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PascalABC.net

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47 pointsandsoitis18 comments

I don't have any burning desire to revisit Pascal, but it might be worth it for a nice RAD IDE that works on Windows and Linux. My brother loved his Delphi programming environment.

Lazarus is mature: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

Sadly, I feel like it’s too mature. If you’re used to contemporary development environments, Lazarus feels like a clunky throwback. I say that with lots of love and respect for the Lazarus team and community. Delphi’s even worse. Working in VSCode is... fine. For such a beautiful language, the ecosystem has really fallen behind the times.

I wish FreePascal would allow declaring variables anywhere and loop local variables. I just can't program like C89 anymore and without these two basic quality-of-life features, Pascal simply feels stuck in history.

I like Lazarus but its also stuck in time it feels like. Theres so many improvements and modernizations they could have implemented into Lazarus by now.

What improvements and modernizations do you have in mind?

Lsp. Seamless support for external editor/changed files so I can use vim without losing changes. Component for markdown rendering. Theme support so apps can switch between light and dark themes at runtime.

Honestly theres a lot I miss when I write Lazarus apps.

Try Oxygene. Files are always up to date (you don't even save, if you type, it'll end up on disk, same in reverse if you save with another editor.) Code completion works. IDE supports themes. Most importantly the language is _far_ more modern than Lazarus / FPC.

It can import Lazarus (and Delphi) projects, but does not have a form designer built in.

and it costs 749 bucks....

You're right re commercial. If it's personal use, twenty bucks a month.

I think this response is more than a little unhelpful

I wanted

>> Theme support so apps can switch between light and dark themes at runtime.

You present

> IDE supports themes.

You don't see the difference?

I want to produce apps that decides, at runtime, which theme to use.

I also don't know if I'd consider it a Lazarus option if

a) It's a different language, not Delphi

and

b) It has no RAD tools.

After all, if I want niche languages with poor support for RAD, I'm spoilt for choice. What I want is for Lazarus to be updated with some modern features, not replace a well-known RAD tool with a niche, expensive, proprietary and little-known language.

You're right, I missed that you wanted styles in your app not IDE. I was thinking IDE especially re the designer, so sorry for missing that.

It's not intended to be unhelpful, and I hope the rest of what I wrote, which you didn't quote, and which I _think_ from what you wrote is of interest to you, is ok.

Delphi had a good thing going for a while, a ton of potential.

But they pivoted themselves out of that real fast...

Now that you dont have to hand write it and can let AI translate your pesudocode into Pascal… well lets just say it could be less painful.

Not sure about writing code, but I sure was recently able to interrogate a code base extensively using Claude Code with Serena connected to Lazarus.

Yes, Pascal is really good for educational purposes. The language syntax is very clear and easy to understand in my opinion. I am actually interested to more deeply learn this language, it has many interesting things to learn, though.

Oh yeah, I remember this thing, this is what whole generation of CIS engineers started with. I've solved countless LC style tasks with it and never touched a class or a procedure.

I love Pascal, but after reading ”primary development center in Russia” I would never ever consider trying this project.

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