Lazarus/FPC vs BASIC Alternatives lazarus / 8-Other ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JJVillamor · 2013-04-25 12:05 I wonder how Lazarus/FPC fares today against Basic alternatives(freeware or commercial). I am referring not only to the compilers but also to popular visual designers(for example, powerbaisc with firefly, etc ). Freebasic Powerbasic Powerbasic with Firefly Visual Designer Purebasic Realbasic Liberty basic etc. In my case, I am just wondering where Lazarus stands at the moment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JD · 2013-04-25 13:22 You forgot GAMBAS http://gambas.sourceforge.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cybermonkey342 · 2013-04-25 13:46 Most mentioned BASIC dialects are not as multi platform as Lazarus or even Freepascal except Purebasic and Realbasic. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nebula · 2013-04-25 18:31 Apart from wondering why I'd want to cripple myself with BASIC instead of the superior Pascal syntax..... l count me fascinated, as I had a quick look at those in your list and they were either payware or nowhere near as well integrated and polished as Laz/FPC. I will only entertain Free Open Source from now on..... is there anything that can match Lazarus? I'd be interested to see..... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cybermonkey342 · 2013-04-25 19:30 Gambas is open source and IMHO one of the better BASICs with a nice IDE which is Lazarus-like. But it's for Linux only and has tons of dependencies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2013-04-26 05:31 Quote from: cybermonkey342 on April 25, 2013, 03:46:36 pmMost mentioned BASIC dialects are not as multi platform as Lazarus or even Freepascal FreePascal runs on more platforms than Lazarus though, IIRC Agreed with the remark about "crippling" yourself with basic dialects, although object-oriented basic is not so bad... Also, I suppose the Gambas debugger is way ahead of our own, as Gambas probably is an interpreted language. @JJVillamor: I'm curious: are you considering using one of those basics? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JJVillamor · 2013-04-26 07:17 Quote from: BigChimp on April 26, 2013, 07:31:01 amQuote from: cybermonkey342 on April 25, 2013, 03:46:36 pmMost mentioned BASIC dialects are not as multi platform as Lazarus or even Freepascal FreePascal runs on more platforms than Lazarus though, IIRC Agreed with the remark about "crippling" yourself with basic dialects, although object-oriented basic is not so bad... Also, I suppose the Gambas debugger is way ahead of our own, as Gambas probably is an interpreted language. @JJVillamor: I'm curious: are you considering using one of those basics? For new programs NO. But I do have some commercial source codes in Visual Basic 6 and VB3 and 1) sometimes wonder if it would be worthwhile to convert some of them to another basic language. I do know that there is no simple conversion process but I am not proficient enough to translate them into lazarus. 2) I still haven't find time to really do some programming as of now and I just goggle once in a while to update myself. I have no formal programming background, am self-taught, so google(and this forum) is the only place where I can ask questions (to keep myself updated). Given the popularity(not superiority) of VB6 I do wonder why there are no VB6 "clones" or look-a-likes although that is not really something to discuss in this forum. I also came across this link and am happy to see here http://alternativeto.net/software/codetyphon/?platform=windows that Lazarus, excluding FPC, is favored(preferred or liked) over Delphi by 5.6X. Lazarus - 28 Likes Delphi - 8 Likes Free Pascal - 7 Likes I also noticed that basic is missing in the above link. I did some googling and found out that basic(in various flavors) is still alive. I have also read that basic today is much more powerful than the basic of yesteryears. so, 1) I am curious how the state of basic is and 2) I am also curious as to how these new basic fares with Lazarus or vice versa. I have programmed in Delphi 6/7 and VB6 so I do know that delphi (also Lazarus) is more powerful. I am still not comfortable with custom components though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2013-04-26 07:28 If you've programmed in Delphi, switching to Lazarus may be a good idea: 1. it's cross platform 2. it has no runtime requirements Alternatively you could consider vb.net though that will limit you to Windows + whatever Mono runs on (and I have the feeling Mono is focusing more on paid versions for IOS and Android than the free version on Linux etc). AFAIK, Gambas tries to be a bit of a VB clone and I suspect it's the biggest effort, but as pointed out above, that limits you to Linux and OSX. To be honest, I wouldn't mess with those smaller basic dialects; if you have to switch over, switch over to either vb.net or Lazarus Having programmed in VB/VB.Net myself, the transition to Lazarus was not very hard but took some time. Looking up "rosetta stone" like resources that match vb with Pascal keywords helped me a lot... for the rest, Lazarus form design etc is quite similar to VB in my experience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cybermonkey342 · 2013-04-26 08:26 Quote from: BigChimp on April 26, 2013, 07:31:01 amQuote from: cybermonkey342 on April 25, 2013, 03:46:36 pmMost mentioned BASIC dialects are not as multi platform as Lazarus or even Freepascal FreePascal runs on more platforms than Lazarus though, IIRC It is not even available as a true 64 bit compiler ... nor does it run on ARM. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JJVillamor · 2013-04-26 08:27 Quote from: BigChimp on April 26, 2013, 09:28:43 amIf you've programmed in Delphi, switching to Lazarus may be a good idea:... Yes, that's why I'm here Quote from: BigChimp on April 26, 2013, 09:28:43 am... you could consider vb.net though... Came across "mono" a few times but haven't got an idea what it is. I have not bothered to download the VB.net exoress but may just do that. My impression is C# would be more sensible(?). Anyway, it's Lazarus for me as of this point. I am looking around not for a programming language but just to look at the forest. When I stopped programming about 7-8 years ago, I had purchased a VB book(forgot the title), Mastering Delphi 6 and DDG, These books are pretty expensive here so that should betray my pascal leanings. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cybermonkey342 · 2013-04-26 08:39 Yes, vb.net was not mentioned earlier. You can of course download the free SharpDevelop IDE http://www.icsharpcode.net/ which can be programmed in vb.net, too. The resulting binaries can be executed on Linux or MacOS via Mono. Sorry, for so much BASIC related stuff, but since I am one of the admins on basicprogramming.org ... so if you have any BASIC related questions just register there.  Although I would recommend Lazarus over any BASIC dialect. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- marcov · 2013-04-26 08:52 Quote from: JJVillamor on April 25, 2013, 02:05:30 pmI wonder how Lazarus/FPC fares today against Basic alternatives(freeware or commercial). I am referring not only to the compilers but also to popular visual designers(for example, powerbaisc with firefly, etc ). Freebasic Free Basic is native, and is in the process of transitioning to  a "plain C" backend, but that hasn't really been put through the test outside the targets it already supports. IOW target support is low (dos,win32 and linux x86. Freebsd too if you dig into the archives). Language and feature level it can't even touch FPC 1.0.x I think. No modular support whatsoever a very "C" style development model. Afaik freebasic can also run with firefly. Some people mess with mostly handcoded GTK and win32 frameworks (like with FPC 1.0.x era, before Lazarus became usable). Nothing that even resembles Lazarus is being planned, let alone realized. QuoteRealbasic Some people like Realbasic as a more polished crossplatform option because of its OS X support. Specially ease of use and richness of the offering. I do sometimes do hear people with larger codebases complain about the language and compiler itself.  All that info predated Delphi OS X support though. Most of the people that used RB for OS X, now switched to Delphi (since they were delphians in the first place) I don't know the other ones intimately ---------------------------------------------------------------------- marcov · 2013-04-26 08:54 Quote from: cybermonkey342 on April 26, 2013, 10:26:43 amIt is not even available as a true 64 bit compiler ... Strange, I'd swear I uploaded 64-bit releases for several targets the last release. Both x86_64 AND PowerPC64. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2013-04-26 08:54 Quote from: cybermonkey342 on April 26, 2013, 10:26:43 amQuote from: BigChimp on April 26, 2013, 07:31:01 amQuote from: cybermonkey342 on April 25, 2013, 03:46:36 pmMost mentioned BASIC dialects are not as multi platform as Lazarus or even Freepascal FreePascal runs on more platforms than Lazarus though, IIRC It is not even available as a true 64 bit compiler ... nor does it run on ARM.  Where did you get that from? Using fpcup on Windows: Code: [Select]C:\Development\fpctrunk\bin\x86_64-win64>fpc -i Free Pascal Compiler version 2.7.1 Compiler Date      : 2013/04/25 Compiler CPU Target: x86_64 Supported targets:   Linux for x86-64   FreeBSD for x86-64   Win64 for x64   Darwin for x86_64   Solaris for x86-64 (under development)   OpenBSD for x86-64 (under development)   NetBSD for x86-64 (under development) Supported CPU instruction sets:   ATHLON64 Supported FPU instruction sets:   SSE64,SSE3,SSSE3,SSE41,SSE42,AVX Also there are installers for Linux x64 FPC... Edit: apart from that, Marco is right... As for ARM: AFAIU there are different flavours of ARM; not all of them are supported. Sorry if yours isn't but there's e.g. people running FPC+Lazarus on Raspberry Pi http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_on_Raspberry_Pi Anyway, glad you recommend Lazarus as well ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cybermonkey342 · 2013-04-26 09:25 Oops, sorry this was a miss-read, instead of "Freepascal" I read "FreeBASIC".  I meant that Freepascal supports more platforms than FreeBASIC. I know that Freepascal has a true 64 bit and ARM compiler. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- marcov · 2013-04-26 20:38 Quote from: cybermonkey342 on April 26, 2013, 11:25:37 amOops, sorry this was a miss-read, instead of "Freepascal" I read "FreeBASIC".  I meant that Freepascal supports more platforms than FreeBASIC. I know that Freepascal has a true 64 bit and ARM compiler.  Well, since yesterday FPC also has a true 16-bit compiler ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leledumbo · 2013-04-27 00:56 QuoteWell, since yesterday FPC also has a true 16-bit compiler Woohoo, something new? (I've read the discussions for a couple years back) I guess we can now create an x86 bootloader with it? I know the primary targets are modern 16-bit devices (AVR, 8051, some ARM, etc.) though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- marcov · 2013-04-27 10:46 Quote from: Leledumbo on April 27, 2013, 02:56:49 amQuoteWell, since yesterday FPC also has a true 16-bit compiler Woohoo, something new? (I've read the discussions for a couple years back) I guess we can now create an x86 bootloader with it? I know the primary targets are modern 16-bit devices (AVR, 8051, some ARM, etc.) though. It's 16-bit real mode x86. It hasn't been fully cleaned of 80186 and 80286 codegeneration yet. It is all very early, and the memory model is extremely limited (64kb max), that needs to be develop further. But yes, in say half an year to an year you might write a bootloader. I'll be preparing a news item later today.