[Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell]

On 14.10.2016 00:13, Erwin van den Bosch via Lazarus wrote:
>
> I'm not a big fan of the RAD development way any more. (I was years 
> ago). The problem is that you should separate your business logic and 
> the GUI.
This is absolutely true especially when doing large systems or 
(embedded) systems that don't are tightly bundled with the GUI. But even 
there using RAD for testing/debugging is a way for speed up the development.

And here the addressees are non-computer engineers who most likely will 
not do large systems on their own, but just should understand what 
programming means to enable them to talk decently with their colleagues 
who will do the programming for appropriate projects.

So a fast way ("RAD")  to do and test a rather simple working project 
and understand the basics

> With Delphi like RAD it's very difficult to do that. (but it is 
> possible) Everything is coded in events and connected to database 
> aware GUI controls. (In the case of a database application)
I don't think so.

With a more careful design it's absolutely possible to do "non RAD" 
programs by doing "GUI units" and "business code Units" that interact 
via Objects with functions, properties and events (callback-properties) .

I believe this is not more effort that using an external GUI designer.

I did this for embedded projects using the GUI units for debugging and 
testing and then replacing them by dummies without needing to modify the 
business code units and hence being able to start testing again at any 
time, while the "GUI-stripped" executable can used on a "headless" 
target system

-Michael