[Lazarus] Is Lazarus project in a downward spiral?

[Daithi Haxton]

Hi!
I've not posted here before, but I've been reading this list for about  
six months, and I've gotta weigh in on this one.

By way of introduction, I'm the Sr. Software Engineer/Team Lead for a  
major consumer electronics company in the US. We've been using C++  
Builder for several years as our PC compiler of choice. It's allowed  
us to develop robust applications in very short time spans with very  
limited resources.

However, it is (of course) Windows only. Last June the word came down  
that the market was changing, something we all knew, and that Mac's  
were gaining a significant enough share of the consumer market to  
warrant our support. I was charged with finding development tools that  
would allow us to move our existing programs to the Mac in the  
quickest and most reliable fashion.

My initial impulse was Java, but there were lots of issues, the  
biggest one being a native look and feel on Windows. Most of our PC  
products involve communication over USB, and that gets problematic  
with Java as well - we really need native code compilation. Deployment  
was also an issue. Ditto for Python, and the other platforms we looked  
at. Then I stumbled across Lazarus/FPC.

Native compilation - check. Native look and feel - check. Similar  
object structure to our existing code base - check. After about a  
month of having the team play around with the tool, we decided to go  
forward. Our entire PC software suite ( ~60 applications) is being  
moved to Lazarus, with the first release scheduled for mid May, on a  
new (for us) device category. The rest will be rolled out as updates  
warrant - all new development is being done in Lazarus.

A colleague moved a rather complex software update tool from C++  
Builder to Lazarus in 4 days - and we now have a Mac version as well.  
That, my friends, is nothing short of incredible.

Following this "downward spiral" discussion has led me to believe that  
perhaps the Lazarus community doesn't really understand what it's  
managed to do here. AFAIK Lazarus is the ONLY tool in it's class that  
allows this kind of development - one code base, multiple targets, all  
native look and feel, all native code. That's just mind boggling.

My boss was initially very skeptical - "Pascal - that old fuddy-duddy  
language from the 80's?" He's a believer now, and happily relearning  
Pascal so he can throw in the odd module himself now and again. We're  
even looking as Lazarus for some of our device code (as some of our  
newer devices are Linux driven). There's a better than even chance  
that we'll officially get in touch with the developers at some point  
in the near future and offer resources to help move the project ahead.  
We were especially intrigued by the discussion of a multi-platform  
setup tool - right now we use Inno Setup on Windows and the awful  
Package Manager thing on Macs...

In summary, Lazarus is a fantastic product. It's usable TODAY for  
commercial development. We've found it (the IDE) more stable on  
Windows than it's commercial counterparts. RAD Studio will generally  
lock at least one of our development machines once a day - so far  
we've had only one issue with Lazarus, and that was on a Mac (and I  
reported the bug to Mantis, and it was fixed in three days - try that  
with you-know-who ....). These discussions are great, but please don't  
lose sight of what you've already got - a world class compiler and  
development tool that's being used right now to solve serious real  
world problems.

Thanks,
Dave Haxton
Sr. Software Engineer
Audiovox Electronics Corp.
Carmel,IN
USA