You’ve mentioned this several times now as though it’s some magic sauce that everybody is missing.
But it’s not like FPC/Lazarus is the only portable GUI solution — Qt, Fox, Swing, SWT, Gtk etc. also exist, and don’t require a fringe language (and I say that as someone who did Turbo/Borland Pascal and Delphi development for more than a decade). What Lazarus offers is a Delphi-type form builder tool, but that seems a lot less interesting in this day and age of heavily customized UIs that aren’t static grids of square components — in particular, we increasingly rely on responsive layouts and smooth animations between them.
Moreover, I’ve yet to see a FPC app (or any app for that matter that isn’t Electron or web) that doesn’t look like an old fashioned Windows-style GUI app. Do you have any examples?
It's not magic sauce, it's a counter-point to the "Electron gives you cross platform deployments" argument.
Yes, there are many GUI toolkits, the LCL creates native applications while some others do not, but it's certainly not the only one.
It's the one I prefer so I use it as an example over QT, Swing, JavaFX, etc.
Lazarus form builder let's you create forms very quickly and easy, and OS themed design.
If you want other types of GUI designs you can do that too, though personally I prefer standard OS design.
As far as static grids and square components, I think you're looking at old stuff..
You can make things as squiggly as you like, and of course you can always use images and colors to design your GUI and let your imagination run wild, and it'll look entirely non-native.
Responsive design isn't that challenging either, use anchors and smart design.
I don't have any examples of desktop applications I've made, that look like web-apps, no, but I might make some after you giving me this idea, and I'll be doing it with FPC/Lazarus.
I’m still not convinced that it’s relevant to the discussion — it’s an old-school GUI builder, Electron isn’t, and it’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison.
People gravitate to Electron not just because you can’t build cross-platform apps in it, but because the underlying UI tech is just the web. You can even do as Slack did, which is to offer the exact same app in the browser. You can’t do that with FPC/Lazarus. The latter is geared towards fairly static layouts, not the kinds of snappy, fluid, single-window apps that Electron is used to build. It’s just a very different world.
Nobody is doubting that you can build decent Windows-style apps with FPC/Lazarus, just as they’re not doubting that you can do it with Qt.
Pascal lost the language war, just like countless other "good" languages. Fantastic that it is working out so well for you, but you are the exception here. You're visible because(at least today) you've managed to post about it 3 times on HN that I have read. Maybe you've posted even more that I haven't seen yet.
Random searches in "dice.com"(pick any job site you want) for "Pascal" yields 5 positions. "Python" yields 8,950. "C++" yields 6008. Even "8086 assembly" yields 1,378 jobs. "Java" yields 17,000+. There is a trend here if you care to see it.
You are obviously passionate about Pascal. That's awesome. Keep using it, and squeeze it for everything its' worth. Please don't be disheartened when technology moves on without you though, often in directions that feel "wrong" to us. Electron feels wrong to me, but it doesn't matter. Technology is going to move where technology is going to move, and sometimes you have to get on board with choices you dislike to avoid being left behind entirely.
PS: I cut my teeth on Pascal in the early 90's, and wish it had become more popular as well.
"Moves on without you", I work in CFML, JavaScript (including various frameworks and engines), Java, Object Pascal just about every day, I've released code in many more languages professionally.
I'm using Node.js right now along with AWS for example, not my favorite combo but it's an appropriate solution being used as a webserver.
I've posted about FPC because it's one of the right tools for the job and the one I prefer over C/C++, Java, etc. for desktop applications.
I don't mind spreading the word about FPC, but really what I'm trying to push for is that there are appropriate tools for desktop development such as C, C++, Python, Nim, Go, Object Pascal, and a bunch more. I just happen to like and push for one of those.
Especially with the "benefits" for Electron like cross-platform deployments, are things that other languages such as Java or Object Pascal, also does and does pretty dang well.
FPC + Lazarus, native executables, cross platform.