
SD> In fact, if anyone wants D7P and my key (doesn't matter who it's
SD> registered to, really), let me know via netmail or email and I'll
SD> be happy to provide it! No, this isn't illegal.
ml> FWIW: as an old pascal hand, i still have troubles with Laz/FPC
ml> because i've never done the delphi or object pascal stuff... they say
ml> to get a decent delphi book and you can go with that but i've yet to
ml> find a "decent" delphi book or one that can reliably point me in the
ml> proper direction for the components used in Lazarus... some things are
ml> named differently and if you don't even know what they were called in
ml> the beginning it is very hard to know what they may be called now...
SD> Wow, I got my first Delphi program running in about two minutes,
SD> even if it was a form where you pressed the button "Hello World"
SD> appeared!
yeah... but that's a whole lot simpler than what i was speaking of ;)
SD> Delphi is easy-peasy compared to grinding out code, but you're
SD> locked into Windows if you use it. You just have to change
SD> your mindset enough to think of Delphi's RAD system as a "helper"
SD> to speed things along.
that's exactly what a RAD is... a "helper"... you still have to go in and add
the necessary code for the specific tasks you need a component to do or call...
ml> i read the lazarus mailing list every day and suggest that others
ml> interested in lazarus do the same... one may want to also participate
ml> in their web forums but i find them quite lacking for numerous
ml> reasons...
SD> What do you expect for free? <G> Really now.
hahahaha... the IDE and compiler are, actually, very good... the main problem
comes to the documentation... that still needs a lot of work but the developers
can only do so much ;) and i don't like using a wiki for many things...
documentation like i feel is necessary for this being one...
SD> I've had compatibility issues with using FPC on my various
SD> machines, so I've just stuck to Borland/Turbo/Virtual Pascal.
if you've not reported those problems, you can't expect them to be fixed ;) of
course, there's also the situation of what version(s) have you worked with...
just reading the mailing list, i easily see where the release versions have
been surpassed by the SVN code and i regularly see bugs reported in the mailing
list and an hour or so later, there's a new SVN update that fixes it... then
one only need do a SVN update and recompile FPC/Laz (both or which ever one
needs to be)...
