Ask HN: What resources have you used to learn Free Pascal?

14 points·jetti··4 comments

I'm trying to learn Free Pascal (since Delphi isn't available on Linux) but am finding that resources for learning are slim. There is the Free Pascal wiki, which leaves much to be desired and then I found this site: http://castle-engine.io/modern_pascal_introduction.html but that is about it. Is it safe to say that anything Delphi is safe to use to learn Free Pascal?

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It's been a long time, but Marco Cantu's books are widely considered some of the best Pascal/Delphi resources available. Essential Pascal is his introductory book.

I've found his stuff while searching for resources but it is Delphi focused. Is that a big issue? I know there are VCL items that are not in the LCL but other than that is there a big difference? If I could use Delphi resources then it would be much easier.

For the better or the worse, Delphi has become the defacto standard Pascal implementation. Free Pascal aims to be compatible with it and Lazarus is pretty much a clone of Delphi 7. If memory serves right, neither Cantu's Essential Pascal book, which is a brief introduction to the language, nor his comprehensive Object Pascal Handbook cover the VCL but focus on the language itself.

You may want to ask these questions in the Free Pascal community, this stuff is too uncool for the HN crowd.

Thanks for your help. I'll take a look at Cantu's book.

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