Hi Florian, On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 2:12 AM, Florian Klaempfl <[email protected]> wrote: > Tom Lisjac schrieb: >> To compare, Linux is now running corporate >> datacenters around the world... and Lazarus is still in beta with very >> few public applications deployed. > > The same might be applied to delphi too: it appears that there are few > public applications deployed.
Given it's relatively brief life, there are actually quite a few well known applications, including Skype, TOAD, Altium Designer, The Bat!,...etc that were built with Delphi: http://delphi.wikia.com/wiki/Good_Quality_Applications_Built_With_Delphi Sourceforge currently hosts 3,170 Delphi/Kylix related projects while Torry's and DSP also list thousands of Delphi related applications and packages. In contrast, the lazarus-ccr has 56 packages at last count and Sourceforge shows 124 Lazarus and 432 Pascal projects. These small numbers provide an alarming perspective on the total Lazarus/FPC mindshare as Sourceforge also hosts 20,313 projects for Java, 14,645 for php, 13,987 for C#/C++, 5,208 for Python and even 2,030 just for the Eclipse ide. >> source level past the version 1.0 release >> that will hopefully be shared by the FPC team. > > When did FPC break source level stuff not being a bug fix? During this time last year, I was working on a large project that I intended to deploy to several thousand users within my company. The compiler/ide was working great, but I was also tracking the compiler svn to make sure I didn't get into "creeping features" trouble that might break the project and cause maintenance issues downstream. Sure enough, sometime during the Nov/Dec 2008 timeframe I got a compile error with the new version. I don't remember the details but found a small posting explaining that this was due to a permanent change in the scoping of inherited class variables "in this and future compiler versions". I will have to un-archive the project to provide the specifics, but I remember having to move some variables out of either private or protected and exposing them more globally to get my application to compile. Regardless of the specifics, this was a change to the language within 2.x that broke my code at the source level. Changing the scope of a variable in post production would have also triggered a QA review and unwanted visibility for using "beta software"... so I decided to put the idea on hold and wait another year to see if Lazarus and FPC would come together at 1.0 and become a unified, non-experimental tool that I could rely on for production coding. That year has passed and here we are. With all that I've said over the last few days, I sincerely hope that you and the other developers have not interpreted any of my comments as criticism. The accomplishments of the compiler and IDE teams have been both inspiring and spectacular! But at this point, I think it's time to revisit some prevailing attitudes and make a few adjustments. In short, after over a decade of brilliant, creative work, it's time to stop pushing back on the idea of a 1.0 for Lazarus/FPC and to rally behind the goals of production stability for application builders and promoting a wider utilization for this outstanding tool while the window of opportunity for it still exists. Thanks, -Tom -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
