| While I agree with most your statements, I do think you unnecessarily | limit yourself, because: | | Applications *can* be based around TForm in Lazarus (or Delphi). We have a 3-tier application with | 600+ forms, all of them descendents from a self-written TCustomForm descendent. And luckily | so; designing this all in code would have cost much more time.
Actually I admit, one of my larger applications is based around forms too.. it would be nice to drop components onto a container I think though...which is still visible at design time, but not visible at run time (some times the components like pop-up menus, main menus, etc. get hidden or get shoved underneath components, so would be better maybe if they were in a container rather than a form). Another problem comes with forms sometimes if your application is just a CGI app or server, and has no form at all.. so a "container" would be handy. A container that just acts as visual helper for designing the application, but not compiled into the binary. | Most forms do not have a single line of code, because we have integrated custom descendents of most | visual components in the IDE, which do all the work for us. An IDE wizard generates | the complete form for us (well, about 95%). All that is left to do is implement some data logic | if needed, because even that often is not necessary any more: the | components already do most of the work. | | The nice thing about Lazarus/Delphi is that they offer you the all basic components for RAD, | but they don't limit your use of them (as e.g. in VB). You can go as deep as you want, Yes and more people need to realize this.. For example lots of people don't even know how easy it is to change the program keyword to 'library' for example and just automatically create a DLL/DSO (with some minor modification, but really very little). | ('Close to the system') but you don't have to if you don't want. The IDE gives you the | best of both worlds: fast code development (good code tools), and visual design. | Do not underestimate the speed that the visual design gives you, if you make good use of it. | As you say: you must use your tool, not let yourself be limited by it. | Lazarus and Delphi allow this: they can be used well in all situations. | Lazarus more so ;-).. for example delphi can not create an operating system. Lazarus/freepascal can. _________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives