[Lazarus] Delphi XE2 uses FPC, plus VCL just not portable

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Hi,

As Jonas pointed out in the FPC-Devel mailing list. Embarcadero thinks
FPC is of high enough quality so they are using it to create there iOS
(ARM) products. This is apparently an intermediate step until they
build there own ARM compiler, but it's still good news for the FPC
team.

http://delphimax.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/delphi-64bit-os-x-and-iphone-native/#comment-743
http://delphimax.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/delphi-64bit-os-x-and-iphone-native/#comment-749

On the flip side...

">> no VCL in MACOS why?

Several reasons. but first, we did start out building a VCL for
Mac – but killed it because VCL is really designed for Windows."

     -- Michael Swindell (Embarcadero Delphi developer)


This confirms my thoughts I have had for a long time. VCL is just too
Windows centric and is NOT a good basis for cross-platform
development. With my recent experiments of Lazarus on Mac OS X, I have
clearly noticed this too in Lazarus. The LCL experience under Mac OS X
was terrible. Yes some things were contributed to very bad defaults in
the IDE, but other things related to LCL were just bad. It doesn't
look good or the same as "real" mac apps, doesn't behave the same
etc... All Lazarus design goals of "native on each platform" is just
not panning out. Sorry guys.

There is hope though. Stop being so anal about "must be VCL compatible
and nothing better". Stop cloning VCL and rather innovate. Come up
with something better than VCL.


Now the very bad news... Embarcadero bumped Linux further down the
priority list. They feel Mac users are willing to pay for software and
Linux users not [I think this is rubbish!]. So they are first tackling
Mac OSX, then iOS, then Linux, then Android.

-- 
Regards,
  - Graeme -