[Lazarus] Lazarus make me create better apps

[Lee Jenkins]

Bee Jay wrote:
> On 18 Mei 2010, at 03:12, Lee Jenkins wrote:
> 
>> I think the traditional barrier has been the deployment issue which
>> probably made pascal based web application or servers more common to
>> workgroup/intranet applications.
> 
> Yes, though binary CGI support is also very common.
> 

Agreed.  I've made several CGI apps, mostly with powtils.  Though certainly 
possible, not good for interactive Web Apps using Ajax techniques that need 
connection pooling, rich session storage, etc.

>> The problem I think has also been lack of a central and openly available
>> (open source?) framework to rally around for web development in pascal in
>> order to foster an eco-system like we see with traditional 3rd party
>> components and libraries.
> 
> What framework do you need to build web apps using pascal? Web apps is just
> about read browser request and reply to it. A custom simple communication
> class (to encapsulate the request-reply process) should be sufficient.

A framework like fpWeb or something similar some years ago that takes care of 
all the boiler plate code necessary to produce web content would have been nice.

> 
>> I've been playing with javascript (particularly the dojo framework) a lot
>> lately and its really not that bad once you get used to the loosey goosey
>> weak typing and creating function objects on the fly as parameters to
>> functions, etc.
> 
> Making web pages using pascal is a bit tedious work due to HTML and CSS
> thingy. But for web apps, especially RIA, with the help of good JS UI
> framework, you just simply need to learn JS and a bit of JSON. For people who
> had been working for years with pascal and need to move to web app
> development, code reuse is a HUGE advantage. Code reuse isn't just about
> copy-paste the code, but also the testability and stability, which you need
> to do it again from start if you rewritten in another language.
> 

Right.  All that code that we've written, collected, modified and maintained and 
proven over the years is right there, at our beck and call to use whenever we 
want with the added bonus of not having to relearn new libraries or frameworks 
to do things.  LazReport is a good example I think.

Even without legacy code at our disposal, pascal still has compelling reasons to 
be used in web applications.

--
Warm Regards,

Lee