[Lazarus] Lazarus make me create better apps

[Razvan Adrian Bogdan]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 12:34 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys
<graemeg.lists at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I don't seem to learn from my mistakes. Every now and again, I have the
> urge to upgrade my Lazarus IDE to the latest version. I really should stop
> doing that. I had a relatively good working IDE, then last Thursday I got a
> svn updated and already I found 5 regression bugs. Reported two and not
> bothering with the rest.
>
> The reason for the Subject line:
> With such constant regression bugs, I started my own IDE from scratch


At some point in the past i would have blamed anyone for making a new FPC
IDE especially one based on Lazarus or the LCL. Lazarus is now a mature
project and much more stable but suffers from the same problem that many
OpenSource projects suffer, an apparent lack of coordination and standards.
It feels bloated because of the executable size but that's more of a
compiler issue. It may not be the fastest IDE but it's certainly better than
most (all) Java IDEs and probably VS and Mono too but i might be wrong.
Lazarus could be so much better but because it inherits some old design
issues would probably be better if it was redesigned, made more modular and
follow some strict code writing rules. It needs a clear architecture so that
anyone can find his/her way into the code without digging for days deeply
into the sources.
Lazarus is still a great project but if we want more people to contribute,
it needs standards of doing things just like VCL has, code must be intuitive
if we want people to like doing what they do, also the team should not
restrict the abilities of the LCL but extend them on all platforms if
possible. Looking at other similar projects and borrowing ideas wold only
help the project become more attractive. Lazarus must make it simple for
people to write CrossPlatform code in a non-restrictive way, allowing people
to port Delphi stuff with little modifications but not restrict itself to
Delphi's abilities.
The mobile world is now a perfect place for Lazarus to "sink it's teeths
into" if it knows how to occupy this space where there is little competition
on the RAD side of things. On the web part after many years of Java slows
apps, PHP code that let's you hit you fingers with a big hammer and
ASP.NETtechnology that seems to be so hard to learn, Lazarus has a big
change to
make something that integrates easily on the Server and the Client side,
maybe using NaCL on the client to build safe apps or simply "compile" to JS,
Flash and Silverlight.
Lazarus should be more like a cheetah following it's prey at high speed but
now it just seems tired and hiding in the tall grass :)
Large commercial projects succeed on the market because of coordination and
standards, Lazarus needs this too, chatting and brainstorming sessions
benefit everyone but OpenSource projects seem to have an "everybody for
himself" attitude, maybe the Linux kernel would have failed too if it wasn't
so strictly checked by the "benevolent" dictators ...
Also not having a foundation or company to support the team only allows
people to work in their spare time and that's not very productive, i know
that this was discussed before (The Lazarus Project Foundation).
Breaking stuff between versions is a bad ideea, if Delphi did this it would
have died many years ago.

Now is the time to either write a new IDE (not the whole LCL) or redesign
the existing one using all the best features LCL has to offer, the LCL
itself could be made less object oriented on the API abstraction part, and
maybe the RTTI system if it is responsible for the big executables.
Lazarus could even replace technologies like Flash and Silverlight with the
right approach on the client side, i think some people are trying to do just
that with things like VGScene/DXScene.

Razvan
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