[Lazarus] Lazarus Webpage

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Martin Frb wrote:
> On 05/12/2013 09:15, Danny Weldon wrote:
>> Maybe we need a bit more information on the Lazarus home page about it.
> 
>> Perhaps this should link to a wiki article with more information about
>> the modern features of Free Pascal and answer common objections.
>>
> 
> There are links to the wiki, at the bottom. But the main page should not 
> go to the wiki. It's content should be reviewed before publishing.

I wonder if I could make a slightly tangential comment here, using an 
analogy. What FPC/Lazarus really needs is not a party manifesto, but 
somebody to go on TV regularly and make the party case before the 
election: a Robin Cook or Boris Johnson figure that entertains as well 
as informs.

My own belief is that "the opposition" is not JavaScript or PHP. I think 
that it's Python, since that's what's being used for the quick hacks 
that once would have been done in Turbo Pascal or early versions of 
Delphi. And just as TP and Delphi hacks would have been put on a 
bulletin board or published via Compuserve or CIX, today's Python hacks- 
which are very often frontends to an Arduino or to a service such as 
Twitter- are capturing mindshare using publicity on websites such as 
Hackaday.

An accurate and attractive website is obviously important. But I think 
that the most good could be done by getting as many projects published 
(on Sourceforge, Berlios or whatever) as possible: if an idea strikes 
you then code it in Pascal, Polish it, Publish it and Promote it. 
Because if you've found a need for something then there's a fair chance 
that somebody else is also looking for it, and every project downloaded 
from Sourceforge etc. raises the profile of Pascal as a language and 
Lazarus as an effective IDE.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]