After some too lengthy encounters with Python and PyQT I remembered Lazarus again. I am close to 70 now and remember the active days using Delphi 3 a lot.
The last time I had a look at Lazarus was when it was in the 0.5 version area. Now I was positively flabberghasted how this duckling developed into a grown up swan! After a short glimpse at the IDE I decided to give it a try.
In the times of Delphi 3 and Paradox I was able to connect to a DB and produce a useful app within half a day. Ok, that was a chickens*** test app, but if gave me enough insight to see how fast development with a well designed tool can be.
Now, the next important thing if you dive into something new is the documentation. Well, Delphi had a VERY well written documentation. This is where Lazarus is so weak I almost decided to send it to the scrapyard again!
Oh, nice, I thought initially, there are some really useful tutorials around. Good, I don´t need lengthy explanations and the umpteenth book describing the same things I have read how many times before. I was a professional and I need exactly the right and correct information for my problem.
Never have I been so disappointed before.
ALL of the so called tutorials did NOT work.
But... I wanted just to have a WORKING and very simple example how to connect to a simple SQlite DB and access some data in a grid or other data control.
All these tutorials are lacking something: they do not work - at least not with the latest version of Lazarus. Why? I guess there were a lot of brilliant guys who had this brilliant idea some 10 or even 15 years ago to publish a nice little tutorial in the internet. But then reality rolled over them, jobs, dependencies and they never cared to test their work with the latest version. All of this is still around, mostly uncommented. I found a lot of deprecated stuff nobody updated ever since it was written.
Ok, I´m an old dog, and I like my docs to be in written form. Written means book, but I don´t need the printed form. Ebooks give me a lot of insight, they are very practical to use.
I understand a project like Lazarus which is still under development must be financed in a way. But, please, not this way: the books cost 40 and 50 USD and I don´t even know a bit about the quality. I did not mind a price like that in former times when I was working (books were tax deductible), but the most necessary support if you decide for Lazarus is and remains the documentation! If you call it FREE, the INFORMATION about the tool SHOULD BE ALSO FREE! This alone keeps a lot of potential users from using it. The information in the Wiki is quite good, but the quality Borland provided in the good old times is never reached. I know, developers hate documentation, I have been in the IT business long enough (since 1979) to know about that. But here with Lazarus the interested newcomer would need functioning, well explained demo projects which are REALLY working and periodically updated!
I am sure plenty of interested persons (including those who decide in companies) are very disappointed and look for something better when they find out about the poor documentation / learning literature.
Nobody is interested in wasting time - but this way you can waste a lot of it.
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