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http://www.freepascal.org/

"The language syntax is semantically compatible with TP 7.0 as well as most versions of Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces). Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading, global properties and other such features."

There is an associated project that aims to duplicate the VCL called FCL:

http://www.freepascal.org/fcl/fcl.html

Finally, there is the related Delphi-like IDE to go with it:

http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

It's actually quite good.

http://www.freepascal.org/

"The language syntax is semantically compatible with TP 7.0 as well as most versions of Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces). Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading, global properties and other such features."

There is an associated project that aims to duplicate the VCL called FCL:

http://www.freepascal.org/fcl/fcl.html

Finally, there is the related Delphi-like IDE to go with it:

http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

It's actually quite good.

My first experience with a computer was when I was five. My dad had an Atari 800. (He ended up selling it because he couldn't afford a disk drive! This was when disk drives cost hundreds of dollars.) I remember one night he typed in a program that acted like an etch-a-sketch.

I few years later, my parents bought me an Atari ST. I was hooked on computers from that point on. One day I was reading an article in Atari Explorer magazine about programming. The article presented a simple "Hello, world" type program in BASIC. I decided to play around with it and see if I could change it slightly. (This was back when every computer came with a copy of BASIC.)
I ended up teaching myself BASIC over the summer.

Anybody remember when computer magazines used to publish type-in programs? :-)

I know nowadays a lot of people don't like BASIC because of goto and what not. But I think it is a good language to teach some basic principles (what a variable is, what a loop is, etc).

I'm currently learning python. I've wondered if it would be a good first language for someone. I'm not sure it would be. For one, I'm not sure if someone who learns it would appreciate all the things it does for you. Second, when they learn another language, I'm not sure what the learning curve will be like. It might take them a while to get used to the new ideas. On the other hand, maybe starting fresh and not carrying some of the baggage of older languages would be good for a new generation of programmers.

I've never used Pascal, but I've heard it's a good language for learning programming.

Now, I've heard some people say that OO is the way to go and should be taught to newbies. But even with OO you still use parts from procedural programming: you still use variables, still use loops, still call functions, etc. I see no harm in using a simpler language to teach the fundamentals before moving on to objects.

Maybe what we need is a version of knoppix set up for teaching programming.

Python links:
Main python site: http://www.python.org/
Dive Into Python book: http://diveintopython.org/

Pascal:
A free Pascal compilerhttp://www.freepascal.org/

Basic:
I don't have a link for a version of basic. But I know there are some on the web. And Win 95 & 98 have a copy (buried) on the setup disk. Look in the other\oldmsdos folder.

More:
http://thefreecountry.com/ Has links to free compilers & more for various languages.

Old computer magazine archives:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/

UML should be used to DESIGN your programs. After all it's "Unified *MODELLING* Language", not "Unified nifty diagrams documenting language".

Lack of previous (even on-paper) design is what makes programs buggy. When you code first, doing the UML diagrams is useless. Why? Because when you find out the structure of your code and see possible improvements, you realize that it's too late to make any changes, due to compatibility problems, etc etc etc.

Look at what happened to the Lazarus project. it's been on "pre-beta" for more than 6 years, and they 're still telling me it's too early to make an UML diagram because "the structures change too much". (WTF?!?!? If I want to cooperate in a project, the least i can ask for is the UML diagrams so i can focus on where to help, not navigate among the millions of lines of code!)

Follow my advise. Design first, code afterwards.

Still, I continue to think that Glade, and especially libglade, are the way to go in term of separations of UI and code.

Still, I continue to think that Glade, and especially libglade, are the way to go in term of separations of UI and code.

You are right, and sadly Boa Constructor is the sticks - very good and finely honed firesticks - but sticks all the same.

Boa Constructor is too much like the class wrappers MS write for their own API, but still a great thing.

Maybe I should take another look and see what lazarus has done in the last 4 years or so. It seems to use GTK or Qt, I wish it used wxWidgets.

Sam

There is also an open source project for the cross-platform clone of VCL and IDE at the Lazarus Project.

Both apps are Free Software (GPL).

www.lazarus.org

www.freepascal.org

Lazarus := Delphi-like (almost a clon) IDE for Win32 AND Linux. It's API independent: can use transparently GTK+, Windows graphic system... etc.

FreePascal := Portable? no problem! It's available for different processors Intel x86, Motorola 680x0 (1.0.x only) and PowerPC (from 1.9.2). The following operating systems are supported: Win32, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, MacOSX/Darwin, MacOS classic, DOS, OS/2, BeOS, SunOS (Solaris), QNX and Classic Amiga.

The language syntax is semantically compatible with TP 7.0 as well as most versions of Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings). Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading and other such features.

Try it! Or, at least visit the web sites.

Both apps are Free Software (GPL).

www.lazarus.org

www.freepascal.org

Lazarus := Delphi-like (almost a clon) IDE for Win32 AND Linux. It's API independent: can use transparently GTK+, Windows graphic system... etc.

FreePascal := Portable? no problem! It's available for different processors Intel x86, Motorola 680x0 (1.0.x only) and PowerPC (from 1.9.2). The following operating systems are supported: Win32, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, MacOSX/Darwin, MacOS classic, DOS, OS/2, BeOS, SunOS (Solaris), QNX and Classic Amiga.

The language syntax is semantically compatible with TP 7.0 as well as most versions of Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings). Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading and other such features.

Try it! Or, at least visit the web sites.

COBOL is so easy, business types can learn it. Check out these freebie COBOL languages.

Pascal is one of the easiest languages to learn, they used to teach it in high school. Lazarus has a good IDE to help with development. Also Delphi has a free demo to download and try out.

Also consider Lingo.

If she still cannot program in those, give up. They are about the easiest there is to learn. Not everyone can learn how to program. Instead teach her how to draw pictures in TuxPaint and if she fails to learn that one, take away her Internet privliges.

You can download a free Personal Edition of Delphi for Windows (or Kylix for Linux) from www.borland.com, but you might want to start teaching in freepascal (because Delphi can look a little intimidating when you first use it). You can get a (free) copy from www.freepascal.org .

Ok, so the first programming I did was TI-Extended Basic but then I was only 8. After I moved into double figures I learnt "proper" programming using Pascal.

You can get Pascal for virtually any OS from the freepascal site.

Pascal in my eyes is a "learning language", and thats what you need, isn't it?

By the way, there _is_ an open-source alternative to delphi: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/

Delphi is not C++

No, but C++ Builder is, and it has all the features of Delphi.

Delphi is not VB.

Right. But that is a feature, not a flaw.

Linux is a server OS, not a desktop OS.

Complete and utter bullshit. Millions of people are running linux on the desktop, including me. The problem is you can't sell software to them, because the want everything to be free.

This is why we need Lazarus

These glitches aren't all Borland's faults. For instance, it seems CLX runs much, much better on Windows than on Linux.
IMHO Borland's worst move was to depend on Qt, instead of porting the VCL to a 'C' (not C++) toolkit. That f*cking glue library is the root of all problems.
I like Qt very much and it's design looks a lot like VCL's own design, but the version of Qt available at the time - which is 2.3 and is used up today! - is leaps behind the current Qt3.2. But the glue library idea doesn't seem to facilite upgrades...
Out of the technical field, Borland's change of pricing was really dumb. There _needs_ to be a basic version which costs no more than US$200; it's what moves small companies in the "accouting software" market.
(oh, and that "open" edition is a fiasco)

Last: I hope Lazarus gets "ready" someday. There've been great improvementes lately!

If you like Object Pascal so much, why not use Free Pascal or even GNU Pascal? Both have support for Delphi's language, though there are no fancy IDEs.

Anyway, I like Free Pascal better.

Oh, come on, how hard is it to make a link?

It's a little confusing when people talk about Kylix. Kylix use to only be an Object Pascal language. Delphi for Linux. However now it contains both Delphi and C++ Builder parts.

I suspect that even though it is the most exciting RAD tool to hit Linux EVER, it didn't have a big following.

The average Joe user has little use for a RAD tool and the average Linux developer for Linux uses C++. The Kdevelop project is pretty tough competition in that area.

Object Pascal hasn't really caught on yet but when it does, one has to wonder if there will be a bid demand for Kylix or Lazarus project.

You mean like this?

...Lazarus?

Whatever happened to pascal?

Lo these many years ago, when I was in first year, pascal was used as the teaching language in many universities, including mine. It's nice enough as a sandbox language to help you learn good programming habits, yet powerful enough to do non-trivial things.

In fact you can download a free pascal compiler to play around with it.

Naming it Lazarus would just be more of the same mess.

Very young kids have problems with attention span, reading, typing, etc. so you may want to use something like Lego Mindstorms instead of text-based programming.

Actually it's not just kids how have attention span issues who can benefit from Lego Mindstorms. If your siblings haven't yet taken high school geometry yet (or haven't had enough exposure to boolean logic), then Lego Mindstorms is a really cool to get a day-to-week-long introduction. Past that, I'd say, based on my own experience, that (when I was 11) C was difficult for me to pick up until after I learned Pascal. They both have similar structures, but Pascal was a much better introduction because of its use of natural language in most of its syntax.

You can find some tutorials here, here, here, here, and here.

The only problem with Pascal (nowadays) is that compilers/debuggers seem hard to come by. Here's a free one that might help. If that doesn't work, then you could always try something this, but I wouldn't recommend it for the beginner who doesn't even know what compilers or linkers are and why they are necessary.

Pascal is good in some areas:

• Pascal is very "neat" (except for pointer syntax, which has been fixed in ObjectPascal/Delphi).
  
• It's fast, especially in development time.
  
• It's well known and it had been used widely.
  
• thus, there is alreasy too much source code and binary components readily available (anybody remembers SWAG?).
  
• It's strongly typed (not an advantage for evertone, though).
  
• It's object oriented and has a very nice syntax (compare and avarage MFC code with a Delphi one and see).
  
• It's portable (thanks to GNU Pascal and FreePascal, the latter is much better).
  
• There are already a very sufficient library support for FreePascal (if anything is missing, you can import C libraries easily).
  
• It's good for database programming (i do not know why, but some vendors used to mix SQL in Pascal or vice versa).
  
  However something is missing (except for A^[13] syntax): the applications. There are too many tools (IDEs, RAD tools, libraries). There are many DOS and Windows apps, but it's not used in Linux, yet.
  
  And here some ideas for using pascal...
  
  
  • mod_pascal: OO programming for Apache, with use of existing data access and XML objects.
    
  • server console: anybody remembers Netware console? Instead of the regular shell, we can start the servers in a special console application, probably using TurboVision or similar.
    
  • gui applications: Delphi is a very nice and rapid way to deploy GUIs, with Kylix and lazarus, we can start a gui movement (especailly frontends to various Linux software), until mono is ready.
    
  • marketing: Kylix is there, but not much used. Why not advertise it as a movement path for developers (MFC -> VCL -> CLX -> Linux).
    
  
  
  But I guess we need to finish lazarus first :)

Pascal is good in some areas:

• Pascal is very "neat" (except for pointer syntax, which has been fixed in ObjectPascal/Delphi).
  
• It's fast, especially in development time.
  
• It's well known and it had been used widely.
  
• thus, there is alreasy too much source code and binary components readily available (anybody remembers SWAG?).
  
• It's strongly typed (not an advantage for evertone, though).
  
• It's object oriented and has a very nice syntax (compare and avarage MFC code with a Delphi one and see).
  
• It's portable (thanks to GNU Pascal and FreePascal, the latter is much better).
  
• There are already a very sufficient library support for FreePascal (if anything is missing, you can import C libraries easily).
  
• It's good for database programming (i do not know why, but some vendors used to mix SQL in Pascal or vice versa).
  
  However something is missing (except for A^[13] syntax): the applications. There are too many tools (IDEs, RAD tools, libraries). There are many DOS and Windows apps, but it's not used in Linux, yet.
  
  And here some ideas for using pascal...
  
  
  • mod_pascal: OO programming for Apache, with use of existing data access and XML objects.
    
  • server console: anybody remembers Netware console? Instead of the regular shell, we can start the servers in a special console application, probably using TurboVision or similar.
    
  • gui applications: Delphi is a very nice and rapid way to deploy GUIs, with Kylix and lazarus, we can start a gui movement (especailly frontends to various Linux software), until mono is ready.
    
  • marketing: Kylix is there, but not much used. Why not advertise it as a movement path for developers (MFC -> VCL -> CLX -> Linux).
    
  
  
  But I guess we need to finish lazarus first :)

Are these usable with GNU Pascal or Free Pascal?

As a Turbo Pascal and now Delphi developer, I have used TurboPower components off and on for many moons.

I hate it that they are leaving the retail scene, but I am glad that they are leaving behind one of the best libraries Turbo Pascal/Delphi ever had.

My hat's off to them for this bold move. Now if we could just get an open-source Delphi-compliant compiler on Linux, I'd be happy. Yeah Free Pascal is pretty good; I use it, but it is not yet up to the level of Delphi under Windows in terms of features and libraries.

Elegant object oriented languages really are a dime a dozen. If you want something like that, Eiffel or Oberon are other choices.

Lazarus

- The Free Software Delphi!

So, do you want to port the app to a command-line form running on Linux on the current hardware? (0.02USD: ncurses, slackware) Or do you want to port the app to a GUI form running on Linux on newer hardware? (0.02USD: any number of toolkits, any number of distributions) Obviously as the second route is the greatest change, the variables are more numerous giving you a much wider of range of options to look at. I'm guessing your current programmers are C or Pascal folks? You might consider using GTK+ (GUI Lib written in C, also has bindings for FreePascal). As far as a linux distro for the more open-ended situation goes, I'd have to say debian. The install can be a bit of a pain for the uninitiated, but it more than pays back that annoyance after install becuase with the very intelligent package management system you can do stuff like point the terminals at a central server to pull updates from (e.g. roll your app in to a .deb, have terms auto-update once a week using a cron job, makes deploying patches and security updates easy as pie). Debian will also work in fairly constrained hardware environments like slackware, but it tends to be a beefier install usually.

So, do you want to port the app to a command-line form running on Linux on the current hardware? (0.02USD: ncurses, slackware) Or do you want to port the app to a GUI form running on Linux on newer hardware? (0.02USD: any number of toolkits, any number of distributions) Obviously as the second route is the greatest change, the variables are more numerous giving you a much wider of range of options to look at. I'm guessing your current programmers are C or Pascal folks? You might consider using GTK+ (GUI Lib written in C, also has bindings for FreePascal). As far as a linux distro for the more open-ended situation goes, I'd have to say debian. The install can be a bit of a pain for the uninitiated, but it more than pays back that annoyance after install becuase with the very intelligent package management system you can do stuff like point the terminals at a central server to pull updates from (e.g. roll your app in to a .deb, have terms auto-update once a week using a cron job, makes deploying patches and security updates easy as pie). Debian will also work in fairly constrained hardware environments like slackware, but it tends to be a beefier install usually.

Jeez. That page says that Packages "was not a feature of Pascal". OK, first of all, Pascal is not a past-tense language. It's alive and well. Second of all, every Pascal implementation I know about supports Packages.

And of course, there's always the Free Pascal compiler, which only supports some of the syntactical candy of Delphi/Kylix.

Dude, that's what the CD is.

It will come with the 1.0 versions of OpenOffice, Mozilla, AbiWord and other programs as well...

The Windows port of GIMP might be cool, but its a bit buggy and is based on a buggier port of Gtk.

For programmers, the Free Pascal compiler (which has been 1.0 for a while now) and tools might be cool as well, along with WinCVS and Emacs or XEmacs. Vim, too.

The Cygwin ports of XFree86 and KDE might be cool, too. :)

The Windows port of PINE? (Or is that not Open Source) Ok, never mind, PINE sucks. :)

Look at GNU Software For Windows Site for more ideas.

1. Write a library to make the code that is invalid in whatever Pascal compiler you want to use valid. (i.e. emulate missing built-in funcions)
I think that biggest problem that this person is facing is time, or the lack there of.

2. Automate translating code from one version to another. For instance, maybe the Sun Pascal has OO extensions, and you could automate translating the Sun object declarations to Objective Pascal (that's a language, right?) style declarations.
See above

3. There is surely a Free (or at least open) Pascal compiler that you could modify to compile the Sun style code.
I searched Sun's site for pascal, and this came up
Maybe it's something to look into, it is built for solaris 2.6, 7 for x86
Free Pascal
I couldn't find any info on here about Sun Pascal. Quite frankly I didn't even know it existed until I read this.

What about Kylix? It does object pascal, but who knows if it can read/compile Sun stuff.

It also seems that Pascal and C should translate almost exactly 1-1. There is a Pascal to C conversion script out there, you might be able to write a Sun Pascal to C conversion script faster than any of the other suggestions.
I *really* like this suggestion, it gets you out of vendor lock in and minimal time used.

Just how much of the code is sun specific? If it's not that much, then try and port, otherwise you seem to be SOL

Free Pascal from www.freepascal.org is available under GPL, here is the description: "The language syntax is semanticly compatible with TP 7.0, some extensions used by Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings) are also supported. Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading and other such features."

In addition to Lazarus, there is fpgui. It should be independent of GUI APIs as well ... dunno if it's good though. Looks nice, lookin at the the little information the site has and the screenshots.

Rather than using Kylix / Delphi, consider the Free Pascal based Lazarus project.

Currently Linux appears to be the main development platform, but the front page mentions WIN32 builds.

Rather than using Kylix / Delphi, consider the Free Pascal based Lazarus project.

Currently Linux appears to be the main development platform, but the front page mentions WIN32 builds.

Say screw it and write in Object Pascal?

The next time (in 1997), it was already a lot more usable, but the optimizer was basically non-existent. Since I liked tinkering with assembler, I started on the peephole optimizer, submitted some patches (by email) and after half a year or so I got CVS access. I've never regretted starting on it.

BTW: this story also contains a quite valuable tip (imho) for people who want to start a (successful) open source project: make sure you are prepared to work on it alone for quite a while until it becomes usable. Only then most people will join in to help.

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For those interested in a genuine GPL'd project to provide an IDE for a Pascal compiler, check out The Lazarus Project.

One of the reasons we are doing this is because Borland is intending to make Kylix a closed-source compiler and IDE. This is also being done as a cross-platform project (supporting both Windows and Linux through the GTK).

For my $0.02, I think this is mainly a lot of buzz words and steam to create the impression that they are GPL-friendly. There are some Borland-sponsored projects, such as the JEDI project which incorporate quite a bit of GPL'd code.

I think that Kylix will be a fantastic tool for people who want to implement a Linux-based application platform with closed-source software (using Linux as the OS... instead of MS-Windows or something else). This should be encouraged in the sense that it does promote the use of Linux as a general platform and will get Linux into "the real world(tm)". For the GNU/Linux purist, however, Kylix will never be GPL'd or free as in speech (such as an RMS-inspired completely free computer system without any closed-source software whatsoever), except as a piece of abandonware from the ruins of Borland. This won't happen soon, if ever.

Combine it with the Free Pascal Compiler and you should have a complete open source solution (iff the Kylix IDE indeed gets open sourced)

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I've spent the last 1,5 years programming in Delphi and it rocks. I love the language. It's easy to learn, produces fast and small executables and helps producing high quality apps.

People coming from a Visual Basic background will notice that that Delphi is just as easy but it's a lot faster and really made the right way. The class libraries make sense and you can create new components really easy. After programming a few years in VB, there's no way I'll go back to the old monster. Delphi is also a lot easier than C. The language helps you avoid errors. I suppose Object Pascal is a good language to learn before C(++)

But the greatest thing about Delphi will be Kylix. It will be a pleasure to port our software for Linux. I really think Borland did a great decision. Kylix will give them a good start as Linux still lacks Visual Basic. It can really become the state of the art RAD tool for Linux and that will also help them gain markets in the Windows world.

Oh, you may also want to have a look at Lazarus, which is open source. It looks like Kylix will be ready first but Lazarus and the Free Pascal Compiler look good. I already use FPC for small apps and hope to get a strong alternative for Kylix which would boost competition and quality in both.

I've spent the last 1,5 years programming in Delphi and it rocks. I love the language. It's easy to learn, produces fast and small executables and helps producing high quality apps.

People coming from a Visual Basic background will notice that that Delphi is just as easy but it's a lot faster and really made the right way. The class libraries make sense and you can create new components really easy. After programming a few years in VB, there's no way I'll go back to the old monster. Delphi is also a lot easier than C. The language helps you avoid errors. I suppose Object Pascal is a good language to learn before C(++)

But the greatest thing about Delphi will be Kylix. It will be a pleasure to port our software for Linux. I really think Borland did a great decision. Kylix will give them a good start as Linux still lacks Visual Basic. It can really become the state of the art RAD tool for Linux and that will also help them gain markets in the Windows world.

Oh, you may also want to have a look at Lazarus, which is open source. It looks like Kylix will be ready first but Lazarus and the Free Pascal Compiler look good. I already use FPC for small apps and hope to get a strong alternative for Kylix which would boost competition and quality in both.

If Borland opened it's Object Pascal compiler (independent of Delphi), I'd switch to it for many development projects

Have you tried Free Pascal? It supports Object Pascal and Delphi code. And it's already free, so there's no waiting.

-- Floyd

somebody else has already mentioned it but FreePascal has the same code syntax of Delphi, and also a free compnent library for it is under development and with a RAD tool (called lazarus).

somebody else has already mentioned it but FreePascal has the same code syntax of Delphi, and also a free compnent library for it is under development and with a RAD tool (called lazarus).

If there are Pascal programmers out there who want to target Linux, I suggest you check out Free Pascal. If you must have a nice, user friendly GUI rather than a straight command line compiler, then I suggest you check out Lazarus, which is an open source version of Delphi for Linux. It's still in the early stages of development, but it is coming along nicely and shows huge potential, IMO.
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