Tom Verhoeff wrote:
[...]
I am interested in collecting experiences with using Lazarus in
education, in particular as a tool of primary choice for programming.
Let me hear those success stories, so I convince others ...
Tom
Last year, I have launched a 15-h course named "Data Processing (in
Japanese)" for undergraduate students in a college of agrobiological
resources.
In the course, 14 students (most of them have never seen "Hello world")
experienced form designing and coding with Lazarus under SUSE 9.3.
Starting from very simple examples, but they could finally compile a
complicated, real-in-use program (one form with a 3.2kb Unit1.pas)
including datafile loading, retrieving user input from components such
as FloatSpinEdit, parameter optimization with the golden section method,
numerical solution of PDE using the explicit finite difference method,
and launching user manual in PDF using "shell()" function, etc.
Maybe the 15-h (in 2days) was tough for them, and about half of them
might just type what I demonstrated without understanding, but most of
them seemed to be fulfilled and interested in GUI programming.
I think that public schools/universities should teach FOSS tools as long
as they have satisfactory features (no need to superior to commercial ones).
Java-Eclipse may be a good candidate, but when I tried it (ver 3.2)
under Linux last year, it was slow and unstable.
I hope this story encourages the employment of Lazarus.
Haruyuki Fujimaki
University of Tsukuba, Japan
http://www.agbi.tsukuba.ac.jp/~aeng/fujimaki/English.htm
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