An Appreciation lazarus / 8-Other ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Davo · 2009-11-19 00:16 I guess that like many Lazarus newbies I have a Delphi background.  My own Delphi history (in its various versions from 1 to 5) goes back many years and followed on from earlier Turbo Pascal use and that, in turn via Apple Pascal and the old AppleSoft, originated when the Apple II was at the cutting edge of personal computer use.  Now all of this history may seem pretty irrelevant today but the point is to show that I have been a contented passenger on the Pascal development train over the years.  In particular, I have marvelled at the evolving sophistication of the language combined with the ever-increasing simplicity of use for persons like myself who are not “power users”. My programming journey started with simple personal enjoyment.  It evolved into the creation of simple consol applications for use in my business environment.  The business related applications got ever-more complicated in line with the increasing sophistication of the development tools.  Software development began to replace my regular day-to-day business activities and all the while I thoroughly enjoyed the ride and marvelled at my luck in being able to seamlessly combine work with pleasure. I am now retired and, for a while I had access to Delphi 5 which allowed me to revert back to creating applications simply for my personal enjoyment.  However, I recently lost that access and I found that to reinstate it would be prohibitively expensive.  If you have read this far you will appreciate the painful withdrawal symptoms this loss of access to a Pascal–based development tool produced.  And then I found Lazarus. So now I am “back in business” thanks to the wonderful people who have created Lazarus and have so generously allowed me free access to it.  From my own programming experience I can begin to appreciate just how much time, effort and the use of creative juices it must have taken to produce a software development environment that seems so familiar.  Sure, I am on a new learning curve and I am currently experiencing some difficulties in porting my old Delphi applications over to Lazarus.  But these are temporary hiccoughs which pale into insignificance in comparison with being able to resume my programming activities. So a big THANK YOU to all who have created Lazarus and who have made it possible for persons like me to use it freely.  My eldest grandson is now 10 years old and is just about old enough to begin his own journey into the exciting world of programming.  With Lazarus he has an open door into that magic kingdom. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- idog · 2009-11-19 01:33 Well put, Pascal friend!  Allow me to jump on the compliment train then... as a programming columnist and an amateur programmer I play with many programming environments, and I find that Lazarus surpasses not only other open- source projects but also many professional/commercial ones. True, the IDE does follow great footsteps (I used to be a Delphi user myself), nevertheless it's no small feat. Excellent work, Lazarus people! And FPC people too, of course! Which reminds me... I should really upload some more Lazarus related material to my homepage, to help convert the local non-believers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Davo · 2009-11-19 02:08 Mea Culpa I should of course have included the FPC developers in my thanks and I apologise for not having done so.  FPC kind of hides behind the Lazarus shop-front window and is easy for a newbie to forget but obviously it is an essential part of the package. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- idog · 2009-11-19 02:14 Actually, the FPC being "easy to forget" is part of what makes Lazarus such a great product ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wodzu · 2009-11-19 18:30 Davo thats a nice story there. I hope I will be programming in FPC with my grandsons some day ;-) Best wishes to you and all the nice community ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TurboRascal · 2009-11-21 17:29 I'll take this opportunity to also express my gratitude to Lazarus and FPC developers. I had a feeling that Pascal was heading to extinction, the last toolchain using it being the declining Delphi, and I'm pretty sure it would join many old languages in the oblivion... but then came the saviors Now we have a wonderful vehicle to prolong Pascal's life indefinitely, thanks to it being open source. This project is really grand, and the amount of work dedicated to it is colossal. So one more time thanks everyone for such an effort. I hope I'll get some chance to give something back... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fred vS · 2009-11-21 17:52 Same for me. Thanks very, very much to all of that marvelous FPC-Lazarus team  Hope one day i could give you something back. All my backgrounds of DBase (+- same ideas that Pascal), Turbo Pascal and Delphi are like Lazarus... they come back to live.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wOvAN · 2009-11-21 19:07 I guess that the best way to really appreciate all the people involved into the lazarus creation is to do our own contribution in this project, by sharing components or libraries or other useful stuff. p.s. Thanks for Lazarus. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jmg · 2009-11-21 23:31 Quote from: Davo on November 19, 2009, 01:16:41 amI am now retired and, for a while I had access to Delphi 5 which allowed me to revert back to creating applications simply for my personal enjoyment.... So a big THANK YOU to all who have created Lazarus and who have made it possible for persons like me to use it freely.  My eldest grandson is now 10 years old and is just about old enough to begin his own journey into the exciting world of programming.  With Lazarus he has an open door into that magic kingdom. Yes, Lazarus/FPC is impressive. There are some very good teaching/example resources, with good 'student engagement levels' you may already know about at Some good stuff there for 10yo... http://www.delphiforfun.org/Programs/index.htm It is coded in Delphi, but I am porting some examples to Lazarus (my way of contributing to the education pool) I've just posted this porting example (Metronome) in another thread. (includes before/after and notes) http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=7749 .0;attach=480