Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2017-01-17 20:01, wkitty42--- via Lazarus wrote:
> sometimes too much is too much ;)


+1   :)



Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Tue, January 17, 2017 2:22 am, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:
> On 2017-01-16 20:18, Lars via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> GUI's require wrappers.
>>
>
> No they don't.
>

Sane GUI programming requires wrappers...

Insane programmers will program a GUI without a wrapper...
;-)


>
>> Delphi 5 as an example, is a wrapper around the win32api
>>
>
> Yes, Delphi's VCL is a wrapper around the common Win32 widgets. LCL is a
> wrapper around Win32, Qt, Cocoa, Carbon and even fpGUI. But not all GUI
> toolkits are designed like than.
>
> For example, fpGUI is not a wrapper around any existing widgets on any
> platform. fpGUI implements its own widgets (gui controls) from scratch and
> talks directly to the underlying libraries (XLib & GDI) to notify the
> system about the top-level window and receiving OS events.

fpGUI is, in every way possible, a wrapper.

It wrapps low level x11/win32 calls into a usable frameworks called fpGUI

Object orientation is often a wrapper around system calls, fpGUI is object
oriented and makes low level calls so someone can use fpGUI as a wrapper
around these obnoxious insane low level calls that no one wants to use
directly.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 17.01.2017 10:22, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:



Yes, Delphi's VCL is a wrapper around the common Win32 widgets. LCL is a
wrapper around Win32, Qt, Cocoa, Carbon and even fpGUI.
And for ease of use as well Delphi as Lazarus come with an IDE that is a 
combination of source code editor, debugger, compiler controller and 
*GUI Designer*. Making the use of a simple GUI extremely easy 
(introducing and suggesting the (dreaded) RAD paradigm.


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 16.01.2017 21:24, Lars via Lazarus wrote:


Except when you find a bug in the lcl, and have to dig in to it..
I don't suppose Lazrus is so  bad that it can't be used for the simple 
programs the students will start with when learning programming :-):-):-).


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Mon, January 16, 2017 3:19 am, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
> On 15.01.2017 15:30, Martin Vahi via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> have came to a conclusion that GUI-s are inherently something that
>> require "dynamic programming" or the code gets really bloated.
>>
>>
> The nice thing about Lazarus "RAD" paradigm is that this is completely
> hidden (in the library) from application programmer. So (s)he only needs to
> write the code that is obviously useful for the task at hand.

Except when you find a bug in the lcl, and have to dig in to it..

In theory one could never look into the lcl or underlying api's

in practice, sometimes there is an issue to be resolved... like when I
fired up the macOS laptop and found that moving the mouse crashed the app,
and Dmitry helped me figure out why ;-)  Had too look into the macOS
related lcl code
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Sunday 15 January 2017 15:30:44 Martin Vahi via Lazarus wrote:
>
> I haven't used Lazarus yet, I need to learn it,
> but during the development of my own
> JavaScript GUI library I have came to a conclusion
> that GUI-s are inherently something that require
> "dynamic programming" or the code gets really bloated.
>
That's the reason why systems like Lazarus, fpGUI and MSEide+MSEgui have been 
invented. ;-)
You really should try them.

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 15.01.2017 15:30, Martin Vahi via Lazarus wrote:

have came to a conclusion
that GUI-s are inherently something that require
"dynamic programming" or the code gets really bloated.

The nice thing about Lazarus "RAD" paradigm is that this is completely 
hidden (in the library) from application programmer. So (s)he only needs 
to write the code that is obviously useful for the task at hand. So 
adding a GUI for the single purpose of debugging / visualizing the 
application code makes a lot of sense.


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 5:52 PM, Martin Vahi via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> Sorry for sending my previous letter about
> teaching Pascal to the mailing list.
> The letter was meant to be sent directly to
> the Adrian De Armas, not the mailing list.
> My mistake.
> --
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>



Please do not worry , because your message was a very useful contribution
to the thread .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Vahi via Lazarus]

Sorry for sending my previous letter about
teaching Pascal to the mailing list.
The letter was meant to be sent directly to
the Adrian De Armas, not the mailing list.
My mistake.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Paul Breneman via Lazarus]

On 10/27/2016 11:15 AM, Paul Breneman via Lazarus wrote:

On 10/25/2016 11:23 AM, Travis Ayres via Lazarus wrote:

So...who wants to work on a modern course outline with me? We have a
lot of
opinions and people willing to chime in, maybe we can do something
good for
the community?


Some suggestions:

1) As the OP wrote (in a later message) "All my students will be civil,
environmental or bio engineers but not computer engineers", I would
recommend checking out SoftwareCarpentry.org (see links on home page
www.ControlPascal.com ) which has been teaching basic programming to
non-programmer engineers since 1998.  They've already done a *lot* of
work that doesn't need to be repeated!  But a pascal version would be nice.

2) I just purchased the least expensive PicoScope which I hope to
combine with the Basic Stamp kit (see top of this page):
  http://www.controlpascal.com/tutorial.htm

Instant gratification (blinking LEDs, switches to push) has worked for
me and others.  One of my favorite college courses (in about 1981)
combined programming and electronics, and after that I decided to jump
into embedded programming (previously I did electronic work).

Regards,
Paul



I just added a link (to a recent magazine article on using a scope to 
"see" Arduino timing) to the top of this page:

  http://controlpascal.com/tutorial.htm

Just trying to help increase embedded and hobby electronic use of Free 
Pascal!  :)


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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Paul Breneman via Lazarus]

On 10/25/2016 11:23 AM, Travis Ayres via Lazarus wrote:

So...who wants to work on a modern course outline with me? We have a lot of
opinions and people willing to chime in, maybe we can do something good for
the community?


Some suggestions:

1) As the OP wrote (in a later message) "All my students will be civil, 
environmental or bio engineers but not computer engineers", I would 
recommend checking out SoftwareCarpentry.org (see links on home page 
www.ControlPascal.com ) which has been teaching basic programming to 
non-programmer engineers since 1998.  They've already done a *lot* of 
work that doesn't need to be repeated!  But a pascal version would be nice.


2) I just purchased the least expensive PicoScope which I hope to 
combine with the Basic Stamp kit (see top of this page):

  http://www.controlpascal.com/tutorial.htm

Instant gratification (blinking LEDs, switches to push) has worked for 
me and others.  One of my favorite college courses (in about 1981) 
combined programming and electronics, and after that I decided to jump 
into embedded programming (previously I did electronic work).


Regards,
Paul

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Travis Ayres via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> So...who wants to work on a modern course outline with me? We have a lot
> of opinions and people willing to chime in, maybe we can do something good
> for the community?
>
> On Oct 25, 2016 4:03 AM, "Michael Schnell via Lazarus" <
> lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 24.10.2016 18:11, Travis Ayres via Lazarus wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> With over 100 replies, we could have already written a course outline,
>>> introduction, ...
>>>
>>> It seems we have lost (or silenced) the OP long since :-(
>>
>> -Michael
>>
>>


My opinion is that writing a course outline is not an abstract process .


It will be delivered in a Department :

Goals of Department with its web site
Class of Students as Year ( First . ... , Fourth )
Curriculum of Department : Where the course(s) will be embedded
Goals of the Course(s) : What is the purpose of course : What will gain the
students from the course ?
Upward services to other courses : Names of such courses
Prerequisite Courses : If any
Background courses : Previous courses which can be used as supporting the
course
Text books selected for course(s) ;
How many course(s) with weekly number of class hours are selected


Course class schedule ( Two courses , etc. ) will determine load level of
classes
Possible Goals will serve to determine course Names and contents ( examples
, problems , etc. ) .


"Pascal" itself may require an independent course
"Lazarus" itself may require an independent course
"Event driven" programming ( with Petri Nets ) itself may require an
independent course

"Pascal" may be an independent course as a "First" computer programming
course or a "Second" .
There may be a previously taken "Computer Programming Algorithms" ( as
Introduction ) course or students may need such a course independent from a
programming language .


All of these affect a course sequence contents .


This means that to be able to design a course outline which will serve to
your needs , it is necessary to supply the above information ( at least )
without forgetting the instructor factor .


Thank you very much .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Travis Ayres via Lazarus]

So...who wants to work on a modern course outline with me? We have a lot of
opinions and people willing to chime in, maybe we can do something good for
the community?

On Oct 25, 2016 4:03 AM, "Michael Schnell via Lazarus" <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 24.10.2016 18:11, Travis Ayres via Lazarus wrote:
>
>>
>> With over 100 replies, we could have already written a course outline,
>> introduction, ...
>>
>> It seems we have lost (or silenced) the OP long since :-(
>
> -Michael
>
>
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 24.10.2016 18:11, Travis Ayres via Lazarus wrote:


With over 100 replies, we could have already written a course outline, 
introduction, ...



It seems we have lost (or silenced) the OP long since :-(

-Michael


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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 11:41 PM, Martin Schreiber via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On Monday 24 October 2016 19:53:21 Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:
> >
> >
> > My opinion is that event based programming needs special care .
> > A simulation example may be useful , for example , by using PetriSim
> > sources , adapted to Free Pascal .
>


Please here add the following sentence :


Then a Petri Net definition may be represented by Lazarus forms easily .
I am not ignoring other works such as fpGUI , mseIDE-mseGUI , but we are
talking about mostly Lazarus .




> >
> The last chapter of "Programmieren macht Spass!" is a lift simulation:
> http://mseide-msegui.sourceforge.net/pics/aufzug.mpeg
>
> Martin
> --
> ___
>



It is difficult to play *.mpeg files in Linux ( there is no default player
) . If you have a converter to format which can be played with default
players of Linux ( for example , Dragon Player ) , it would be a very good
contribution .


Simulation subjects may be selected easily for the Department related
subjects where Lazarus is taught .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Monday 24 October 2016 19:53:21 Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:
>
>
> My opinion is that event based programming needs special care .
> A simulation example may be useful , for example , by using PetriSim
> sources , adapted to Free Pascal .
>
The last chapter of "Programmieren macht Spass!" is a lift simulation:
http://mseide-msegui.sourceforge.net/pics/aufzug.mpeg

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 1:00 PM, wkitty42--- via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On 10/24/2016 01:53 PM, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> I have the book :
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Lazarus-Complete-Guide-pascal-teachin
>> g/dp/9490968021
>> ( Lazarus The complete Guide )
>>
>
> i've been looking for that book off and on since i heard about it...
> amazon currently shows it as unavailable and does not show a price for it
> :( :( :(
>
> --
>  NOTE: No off-list assistance is given without prior approval.
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>private contact is specifically requested and granted.
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>
>
>



I am sorry that I have forgot to write the following sentence :


"Please search the phrase

Lazarus The complete Guide

in Google ."


I have obtained my book through a friend in Turkey who ordered it from
publisher of the above book or a book seller in Europe , I do not know
which one , but for a possible link , please see :


http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/content.php?229-Lazarus-The-Complete-Guide-is-Finally-Here
http://www.blaisepascal.eu/index.php?actie=./subscribers/subscription_mainpageUKPaypalPage2
http://www.blaisepascal.eu/subscribers/UK/UK_Book_Department.html
http://www.cul.de/lazarus2.html


 I do not know the availability of the book at present , but , a name is
good to start . Sometimes , I am ordering a used book when a new one is not
available .


In University libraries , it is very likely that the above book may be
found .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[wkitty42--- via Lazarus]

On 10/24/2016 01:53 PM, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:

I have the book :

https://www.amazon.com/Lazarus-Complete-Guide-pascal-teaching/dp/9490968021
( Lazarus The complete Guide )


i've been looking for that book off and on since i heard about it... amazon 
currently shows it as unavailable and does not show a price for it :( :( :(


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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Travis Ayres via Lazarus]

The part I'm most interested in is using Lazarus to full effect with good
architecture; I don't think the GUI portion would make a good first (or
even second) course in computers/computing.

I would like to see a "Software Architecture" course that used
Delphi/FreePascal/Lazarus

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 3:51 AM, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> Am 2016-10-24 um 12:20 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
> > On 21.10.2016 11:09, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
> >> What is the use of a program? Entertainment?
> > Nowadays in 90% of the usage exactly this.
> > Maybe other usage cases are more "important", but still the money is
> made with Entertainment.
>
> There may be a misunderstanding:
> I did not ask whether the *purpose* of a program is entertainment
> but whether *programming* it has to be entertainment?
> The aim of programming should be to get a program running
> (as the programmer wants it) not to spend time with
> juggling gaudy pictures, icons and videos.
>
> In the end, it is somehow "entertaining" if a program works
> but this requires knowledge about how the programming language works.
> Ignoring all facts will never lead to a satisfying programming experience.
>
>
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 9:11 AM, Travis Ayres via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> With over 100 replies, we could have already written a course outline,
> introduction, and some notes about events and RAD programming, maybe also
> the observer pattern?
>
> On Oct 24, 2016 3:51 AM, "Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus" <
> lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:
>
> Am 2016-10-24 um 12:20 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
> > On 21.10.2016 11:09, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
> >> What is the use of a program? Entertainment?
> > Nowadays in 90% of the usage exactly this.
> > Maybe other usage cases are more "important", but still the money is
> made with Entertainment.
>
> There may be a misunderstanding:
> I did not ask whether the *purpose* of a program is entertainment
> but whether *programming* it has to be entertainment?
> The aim of programming should be to get a program running
> (as the programmer wants it) not to spend time with
> juggling gaudy pictures, icons and videos.
>
> In the end, it is somehow "entertaining" if a program works
> but this requires knowledge about how the programming language works.
> Ignoring all facts will never lead to a satisfying programming experience.
>
>
>



I have the book :


https://www.amazon.com/Lazarus-Complete-Guide-pascal-teaching/dp/9490968021
( Lazarus The complete Guide )


You can write a course outline about , for example , "Programming Pascal by
using Lazarus"  from thr above book .


For Free Pascal , unfortunately , I do not have a teaching oriented book .

For general Pascal programming , the following book may be useful :

https://www.amazon.com/Structured-Programming-Pascal-Winston-Crawley/dp/0138540357/ref=sr_1_1?s=books=UTF8=1477331132=1-1=0138540357
(  Structured Programming Using Pascal )


For event based programming , the following pages and links in them may be
useful :

(
Please see my messages from starting the following link :
http://lists.lazarus-ide.org/pipermail/lazarus/2016-October/229807.html
)

in page

http://lists.lazarus-ide.org/pipermail/lazarus/2016-October/author.html

especially :

http://lists.lazarus-ide.org/pipermail/lazarus/2016-October/229976.html


My opinion is that event based programming needs special care .
A simulation example may be useful , for example , by using PetriSim
sources , adapted to Free Pascal .



Thank you very much .
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Travis Ayres via Lazarus]

With over 100 replies, we could have already written a course outline,
introduction, and some notes about events and RAD programming, maybe also
the observer pattern?

On Oct 24, 2016 3:51 AM, "Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus" <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

Am 2016-10-24 um 12:20 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
> On 21.10.2016 11:09, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
>> What is the use of a program? Entertainment?
> Nowadays in 90% of the usage exactly this.
> Maybe other usage cases are more "important", but still the money is made
with Entertainment.

There may be a misunderstanding:
I did not ask whether the *purpose* of a program is entertainment
but whether *programming* it has to be entertainment?
The aim of programming should be to get a program running
(as the programmer wants it) not to spend time with
juggling gaudy pictures, icons and videos.

In the end, it is somehow "entertaining" if a program works
but this requires knowledge about how the programming language works.
Ignoring all facts will never lead to a satisfying programming experience.


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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-24 um 12:20 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
> On 21.10.2016 11:09, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
>> What is the use of a program? Entertainment?
> Nowadays in 90% of the usage exactly this.
> Maybe other usage cases are more "important", but still the money is made 
with Entertainment.

There may be a misunderstanding:
I did not ask whether the *purpose* of a program is entertainment
but whether *programming* it has to be entertainment?
The aim of programming should be to get a program running
(as the programmer wants it) not to spend time with
juggling gaudy pictures, icons and videos.

In the end, it is somehow "entertaining" if a program works
but this requires knowledge about how the programming language works.
Ignoring all facts will never lead to a satisfying programming experience.

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-24 um 11:57 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
> On 21.10.2016 09:51, Lars via Lazarus wrote:
>> The concept of callbacks is very similar to events.
> The difference is that with a callback you usually know both sides and hence 
how exactly it is called,
> while with an event (especially when fired by the LCL on behalf of something 
that happens in the GUI, aka RAD)
> you don't need to know exactly how and why it is fired, you just place your 
user code in it and are happy (at least if you are not a nerd like myself).

You cannot "be happy" if you don't know exactly when an event is fired.
It is of course important to know that.
Otherwise you only assume something (that must not be true).
The discussions about events fired by the user but not
when changes are done by code showed this clearly.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 21.10.2016 10:12, Lars via Lazarus wrote:

Today's bloatware applications are so large no one can understand them
IMHO, you did a good job to scare everybody away from even thinking 
about starting to try programming. So we should just stop "Teaching 
Pascal at College".


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 21.10.2016 11:09, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:

What is the use of a program? Entertainment?

Nowadays in 90% of the usage exactly this.

Maybe other usage cases are more "important", but still the money is 
made with Entertainment.

-Michael

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 18.10.2016 17:16, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:


Yes, therefore start with simple procedural (console)
programs that let them have immediate success with
all the elementary things that a program consists of
(variables/types, loops, commands, etc.).

Yep. Satisfying for a Nerd, but it does not get something useful done 
and hence frustrating for a beginning application developer.


If you do it the other way round you only delay the date
of frustration but you do not avoid it.
That is true if (s)he one day will be confronted with large, complex, 
unusual or critical tasks.


-Michael

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 21.10.2016 14:05, Martin Schreiber via Lazarus wrote:

Win32 API works with message queues.
Happily, the application programmer does not need to know about that, as 
the LCL completely hides the underlying complexity. He sees the same 
type of "GUI"-events, independent of running on Winx (OS-introduced 
message queues) or Linux (Event Queues implemented by the LCL itself) 
(The reality is even more complex).


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 21.10.2016 09:51, Lars via Lazarus wrote:

The concept of callbacks is very similar to events.
The difference is that with a callback you usually know both sides and 
hence how exactly it is called, while with an event (especially when 
fired by the LCL on behalf of something that happens in the GUI, aka 
RAD) you don't need to know exactly how and why it is fired, you just 
place your user code in it and are happy (at least if you are not a nerd 
like myself).


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 12:51 AM, Lars via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On Mon, October 17, 2016 7:32 pm, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:
> > One obvious point is that an "event" driven programming knowledge is a
> > must to become a competent programmer . The problem is how this can be
> > learned . Without knowing how to program an algorithm when a related
> event
> > is occurred , will bring any one to nothing means ( not to a success ) .
> >
>
> An interesting question is what is an event and isn't in some way or
> another all programming based on events that occur?
>
> The concept of callbacks is very similar to events. you make a callback
> when something happens, just like an event. This can be done even in old
> turbopascal programs or console mode programs..
>
> I'm not so sure event driven programming is a must to become a competent
> programmer, I would have to think about that. Events could (may) force a
> programmer to think about programs in a certain way... when there are
> alternatives? or are events the only alternative just in another form
> (callbacks, or calling procedures). It begs the question about whether
> events are just procedures being called, which is the same as any
> programming methodology since all programs "call procedures".
>
> Is a compiler event driven? A competent programmer could write a compiler,
> or a parser. Are they necessary to have event driven architectures?
>
> i.e. is the fpc compiler event driven, even if not officially event driven
> someone ended up reinventing events in it? From what I understand Michael
> V. C.'s documentation tool is event driven which differs from the fpc
> compiler.  However I beg the question:  is all programming event driven in
> some way since events are just "calls to procedures". Of course that is
> simplifying it, but "what is an event?" would be a good computing science
> article to write. If I had any time..
> --
> ___
>




Please see the following pages :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event-driven_programming
( Event-driven programming )


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperative_programming
( Imperative programming )


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Events_(computing)
( Category:Events (computing) )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programming_paradigms
( Category:Programming paradigms )


You can find plenty of information in the above pages and in their linked
pages .


Lazarus IDE : An example of event driven programming
FPC : An example of imperative programming




Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Friday 21 October 2016 13:26:13 Lars via Lazarus wrote:
> On Fri, October 21, 2016 2:11 am, Martin Schreiber via Lazarus wrote:
> > On Friday 21 October 2016 09:51:38 Lars via Lazarus wrote:
> >> I'm not so sure event driven programming is a must to become a
> >> competent programmer, I would have to think about that.
> >
> > "Event driven" probably means that there is an event queue with a central
> >  toolkit-main-eventloop which dispatches the events instead a program
> > specific flow control.
>
> What about a pure win32 API app written in C.  Do you essentially reinvent
> your own event system using callbacks with program flow control? Or the
> win32 api has an event system in its api itself?

Win32 API works with message queues.

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Fri, October 21, 2016 2:11 am, Martin Schreiber via Lazarus wrote:
> On Friday 21 October 2016 09:51:38 Lars via Lazarus wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm not so sure event driven programming is a must to become a
>> competent programmer, I would have to think about that.
>
> "Event driven" probably means that there is an event queue with a central
>  toolkit-main-eventloop which dispatches the events instead a program
> specific flow control.
>

What about a pure win32 API app written in C.  Do you essentially reinvent
your own event system using callbacks with program flow control? Or the
win32 api has an event system in its api itself?  Been a while since I did
some win32 api programming..
I'm just wondering if pretty much every system out there has some kind of
rolled your own event system of some kind.  The other common item that
pops up everywhere is some kind of messaging system to notify objects,
which I guess is what Smalltalk takes credit for.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mattias Gaertner via Lazarus]

On Fri, 21 Oct 2016 03:41:49 -0600
Lars via Lazarus  wrote:

>[...]
> The word engineer is so overloaded, that I hate it, with my guts.
> 
> What is an engineer? A guy "who makes stuff".. which pretty much describes
> every single profession.

This is going off-topic. Please stick to the topic.

Mattias
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-21 um 11:28 schrieb Lars via Lazarus:
> Hmmm.. I'm not so sure learning about the internals of the CPU is so good.
> IMO that is computer science, whereas programming is computing science.
> I was interested in how computers physically worked, before I became a
> programmer. One of the worst things a programmer can do is think in CPU
> cycles because it's a low level detail that has nothing to do with the
> program as a mathematical construct.

I am talking about the general construction of a computer:
That a CPU exists with registers to store data which runs your program
and that it has some rudimentary built in commands (a rough overview of them
is useful) and that a stack and a heap exits to store data. That's almost 
enough.
I am not talking about knowing how many CPU cycles a certain command takes.
But a programmer should know to what his program boils down to in the end.
Otherwise he would not know what limits exist and how to avoid exceeding them.


> For example in mathematics when you write equations on paper do you ever
> think about how the electronic calculator works, to process these numbers,
> when you punch the math into your calculator? The last thing a mathematics
> student knows about, is the internal architechture of the Casio calculator
> he is using, because he's more focused on the maths... which IMO is good.

That is a bad comparison. In a calculator you have no choice how to
"program" equations. You just type them and get a result.
But even here you need to know how the calculator works as you may have
polish notation or the calculator may obey point before line calculation or not.
If you do not know these details you cannot use the calculator effiently.

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Fri, October 14, 2016 4:42 am, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 1:18 AM, Michael Schnell via Lazarus <
> lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:
>
>> On 13.10.2016 10:20, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:
>>
>>
>>> +1
>>> That would be the best solution. GUI programming is based on
>>> fundamentals than need to be understood first.
>>>
>>
>> -1 !!
>>
>>
>> The OP explained that his main purpose is to introduce more fun in the
>> education.  That can be done by plunging into programming directly with
>> GUI
>> development.
>>
>> This is why RAD had been invented.
>>
>>
>> Of course there are decent drawbacks regarding relying too much on RAD
>> and about not really understanding the fundamentals behind it.
>>
>> But in the end the addressees are non-computer engineers.
>>
>>
>> -Michael
>> --
>> ___
>>
>>
>
>
> As an engineer , they need to write programs for doing computations not
> available in ready-made packages . Therefore , they need to a sufficient
> knowledge to write programs . This can be achieved in a good balance of
> learning programming itself and GUI application .
>
>


The word engineer is so overloaded, that I hate it, with my guts.

What is an engineer? A guy "who makes stuff".. which pretty much describes
every single profession.

Do software engineers have to buy an APPEGA subscription? are they
registered as professional engineers and have to have a degree to prove
it?

I think the word engineer should be kept for the oil and gas industry,
IMO, where buffoons engineer solutions to rape oil out of the ground.

I prefer the term programmer...

I made the mistake of thinking of myself as a software engineer at one
time, but I'm wondering... since engineering requires a membership with an
organization like APEGA, are software engineers misusing the engineer
term?

Now, if you mean "engineer" as in someone who really does hold an APEGA
subscription and is using programming languages to control oil and gas
industry PLC's (logic controllers) then I can understand using engineer as
a title.

Honestly, I just hate the word engineer... as to me an engineer is a
vague, meaningless term.  It essentially means "guy who makes solutions to
problems" or "Guy who makes things"... But since engineers have to have an
APEGA subscription to be a valid engineer, why are programmers using the
term? It's leaked into the industry and profession, which was a big
mistake imo. I just prefer the term programmer. Not hacker. Not engineer.
I'm a programmer.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Tue, October 18, 2016 9:16 am, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
> Am 2016-10-18 um 16:47 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
>
>> If you start with complex stuff that does not yield immediate success
>> (i.e. a working program that does something that might be useful) The
>> students will loose interest and run away, unless they are nerds like
>> ourselves.
>
> Yes, therefore start with simple procedural (console)
> programs that let them have immediate success with all the elementary
> things that a program consists of (variables/types, loops, commands,
> etc.). If that is understood you can switch to GUI applications.
>
>
> If you do it the other way round you only delay the date
> of frustration but you do not avoid it.
>


There are two sides to this story, I'm afraid. I'm a fan of the console
program teaching method myself but the issue is: console mode programs are
irrelevant and useless.  Today, MS DOS doesn't exist any more. Even when
ms dos existed, console mode programs were boring, and only complete geeks
would be interested in creating console mode programs. We're talking about
people who have no social lives who create text mode games here...

If I was introduced to ComponentPascal (oberon) or delphi as a person
learning programming, where there were actual widgets you could create, it
just might convince me that programming is of some use. Console mode
programs are utterly useless to a newcomer. Wow you created a console mode
program that prints and asks questions... Joy Joy!  I think that's why I
never got interested in Basic, for ms dos... It was on my machine but I
just couldn't see how it was of any use. Now on the other hand if Delphi
was on a windows 3.1 machine I may have even been interested, as you could
just see a person being drawn into wiz bang widgetsets.. that do something
useful, unlike a boring console mode program.

Saying that, I still am a fan of console mode program teaching as it
teaches you about variables, setting values, incrementing, etc.

Today, programmers learn to program in PHP because HTML is the widgetset.
Often a first programming language a person learns is PHP these days, IMO.
And that's sad, as it creates bad habits galore. All because HTML today is
literally "the widget set" being used for programming.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Tue, October 18, 2016 7:23 am, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
> Am 2016-10-18 um 12:53 schrieb Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus:
>
>> Order of teaching is not so critical : As you say , write a GUI program
>> for events : Say : "Now it is necessary to define what will be done for
>> the events ? ... Its way is the following : Write your program parts in
>> that way ..."
>
> IMO the order is extremly important!
> If you start with the fundamental informations
> (how does the processor work in general,
> how are variables stored (stack/heap/etc.), what does the processor do in
> loops, etc.) then this information is remembered very well because
> everybody can imagine what goes on in general. You can *predict* what will
> (should) happen in your program.
>


Hmmm.. I'm not so sure learning about the internals of the CPU is so good.
IMO that is computer science, whereas programming is computing science.

I was interested in how computers physically worked, before I became a
programmer. One of the worst things a programmer can do is think in CPU
cycles because it's a low level detail that has nothing to do with the
program as a mathematical construct.

For example in mathematics when you write equations on paper do you ever
think about how the electronic calculator works, to process these numbers,
when you punch the math into your calculator? The last thing a mathematics
student knows about, is the internal architechture of the Casio calculator
he is using, because he's more focused on the maths... which IMO is good.
To now know anything, and be completely ignorant, of the casio calculator
and how it processes your equations and additions and subtractions, is a
very good thing.

On the other hand, someone interested in physics, and computer science
(not computing science) will benefit greatly from learning how the cpu
works, memory, etc.  Every time they said they were offering "computer
science" courses, as a child I always wondered... is that how the
capacitors, resistors, and cpu chips work? I never once could possibly
grasp how programming a computer had anything to do with the computer
itself. As programming can be done on paper and never touch a computer,
and still be a a program that is understandable even if it doesn't run on
any physical system.

I've been very skeptical of any programmer who immediately converts his
program to assembly instructions. I can see how it is useful for
debugging, and creating a compiler on hardware, but it completely ruins
the abstract program concept. It's equivalent of someone writing a
beautiful mathematics paper, and then converting it to his casio
calculator instruction set. A mathematician would never do such a thing as
he couldn't care less about the internals of his casio calculator. So I
don't understand why so many programmers are obsessed with low level
details. I guess I just find abstract la la land a better place to be in,
where there is even a potential for a program to be proven correct and
never debugged.


>
> If you just start with clicking you do not know *why* it works
> (if it works) nor do you know *why* it does not work (if it does not do
> so). They would always need someone at hand with exprience to tell them
> how to continue. This can be very frustrating for studends.
>
> Therefore I would always present at least a rough overview about
> procedural programming before starting with objects and events. In the
> end, the latter is still processed in a procedural manner which every
> programmer should know.
>
>
>> My application was like the following ( as a very simple example ) :
>> Pose a problem "Display your name ."
>> After this is done :
>> "Display your name 10 times ."
>> The students were not able to write their programs . Then , solution was
>>  "You should use a loop ."
>> "A loop is defined in the following ways : ... "
>> Such an approach is used frequently in Mathematics text books :
>> Subject text .
>> Problems ..
>> Last problems were "Unsolvable" with the above text .
>> Solution :
>> "Read the next chapter ..."
>> Such approaches are "the Art of Teaching" ...
>>
>
> IMO this "approach" has a severe drawback:
> The students do not get an overall picture of what
> *can* be done and *how* it can be done.
> If they do not know about loops how should they
> know that they exist? They would need to read *everything* that is
> available and hope to find something helpful. That is very frustrating and
> can lead to suboptimal solutions because they get tired of reading yet
> another chapter and instead use something else (like copying the code in
> the editor 10 times).
>
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>

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-21 um 10:08 schrieb Lars via Lazarus:
> Sometimes knowing the internals and details can be a disadvantage because
> instead of thinking about the abstract program you are thinking about cpu
> cycles, bit popping, bit twiddling, low level API calls.

How do you think about "the abstract program" if you have no knowledge about 
the program language?
How can you program without knowing what a variable or a while statement is?
Programming is the mapping of an abstract problem into a programming language.
But if you do not know how the programming language works,
how can you then write programs?


> Also, Edsgar Dijkstra was also very much against knowing too many details
> about the CPU or computer hardware, as he though computing was math, not
> engineering of computers.

And how do you do math without knowledge about variables and loops?

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-21 um 09:20 schrieb Lars via Lazarus:
> The issue with console mode programs is students see utterly no use for them.

Why should they not?
A computer is a information processing machine and GUI is not necessary to
process information, it's just a cosmetic thing.
The interaction of a program with the user can be done in text mode too.
Algorithms have nothing to do with GUI or text mode.
If students just want to paint graphics and make a game of every program
then they will never be real programmers.
Not every program must be a game with visual effects.


> GUI apps are of much more use to people as they are flashy and rich with
> widgets, whereas console mode programs seem utterly boring.

What is the use of a program? Entertainment?


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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Tue, October 18, 2016 4:42 am, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:
> One unfortunate situation is that there is not much Pascal software for
> Petri Nets processing , except the following ( which its license is very
> ambiguous means not usable )

Hopefully in these situations, you can find a C dll and then just write a
wrapper, in Pascal, to link the the DLL code.

Any petri related DLL's that you could bind to?

Just because the petri code is written in another language, doesn't mean
you can then use fpc to link to it and write layers around it?

I have no idea of dll's available for petri.. sorry, just offering this
idea. In fact 99 percent of programming today is using other people's code
that is stored away in dll's. The entire operating system is a bunch of
dll's and likely your typical lazarus application only uses 1-10 percent
pascal code and 90 percent DLL code in C.


>
>
> Petri Nets are a vast subject now . There are some Petri Nets processing
> software but their licenses being copy left are not friendly for
> commercial environment .
>

Ahh, the age old license war which I've been a part of and why I prefer
MIT/bsd code...

>
> Actually , it is not compulsory to use Pascal , but Pascal will supply
> the Pascal programming language learners a very good example ,

Again you could also use a combination here: c dll's linked in. If that
works.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Mon, October 17, 2016 3:07 am, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:
> On 2016-10-17 09:52, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> - do I need know how/why the GUI builder creates the code that makes a
>> Button visible on a Form and  my Event handler be called when a button
>> is pressed ?
>
> Yes
>
>
> (I.e. do I need to be able to write the code myself
>
>> without the help of the GUI builder ?)
>
> Yes
>
>
>
>> - do I need to know how the startup code works that make the Form
>> visible on the screen ?
>
> Yes
>
>
>> - do I need to know how the Event-Queue and the checksynchronize()
>> system works ?
>
> If you are using queues and Synchronise, then Yes.
>
>
>
>> - do I need to know what system, calls the pascal program performs ?
>>
>
> No
>
>
>
> The rest of your questions were just flame bait so don't deserve an
> answer.
>
>
> If you don't know any of the above, how do you expect to do any
> debugging? Yes, debugging is a major part of being a programmer.


I can chime in on this flame here. Although debugging is a major part of a
lot of programmers life, it SHOULD NOT be.  We should be developing
applications knowing the entire source code of the application in our
minds, without just knowing little tiny bits of the system and "Winging
it".

Today's bloatware applications are so large no one can understand them
which is what attracts me to systems like Oberon by Nik. Wirth, and
OpenBSD, and other small systems that are simple enough you can understand
them in a month of reading about them (the basics).

Also Plan9 from bell labs... and small programming languages, like oberon,
are very interesting because they go against today's trends of bloatware
like Firefox (as much as I love firefox) and Lisp, or Emacs.

The idea that programmers spend much of their efforts debugging, is a bug,
not a feature. Debugging itself, is a bug in a programmers life, that
should be fixed. I love a small program that I rarely debug that's been
running on a server for years without being touched. I dislike so much
apps that need "maintenance".
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Lars via Lazarus]

On Mon, October 17, 2016 2:52 am, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
> On 14.10.2016 16:10, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:
>
>>
>> In most cases they never get to the step "find out how it works".
>> If it works, nobody wants to invest time anymore to look under the hood.
>>  So they always operate on the surface and repeat the same
>> subobtimal programming over and over again because they don't know how to
>> do it better.
>>
> That is absolutely correct.
>
>
> But the point where the "knowing how it works" is just a matter of
> deliberate choice (or the professor, the student or the situation you get
> in and need to crawl deeper into the complexity of the matter.-
>
>
> - do I need know how/why the GUI builder creates the code that makes a
> Button visible on a Form and  my Event handler be called when a button
> is pressed ?  (I.e. do I need to be able to write the code myself without
> the help of the GUI builder ?)
>

Sometimes knowing the internals and details can be a disadvantage because
instead of thinking about the abstract program you are thinking about cpu
cycles, bit popping, bit twiddling, low level API calls.

Sometimes it's nice to live in La La land of an abstract layer over top so
you can focus on the program construct, instead of low level
implementation details.  I for one, do not like doing pure Win Api calls,
even though that can be so much fun for an intellectual exercise. The
first time I really realized this was when I downloaded the Sysinternals
tools (procmon, taskmon, regmon) now which no longer exist as sysinternals
tools and were purchased by microsoft. I was absolutely fascinated that
Mark R. and friend, wrote those tools in pure winapi... I was beautiful
code.

But I was also disappointed that they would waste their time on such low
level code when a lot of it could have been easily abstracted with a tool
like Delphi, with just some winapi calls directly, and most of the stuff
automated with gui widgets already in a vcl.  They didn't use c++ and did
it in pure c, AFAIR.  It was beautiful code, but then I asked my self..
why? why would you waste your time doing pure api calls? Just as
intellectual exercize?

Sometimes it's nice to live in a fairy land (abstract) over top of all the
low level details.

Also, Edsgar Dijkstra was also very much against knowing too many details
about the CPU or computer hardware, as he though computing was math, not
engineering of computers.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-18 um 16:47 schrieb Michael Schnell via Lazarus:
> If you start with complex stuff that does not yield immediate success (i.e. a 
working program that does something that might be useful) The students will loose 
interest and run away, unless they are nerds like ourselves.

Yes, therefore start with simple procedural (console)
programs that let them have immediate success with
all the elementary things that a program consists of
(variables/types, loops, commands, etc.).
If that is understood you can switch to GUI applications.

If you do it the other way round you only delay the date
of frustration but you do not avoid it.


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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 6:23 AM, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> Am 2016-10-18 um 12:53 schrieb Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus:
> > Order of teaching is not so critical : As you say , write a GUI program
> for events : Say : "Now it is necessary to define what will be done for the
> events ? ... Its way is the following : Write your program parts in that
> way ..."
>
> IMO the order is extremly important!
> If you start with the fundamental informations
> (how does the processor work in general,
> how are variables stored (stack/heap/etc.),
> what does the processor do in loops, etc.)
> then this information is remembered very well
> because everybody can imagine what goes on in general.
> You can *predict* what will (should) happen in your program.
>
> If you just start with clicking you do not know *why* it works
> (if it works) nor do you know *why* it does not work (if it does not do
> so).
> They would always need someone at hand with exprience to tell them how
> to continue. This can be very frustrating for studends.
>
> Therefore I would always present at least a rough overview about procedural
> programming before starting with objects and events. In the end, the latter
> is still processed in a procedural manner which every programmer should
> know.
>
>
> > My application was like the following ( as a very simple example ) :
> > Pose a problem "Display your name ."
> > After this is done :
> > "Display your name 10 times ."
> > The students were not able to write their programs . Then , solution was
> > "You should use a loop ."
> > "A loop is defined in the following ways : ... "
> > Such an approach is used frequently in Mathematics text books :
> > Subject text .
> > Problems ..
> > Last problems were "Unsolvable" with the above text .
> > Solution :
> > "Read the next chapter ..."
> > Such approaches are "the Art of Teaching" ...
>
> IMO this "approach" has a severe drawback:
> The students do not get an overall picture of what
> *can* be done and *how* it can be done.
> If they do not know about loops how should they
> know that they exist? They would need to read *everything*
> that is available and hope to find something helpful.
> That is very frustrating and can lead to suboptimal solutions
> because they get tired of reading yet another chapter and
> instead use something else (like copying the code in the editor 10 times).
>
> --
> ___
>

I have said that

"the Art of Teaching"  ...


Assume that a course is designed by a department , and you are the
instructor .


For example : Course X : Programming using Lazarus

Course outline is the Lazarus components .

What can you do ?


"I am resigning because this course is not well designed ."
or

"I am changing the course outline as I want ." ( which you do not have
authority to do that ) .

or

"Lazarus is this ...  The following parts are necessary to learn to use
when you click ... ( here you will teach what is required which yo
described above ... ) "


Please select an appropriate one .


If you are the designer of the courses you are right what to do .

Problem arises when you are not course designer but an instructor of it .
Then you need to use "the Art of Teaching" with your "the Science of
Teaching" .



Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus]

Am 2016-10-18 um 12:53 schrieb Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus:
> Order of teaching is not so critical : As you say , write a GUI program for events : 
Say : "Now it is necessary to define what will be done for the events ? ... Its way is 
the following : Write your program parts in that way ..."

IMO the order is extremly important!
If you start with the fundamental informations
(how does the processor work in general,
how are variables stored (stack/heap/etc.),
what does the processor do in loops, etc.)
then this information is remembered very well
because everybody can imagine what goes on in general.
You can *predict* what will (should) happen in your program.

If you just start with clicking you do not know *why* it works
(if it works) nor do you know *why* it does not work (if it does not do so).
They would always need someone at hand with exprience to tell them how
to continue. This can be very frustrating for studends.

Therefore I would always present at least a rough overview about procedural
programming before starting with objects and events. In the end, the latter
is still processed in a procedural manner which every programmer should know.


> My application was like the following ( as a very simple example ) :
> Pose a problem "Display your name ."
> After this is done :
> "Display your name 10 times ."
> The students were not able to write their programs . Then , solution was
> "You should use a loop ."
> "A loop is defined in the following ways : ... "
> Such an approach is used frequently in Mathematics text books :
> Subject text .
> Problems ..
> Last problems were "Unsolvable" with the above text .
> Solution :
> "Read the next chapter ..."
> Such approaches are "the Art of Teaching" ...

IMO this "approach" has a severe drawback:
The students do not get an overall picture of what
*can* be done and *how* it can be done.
If they do not know about loops how should they
know that they exist? They would need to read *everything*
that is available and hope to find something helpful.
That is very frustrating and can lead to suboptimal solutions
because they get tired of reading yet another chapter and
instead use something else (like copying the code in the editor 10 times).

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 1:11 AM, Michael Schnell via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On 17.10.2016 21:05, Lars via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> The big issue with teaching using a RAD tool, is welding the program logic
>> into the onclick events, instead of decoupling the logic in separate
>> procedures that can be reused elsewhere.
>>
> As you point out in the text this is as well a pro (easy fast solving of
> small unitary tasks) as a con (bad reusability, bad code when doing big
> projects).
>
> But as Learning of course starts with doing small unitary tasks RAD
> obviously is a great help to fight the FUD and prejudice the students might
> have regarding programming.
>
> Of course it's great to dedicate a (later) lesson to un-RAD-ing your code
> in order to be prepared for bigger tasks.
>
> -Michael
>
> --
> ___
>




Order of teaching is not so critical : As you say , write a GUI program for
events : Say : "Now it is necessary to define what will be done for the
events ? ... Its way is the following : Write your program parts in that
way ..."


My application was like the following ( as a very simple example ) :

Pose a problem "Display your name ."
After this is done :

"Display your name 10 times ."

The students were not able to write their programs . Then , solution was
"You should use a loop ."
"A loop is defined in the following ways : ... "


Such an approach is used frequently in Mathematics text books :


Subject text .

Problems ..

Last problems were "Unsolvable" with the above text .

Solution :
"Read the next chapter ..."


.


Such approaches are "the Art of Teaching" ...



Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 17.10.2016 21:05, Lars via Lazarus wrote:

The big issue with teaching using a RAD tool, is welding the program logic
into the onclick events, instead of decoupling the logic in separate
procedures that can be reused elsewhere.
As you point out in the text this is as well a pro (easy fast solving of 
small unitary tasks) as a con (bad reusability, bad code when doing big 
projects).


But as Learning of course starts with doing small unitary tasks RAD 
obviously is a great help to fight the FUD and prejudice the students 
might have regarding programming.


Of course it's great to dedicate a (later) lesson to un-RAD-ing your 
code in order to be prepared for bigger tasks.


-Michael

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Travis Ayres via Lazarus]

I'm all for this effort, and hope it leads to new and modern tutorials,
books or notes that would be useful for others that use FreePascal/Lazarus
to convey graphical system interactions. If there's any need to proofread
such materials, I'll gladly help out!

On Oct 17, 2016 6:32 PM, "Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus" <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:



On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 12:05 PM, Lars via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> > On 14/10/16 08:30, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
> >
> >
> > Of course there are decent drawbacks regarding relying too much on RAD
> > and about not really understanding the fundamentals behind it. But in the
> > end the addressees are non-computer engineers.
>
> The big issue with teaching using a RAD tool, is welding the program logic
> into the onclick events, instead of decoupling the logic in separate
> procedures that can be reused elsewhere.  RAD tools are superior at
> prototyping... I can't believe how awesome they are at that. They are
> inferior, however, when it comes to bad habits being brought on.  With
> this warning, RAD tools can still be very useful for writing solid
> programs, as long as one knows this warning ahead of time.
>
> When I first learned delphi I made the mistake of putting code in the
> onClick events and similar, and then when you expand your app later you
> realize all that code is welded in place and cannot be reused outside of
> the events.
>
> Of course decoupling the logic from the GUI leads to more layers of code.
>
>
-




> How I got rid of my bad habits when I first learned delphi: I started
> writing console apps with no object oriented programming, no events, and
> learned that not everything is a click event in computer programming.
>
>

-


My opinion is that the above ideas are really very good to be applied
during teaching :
First , teach language on , let's say , "atomic" problems . Then , use
these "atomic" concepts in further problems either embedded in a GUI or
console program .

One obvious point is that an "event" driven programming knowledge is a must
to become a competent programmer . The problem is how this can be learned .
Without knowing how to program an algorithm when a related event is
occurred , will bring any one to nothing means ( not to a success ) .

-



> People late in the game (learned programming when GUI's were available)
> and have no experience with console mode apps will earn some bad habits
> because of the GUI oriented programming. Those with experience in other
> areas of programming such as old Dos programs, web programs (basically
> like a dos or unix console program) will learn different ways of
> organizing code without everything being tied to a GUI event driven code.
>
> I suppose even doing a plain Win32 API app with no delphi code (pure win
> api) would help someone learn how to organize code from a second opinion
> view, without being forced to use the event driven system you were given
> by the RAD tool.
>
>

-



> Of course, also learning other programming languages helps (although, IMO
> learning too many brain dead languages and hip cool ones will not help, as
> much as others claim... Basic programmers from the 80's or 70's still
> think in GOTO's and line numbers)
> --
>


-



With respect to researches ( I am not able to supply links now because this
view is based on old times readings , but I am sure that such research
findings can be found ) ,

people ( mostly ) uses a "primary" language for her/his profession and a
"secondary" language for some her/his works as an additional tool .

This shows that during teaching , this feature should be taken into
consideration : Guide the students to discover which language she/he will
prefer to use in much of her/his works , and attempt to teach that language
in a "best" way to be used by the students in their profession .

A similar approach should also be used for a "secondary" language .

If a language is taught just for fun or whatever else other than being a
possible candidate for "primary" or "secondary" is likely that , if it not
a necessity for the learner , is only a waste of everything is involved .



Mehmet Erol Sanliturk



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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

Generally speaking:

Getting confronted with the limits,  imposed by lack of knowledge to 
your work to get a task done is a great motivation for learning.


Being forced by the tutor to learn stuff you don't immediately need to 
get the task at hand done is a great motivation to give up.


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-17 09:52, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
>   - do I need know how/why the GUI builder creates the code that makes a 
> Button visible on a Form and  my Event handler be called when a button 
> is pressed ?

Yes

  (I.e. do I need to be able to write the code myself
> without the help of the GUI builder ?)

Yes


>   - do I need to know how the startup code works that make the Form 
> visible on the screen ?

Yes

>   - do I need to know how the Event-Queue and the checksynchronize() 
> system works ?

If you are using queues and Synchronise, then Yes.


>   - do I need to know what system, calls the pascal program performs ?

No


The rest of your questions were just flame bait so don't deserve an answer.


If you don't know any of the above, how do you expect to do any
debugging? Yes, debugging is a major part of being a programmer.

You made the [totally wrong] comparison earlier about learning to drive
a car and knowing how the engine is constructed. Well, a programmer is
not the driver of the car, he/she is the engineer designing and building
the car. The driver is more like the end-user using your program. So
YES, a programmer needs to know how the internals of a program works and
fits together, after all, it is the programmer that designs the program
and puts it together (coding).


Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 14.10.2016 16:10, Jürgen Hestermann via Lazarus wrote:


In most cases they never get to the step "find out how it works".
If it works, nobody wants to invest time anymore to look under the hood.
So they always operate on the surface and repeat the same
subobtimal programming over and over again
because they don't know how to do it better.


That is absolutely correct.

But the point where the "knowing how it works" is just a matter of 
deliberate choice (or the professor, the student or the situation you 
get in and need to crawl deeper into the complexity of the matter.-



 - do I need know how/why the GUI builder creates the code that makes a 
Button visible on a Form and  my Event handler be called when a button 
is pressed ?  (I.e. do I need to be able to write the code myself 
without the help of the GUI builder ?)


 - do I need to know how the startup code works that make the Form 
visible on the screen ?


 - do I need to know how the Event-Queue and the checksynchronize() 
system works ?


 - do I need to know what system, calls the pascal program performs ?

 - do I need to know what ASM code is generated from a pascal 
instruction ?


 - do I need to know how semaphores are done by atomic instructions ?

 - do I need to tell the difference between CISC and RISC ?

 - do I need to know what microcode the CPU runs ?

 - do I need to know how a transistor works ?

 - do I need to know how dotating silicone is done ?

In most cases it's better to first concentrate on the task at hand and 
dig deeper if necessary.


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[el es via Lazarus]

On 14-Oct-16 17:16, Reimar Grabowski via Lazarus wrote:

On Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:24:04 +0100
Lukasz Sokol via Lazarus  wrote:


D'oh, really.



D'oh, really? (fixed that for you)

Answer: No (well actually the part about matlab I meant serious)



Ah Matlab. Happy TU days. Calculating 2D FFT of a picture or trying to 
implement discrete audio filters with just a couple of lines of code ;)
Transformation of bitmaps through 2D FFT, applying bandpass filters and 
rev-2D-FFT ;)



Reminder to myself:
The interwebz dozn't get sarcazm
The interwebz dozn't get sarcazm
The interwebz dozn't get sarcazm



if you want sarcasm, go xkcd (386) ;)


R.



el es

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Reimar Grabowski via Lazarus]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2016 16:24:04 +0100
Lukasz Sokol via Lazarus  wrote:

> D'oh, really.

> D'oh, really? (fixed that for you)
Answer: No (well actually the part about matlab I meant serious)

Reminder to myself:
The interwebz dozn't get sarcazm
The interwebz dozn't get sarcazm
The interwebz dozn't get sarcazm

R.
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Friday 14 October 2016 13:08:13 Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:

>
> In previous years
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/mseide-msegui/
>
> was limited to Linux .

MSEide+MSEgui runs on Windows and Linux from start at 1999. Since several 
years it runs on FreeBSD too.

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Friday 14 October 2016 10:50:28 Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
>
> 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) .
>
Separating GUI and program logic is also possible with RAD. See for example 
MSEkicadBOM, the application I am currently working on.
https://gitlab.com/mseide-msegui/mseuniverse/tree/master/tools/kicad/bom
It is a component and footprint database program for KiCad.

It consists of a datamodule with the program logic and the database and action 
components:
http://mseide-msegui.sourceforge.net/pics/kicadbommainmo.png

a mainform with the mainmenu, GUI actions and the main datagrid:
http://mseide-msegui.sourceforge.net/pics/kicadbommainfo.png

and several editforms:
http://mseide-msegui.sourceforge.net/pics/kicadbomcomponented.png

The editforms inherit from a common base editform with base functionality 
(datasource, navigator, timestamp display, window close logic...) and have no 
or GUI-code only. The connection GUI<>datamodule is made with TDataSource, 
action- and ifi-dataendpoint-components.

If done right the RAD-approach is productive and convenient, the projects are 
easily extendable and maintainable.

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-14 12:08, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:
> program can not be compiled as a Lazarus program or an fpGUI program as it
> is like compiling the same program by Delphi ( with required compiler
> directives ) . It is necessary either use Lazarus or fpGUI programming .

I am yet to see that in reality! [excluding all but he most basic "Hello
World" programs]

I've never come across a real-world Delphi project that can simply be
opened in Lazarus IDE and compiles 100% correctly first time. As proof
of that, it would also explain why Lazarus IDE includes the "Tools ->
Delphi conversion" set of menu items, which does a one-way conversion
(thus you can't go back to Delphi).

Saying that, yes it is partly possible to have a single project that is
compilable in both Delphi and Lazarus, but it requires significant
amounts of changes and compromises. I don't see any benefit in having
dual compiler and dual toolkit support in a single project.


> As an example , I want to convert my program to fpGUI . If I can do it , it
> may be more easy to convert it to C program. To convert it to fpGUI
> program is a hard problem because it is necessary to convert all of the GUI
> related parts.

And you think moving to C with a totally different GUI toolkit is any
easier? I seriously doubt that. I think it is pretty straight forward to
convert a Lazarus project to fpGUI - I've done it many times with
components and whole applications. It's not a 5 minute job, but will be
significantly less effort that moving to C/C++ and using GTK, Qt or
wxWidgets etc.


> was limited to Linux . I do not know whether the same program can be
> compiled as a  Lazarus or MSEide program .

GUI programs - definitely not.  Lazarus LCL and MSEgui are very
different toolkits. Much more so than LCL vs fpGUI.



Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 3:48 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On 2016-10-13 23:13, Erwin van den Bosch via Lazarus wrote:
> > The problem is that you should separate your business logic and
> > the GUI. 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)
>
> Exactly why I use tiOPF for every application I write - even
> non-Database applications. Also exactly why I implemented the MGM
> (Model-GUI-Mediator) design pattern for use with VCL, LCL and fpGUI
> Toolkit - also included in the tiOPF repository.
>
> All my form units are now VERY empty as all the real functionality lives
> in mediators. This also makes unit testing of my code much easier.
>
>
> > Another problem with the RAD way is that a lot is stored in forms (.lfm
> > files) and it's difficult to see/notice changes to those files.
>
> And exactly why I designed the fpGUI Visual Forms Designer to generate
> actual Object Pascal code in a AfterCreate() method, instead of using
> *.lfm or *.dfm files.  I now have one unit in my source code revision
> system that shows all changes (no need review two files for form
> changes), I can easily do a search & replace for form components and
> other code, and I also don't need to fire up a visual form designer if I
> just want to make one small tweak to a property.
>
>
> Regards,
>   Graeme
>
> --
> fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
> http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/
>
> My public PGP key:  http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp
> --
> ___
>



I am reading/studying the fpGUI system . The problem here is that it is NOT
an alternative to , let's say , Lazarus , in the sense that , the SAME
program can not be compiled as a Lazarus program or an fpGUI program as it
is like compiling the same program by Delphi ( with required compiler
directives ) . It is necessary either use Lazarus or fpGUI programming .

As an example , I want to convert my program to fpGUI . If I can do it , it
may be more easy to convert it to C program . To convert it to fpGUI
program is a hard problem because it is necessary to convert all of the GUI
related parts ( because all of the unit names are different , I did not
study their contents very much  ) .


In previous years

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mseide-msegui/

was limited to Linux . I do not know whether the same program can be
compiled as a  Lazarus or MSEide program .

During teaching , it is necessary to take care about such differences .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-14 12:01, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:
> and maybe incite them every now and again

Oops, that meant to read: "...and maybe entice them..."

Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-14 09:18, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
> The OP explained that his main purpose is to introduce more fun in the 
> education.  That can be done by plunging into programming directly with 
> GUI development.

So for somebody that doesn't know anything about programming, then
suddenly using a Visual Form Designer, but when they look at the code
that was generated they have NO idea what is going on. The don't know
what a Class is, they don't know what Inheritance is. They don't know
what Event Handlers are, what Properties are, what's the difference
between 'var' and 'const' parameters etc.

They will be thrown into the deep end and sink. The result - if they
keep their head above water - they become "programmers" like that
rubbish Visual Basic generation we saw in the late 90's, early 2000's.
Writing horrific code because they actually don't have a clue what they
are doing.

Yeah, that sounds great!  [major sarcasm]

Start with the fundamentals, and maybe incite them every now and again
with the same example done in a GUI environment. Just enough to keep
them interested and excited in programming, but you have to get those
fundamentals down, otherwise they have no base to build on.

Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-13 23:13, Erwin van den Bosch via Lazarus wrote:
> The problem is that you should separate your business logic and 
> the GUI. 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)

Exactly why I use tiOPF for every application I write - even
non-Database applications. Also exactly why I implemented the MGM
(Model-GUI-Mediator) design pattern for use with VCL, LCL and fpGUI
Toolkit - also included in the tiOPF repository.

All my form units are now VERY empty as all the real functionality lives
in mediators. This also makes unit testing of my code much easier.


> Another problem with the RAD way is that a lot is stored in forms (.lfm 
> files) and it's difficult to see/notice changes to those files. 

And exactly why I designed the fpGUI Visual Forms Designer to generate
actual Object Pascal code in a AfterCreate() method, instead of using
*.lfm or *.dfm files.  I now have one unit in my source code revision
system that shows all changes (no need review two files for form
changes), I can easily do a search & replace for form components and
other code, and I also don't need to fire up a visual form designer if I
just want to make one small tweak to a property.


Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 1:50 AM, Michael Schnell via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
> "


The above paragraph is not correct very much , because the computer
engineers and the other engineers are different professions . The other
engineers are using computer programming to solve their own problems , the
computer engineers are using computer programming to solve other people's
problems .



Mehmet Erol Sanliturk




> 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
>
> --
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 1:18 AM, Michael Schnell via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On 13.10.2016 10:20, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> +1
>> That would be the best solution. GUI programming is based on
>> fundamentals than need to be understood first.
>>
>
> -1 !!
>
> The OP explained that his main purpose is to introduce more fun in the
> education.  That can be done by plunging into programming directly with GUI
> development.
>
> This is why RAD had been invented.
>
> Of course there are decent drawbacks regarding relying too much on RAD and
> about not really understanding the fundamentals behind it.
>
> But in the end the addressees are non-computer engineers.
>
> -Michael
> --
> ___
>


As an engineer , they need to write programs for doing computations not
available in ready-made packages . Therefore , they need to a sufficient
knowledge to write programs . This can be achieved in a good balance of
learning programming itself and GUI application .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

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

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 13.10.2016 10:20, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:

+1
That would be the best solution. GUI programming is based on
fundamentals than need to be understood first.


-1 !!

The OP explained that his main purpose is to introduce more fun in the 
education.  That can be done by plunging into programming directly with 
GUI development.


This is why RAD had been invented.

Of course there are decent drawbacks regarding relying too much on RAD 
and about not really understanding the fundamentals behind it.


But in the end the addressees are non-computer engineers.

-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[zeljko via Lazarus]

On 10/14/2016 08:28 AM, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:


I consider QT a very big trap . Please be careful about its license if
you want to develop commercial software and also if you want to teach
computer programming to the students that they will work for commercial
companies .


I am seeing many student projects in , especially , Github , which I
consider a total disaster for the students because over time , when they
start as a worker in a commercial company , they will not be able to use
their knowledge if the company does not buy a commercial license from QT
owner .


Trap is the following : QT is using LGPLv2 license in some parts . This
seems to be a good choice , BUT , the same sources are using in some
parts LGPLv3 ( Three ) license . Since software is developed or
contributions accepted by QT owner , this LGPLv3 license is NOT
compulsory , means they can have it LGPLv2 license .  Really , I
consider GPLv3/LGPLv3 licenses not suitable for a service to humanity as
a whole because they are very hostile to commercial companies . If any
LGPLv3 part is used , is only a disaster for all of the other software .
In QT , this fact is a seemingly hidden trap .


AFAIK, LGPLv3 is applied only to Qt extra modules (like QVirtualKeyboard 
etc), but not to the core lib which is LGPLv2, and we are using core/gui 
lib only for lazarus, so no problems with commercial usage.


zeljko

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 3:13 PM, Erwin van den Bosch via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> Although I use Free Pascal/Lazarus a lot (because we have a lot of
> existing pascal code) I think C++ and some GUI framework like QT might be a
> better option. C/C++ is the number one used programming language. C/C++
> code is much more portable to other systems. There are more compilers. QT
> has a very nice IDE (QT Creator) and is available for Windows, Mac and
> Linux. Nobody is using Pascal these days. So why learn it?
>
> 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.
> 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)
> Another problem with the RAD way is that a lot is stored in forms (.lfm
> files) and it's difficult to see/notice changes to those files. They can be
> very big and it's difficult to see if some control is missing, for example,
> an event or so. The Lazarus IDE does frequently change the properties of
> controls on the form. For example the width and the height properties
> frequently change with no reason as it seems. As specially when you do
> development on both Windows and Linux. That makes tracking code changes
> (and so potential new bugs) not very easy.
>
> Regards,
> Erwin
>



I consider QT a very big trap . Please be careful about its license if you
want to develop commercial software and also if you want to teach computer
programming to the students that they will work for commercial companies .


I am seeing many student projects in , especially , Github , which I
consider a total disaster for the students because over time , when they
start as a worker in a commercial company , they will not be able to use
their knowledge if the company does not buy a commercial license from QT
owner .


Trap is the following : QT is using LGPLv2 license in some parts . This
seems to be a good choice , BUT , the same sources are using in some parts
LGPLv3 ( Three ) license . Since software is developed or contributions
accepted by QT owner , this LGPLv3 license is NOT compulsory , means they
can have it LGPLv2 license .  Really , I consider GPLv3/LGPLv3 licenses not
suitable for a service to humanity as a whole because they are very hostile
to commercial companies . If any LGPLv3 part is used , is only a disaster
for all of the other software . In QT , this fact is a seemingly hidden
trap .


I am not a commercial person . I am a retiree of the Government of Turkey
from a State University .
I have attempted to a  business to produce furniture , it turned to be a
disaster . I decided that business activities is not for me . I am trying
to produce software to supply it to market just to obtain money at least to
support its maintenance . If more money , there may be possibility to
produce more software .


I know that software development is an extremely costly process . To try to
enforce commercial companies to make their software open source
unconditionally , really it is not a friendly action .
Or trying to entrap into a situation that they will be enforced to buy a
software by tricking them in any way .



It is not my business to discuss the issues about QT , but it is necessary
to be at least friendly to the people . My trouble is that point . To
expect that everyone ( especially students ) will know  details of the
licenses and their legal consequences is not very realistic . Here , main
responsibility lies on the schools and their instructors . A huge number of
student projects ( in order of many ten thousands ) even does not contain
any single sentence about their license . With this structure , no one of
the students in job search can use their projects to show their
achievements because most of the project copyrights are belong to their
universities . When a software does not contain any explicit license about
what can be done with it , its rule is with respect to copyright laws : You
can NOT touch to this !
So simply .


Since I have mentioned the above issue about student projects , I want to
also mention the following disastrous issue about them :


Quality of projects is so low that ( even in best universities of the world
) , the only my feeling was a big disappointment and sorrow . It is not
necessary to each everything listed in a manual of a programming language ,
but teach a subset that , at least the student can write a program which
can be used in a production environment with its inherent quality . It is
not important of its size also , but its quality .
Quality of software is the most important feature . Use knowledge found in
"Software Engineering" books in a way that it can be used even in an
introductory course .

A starting point may be


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_process


Instead of 

Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Paul Breneman via Lazarus]

On 10/13/2016 05:13 PM, Erwin van den Bosch via Lazarus wrote:
...

Another problem with the RAD way is that a lot is stored in forms (.lfm
files) and it's difficult to see/notice changes to those files. They can
be very big and it's difficult to see if some control is missing, for
example, an event or so. The Lazarus IDE does frequently change the
properties of controls on the form. For example the width and the height
properties frequently change with no reason as it seems. As specially
when you do development on both Windows and Linux. That makes tracking
code changes (and so potential new bugs) not very easy.

Regards,
Erwin


I've used Beyond Compare since (about) 1995 to always compare my form files.

Here is a related topic:
Cleaning up the Delphi uses statements
http://brenemanlabs.com/Uses.htm

Regards,
Paul
www.ControlPascal.com

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Erwin van den Bosch via Lazarus]

Although I use Free Pascal/Lazarus a lot (because we have a lot of 
existing pascal code) I think C++ and some GUI framework like QT might 
be a better option. C/C++ is the number one used programming language. 
C/C++ code is much more portable to other systems. There are more 
compilers. QT has a very nice IDE (QT Creator) and is available for 
Windows, Mac and Linux. Nobody is using Pascal these days. So why learn it?


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. 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)
Another problem with the RAD way is that a lot is stored in forms (.lfm 
files) and it's difficult to see/notice changes to those files. They can 
be very big and it's difficult to see if some control is missing, for 
example, an event or so. The Lazarus IDE does frequently change the 
properties of controls on the form. For example the width and the height 
properties frequently change with no reason as it seems. As specially 
when you do development on both Windows and Linux. That makes tracking 
code changes (and so potential new bugs) not very easy.


Regards,
Erwin

Op 12-10-2016 om 20:10 schreef Adrian De Armas via Lazarus:

Hello everyone,
I am a professor of "introduction to programming". Currently we are 
working with matlab and c.


Today I had a meeting about doing the module more interesting to the 
students. Currently we teach algorithms making console applications 
and usually I receive questions like "Why don't we do something more 
modern?".


I recommended that we should use Pascal in General and Lazarus in 
particular to teach how to create rich GUI Applications and to my 
surprise the idea was well recieved. Now I have to make suggestions 
about how to prepare the module starting from zero. Students do not 
know how to program and I need to include subjects as: variable 
declaration, operations, if, while, for, functions and procedure, 
arrays and multidimensional arrays.


I would love to know what you think about making the transition from 
console to GUI.

This is an exciting opportunity I'd love to make it right.

Regards




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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-13 21:13, Martin Collins via Lazarus wrote:
> My coding is just a hobby that I enjoy, but I would like to be able to 
> do it well and also somehow know that I am. Unfortunately I come from a 
> marine (ships) background not from an IT one. No formal training in 
> programming.

You background doesn't matter. Many have found there way into
programming from whatever they did before. Formal training is also not a
requirement for becoming a good or even excellent programming. I know
many excellent self-taught programmers. Most things programmers do are
all self-taught anyway. Formal training just plants the seed. From what
you described (your willingness to learn by reading various programming
books), it seems you are well on your way to become a better programmer.
You should give yourself more credit. :-)


> on this mailing list recommend as the best reference publication for 
> teaching a) programming concepts in general, & b) pascal programming 
> specifically?

With the availability of the Internet, there are tons of useful
information out there - all for free. You just need the willingness to
read, learn and practice. My biggest leap in improving my programming
skills was when I started studying Design Patterns.


Regards,
  Graeme

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My public PGP key:  http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Giuliano Colla via Lazarus]

Il 13/10/2016 16:48, Reimar Grabowski via Lazarus ha scritto:


If you want modern, teach them Java and let the programs run on their phones or 
keep doing console programs and do the GUI in JS (aka web applications). ^^


I find very unlikely that civil, environmental and bio engineers will 
find of any use learning how to write program for their phones, or for 
developing web applications. On the contrary they may need to develop 
typical computer applications, where a traditional programming language 
provides the required efficiency, and RAD can be very important bonus, 
to get it quickly done.


I have always found that following no matter what the most "modern" 
technology is totally wrong and misleading. One should be aware of what 
is available, of course, but then one should always select the most 
"appropriate" technology, and not be influenced by what is "modern".


Tombstones are still made of stone, a stone age technology, just because 
it still turns out to be the most appropriate technology to cover a grave.


Giuliano

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Collins via Lazarus]

Darn it, sounds like Graeme is describing me!

I wandered into Lazarus/Free Pascal a few years ago after enjoying 
writing VBA code in Excel. Admittedly I always found my (VBA) code 
sloppy and wrote some odd code just to make things work!


My coding is just a hobby that I enjoy, but I would like to be able to 
do it well and also somehow know that I am. Unfortunately I come from a 
marine (ships) background not from an IT one. No formal training in 
programming. I'm a lonely Linux user and an even more lonely pascal 
coder, so I only have this mailinglist to "litmus test" my "skills" 
against. Sometimes I feel like I'm being a pain but no one has yet been 
rude to me, just helpful which I appreciate ;-)


When I see a recommendation from someone on this list, I normally go for 
it. Therefore just ordered a copy of An Introduction To Methodical 
Programming, thanks Tony. I am envious of the students of Adrian De 
Armas who will receive some formal training.


I have a lot of books on pascal programming, pascal manuals (turbo 5.5), 
even Kylix & Delphi 3 tomes including Lazarus The Complete Guide that 
all threaten to break my shelves at any moment. All these books have 
been a great help to me, but out of interest what would the IT graduates 
on this mailing list recommend as the best reference publication for 
teaching a) programming concepts in general, & b) pascal programming 
specifically?


Thanks, Martin


On 13/10/16 09:20, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus wrote:


.. We don't want another
whole generation of Visual Basic programmers. The Visual Basic 4-6
programs I had seen and unfortunately had to maintain were the sloppiest
code I've ever seen - all written by "programmers" that dived straight
into VB with no prior programming experience.


Regards,
   Graeme



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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 7:04 AM, Michael Schnell via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On 13.10.2016 15:32, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus wrote:
>
>> When a problem tends to be very large , Pascal is losing its power
>> because of its non-standard ( actually related standards are dead and not
>> maintained and not adhered ) structure .
>>
> I do know several very large systems done in Delphi. The only real
> downside I see is that they are not portable to Linux and/or ARM.
>
> -Michael
> --
> ___
>



This is the real problem as you said : Portability among different
operating systems .

As an example : All of the super computers are using Linux ( there are very
few exceptions being the smallest super computers in "500 super computers
list" using Windows  ) .

Development in Delphi is no use in that environment .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Thursday 13 October 2016 16:27:44 Martin Schreiber wrote:

A better screenshot who shows what the binary value displays do:
http://mseide-msegui.sourceforge.net/pics/rechenkunst.png

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Chris Kelling via Lazarus]

Because there are some basic controls that use array logic (lists, combo 
boxes, even edit boxes when dealing with positions of characters in a 
string), I'd introduce the concept with the variables. If the student 
can make the connection between the visual controls and concept of array 
logic, the inserting, selecting, and manipulation of that data should be 
easy to grasp.


Considering your audience, it should fit in with stuff they are already 
familiar with, just not thought of in the way of how a computer 
organizes memory?  Meh, may be I'm getting too far down into the weeds.


On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 9:37 AM, Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:


First of all,
Thank you all who spent your time reading and suggesting about this 
subject.
First, some clarifications. When I wrote "modern" my comparison was 
againts

console applications. Even those students who won't do a line of code
except in my class realize that console applications are not what they 
have

been using since they approached to a computer.

Introducing GUI is an efford to make the module more attractive to the
students (the droupout rate is high). The module is taught as a basic
science. All my students will be civil, environmental or bio engineers 
but
not computer engineers. So I have two modules (Introduction to 
programming

and advanced programming) to give them an idea of what programming is.

My main focus now is "introduction to programming". It is a 
four-months
course and given your advice, I will split the course in two months 
parts.


First part will be all console applications where I will introduce the
basics of pascal:

   - structure of a pascal program
   - variable declarations (integers, doubles, strings...)
   - read, readln, write, writeln
   - operations (+. -, *, /)
   - if, case, while, for, repeat/until
   - procedures and functions
   - algorithms like getting prime numbers, fibonacci series, etc

The second part will introduce:

   - GUI environment. Dropping components on a form and arrange them.
   Changing properties.
   - Event oriented programming
   - simple and multidimensional arrays
   - ¿files?

I will use some specific components to help the transition for 
example:

var
  a, b, c: integer
begin
  ...bla..bla...
c=a+b;
end;

In GUI a, b, and c will be spinedits with a "value" integer property 
so I

can write:

spineditc.value := spinedita.value+spineditb.value;

instead of

editc.Text := IntToStr(StrToInt(Edita.Text)+StrToInt(Editb.Text));

Comboboxes and list control will be used in case statements with the
"ItemIndex" property

Memo.Lines and arrays will be given at the same time...
etc...

What do you think?


Regards











2016-10-13 7:02 GMT-03:00 Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org>:


On 2016-10-13 10:04, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:

IMHO it's a shame, but new
projects in Pascal seem to be declining,


That's got nothing to do with the Object Pascal being modern or not 
(I

think it is modern enough). The decline is about marketing and
popularity contests, and management decisions (how easy is it to 
replace

a Object Pascal developers vs a Java developer).

Delphi being sold every other year doesn't help with the stability of
Object Pascal in the marketplace either.

Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 3:02 AM, Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> On 2016-10-13 10:04, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
> > IMHO it's a shame, but new
> > projects in Pascal seem to be declining,
>
> That's got nothing to do with the Object Pascal being modern or not (I
> think it is modern enough). The decline is about marketing and
> popularity contests, and management decisions (how easy is it to replace
> a Object Pascal developers vs a Java developer).
>
> Delphi being sold every other year doesn't help with the stability of
> Object Pascal in the marketplace either.
>
> Regards,
>   Graeme
>
> --
> ___
>



Free Pascal is a "Turing complete" and "Resource complete" language , means
it is not "lower" than any other programming language whatever it is .

The unfortunate situation is that Free Pascal ( and  Lazarus ) is alone ,
i.e., there is no any other competing compiler production SIMILAR to Free
Pascal . Also Free Pascal is a voluntary project means the developers can
not devote their times solely to develop ( maintain ) the Free Pascal
because they a "life" to pursue .

In a commercial environment such a structure can not be used for a "life
critical" component as used "programming language" , because there is no
any alternative . Delphi can not be considered as an alternative due to
reasons about their development and maintenance policies and it is also
"monopoly" naturally because there is no any alternative SIMILAR compiler .


I am using Free Pascal . I have abandoned Delphi , I did not buy a new
version of it because it is for only a single operating system . Now , I
will convert my program to C ( around 12 000 procedures ) where there is no
any converter which can convert such a program . In that respect , I
consider my program ( about data base programming language and interpreter
) as went into nearly scratch .


Main reason is that in such a program generated code is correct but when an
error is occurring it is not possible to its place or reason of it .
Debugging tools are useless because they are very difficult to use .


As a result , Pascal is a dead language , but a very useful and nice
language to teach programming concepts . For small problems it is very good
, but now , problem definitions started to become very complex . When a
problem tends to be very large , Pascal is losing its power because of its
non-standard ( actually related standards are dead and not maintained and
not adhered ) structure .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-13 10:04, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:
> IMHO it's a shame, but new 
> projects in Pascal seem to be declining,

That's got nothing to do with the Object Pascal being modern or not (I
think it is modern enough). The decline is about marketing and
popularity contests, and management decisions (how easy is it to replace
a Object Pascal developers vs a Java developer).

Delphi being sold every other year doesn't help with the stability of
Object Pascal in the marketplace either.

Regards,
  Graeme

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Michael Schnell via Lazarus]

On 12.10.2016 20:10, Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:
teach how to create rich GUI Applications and to my surprise the idea 
was well recieved. Now I have to make suggestions about how to prepar
The GUI development in Lazarus is not "modern" at all (but IMHO a *very* 
decent way to do a GUI).


Embarcadero Delphi changed to the "FireMonkey" GUI builder, that is 
intended to do a "modern" "dynamic" GUI, more suitable for 
mobile-trained users.


Regarding building a GUI, the "RAD" paradigm seems not to to be widely 
accepted any more, but a dedicated GUI builder, separated from the 
language code, is recommended in many places, even though a lot more 
clumsy than Delphi-alike RAD.


-Michael
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Graeme Geldenhuys via Lazarus]

On 2016-10-13 06:33, LacaK via Lazarus wrote:
> I understand, that black/white window does not look modern. You can 
> introduce 2 courses:
> 1. Introduction to Pascal (Object Pascal)
> 2. GUI programing

+1

That would be the best solution. GUI programming is based on
fundamentals than need to be understood first. We don't want another
whole generation of Visual Basic programmers. The Visual Basic 4-6
programs I had seen and unfortunately had to maintain were the sloppiest
code I've ever seen - all written by "programmers" that dived straight
into VB with no prior programming experience.


Regards,
  Graeme

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/

My public PGP key:  http://tinyurl.com/graeme-pgp
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Martin Schreiber via Lazarus]

On Wednesday 12 October 2016 20:10:50 Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:

> Today I had a meeting about doing the module more interesting to the
> students. Currently we teach algorithms making console applications and
> usually I receive questions like "Why don't we do something more modern?".
>
I made such an experiment with Free Pascal and MSEide+MSEgui:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mseuniverse/files/book/
"programmierspass_0_1.zip" contains the text and example code (German).

Martin
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[LacaK via Lazarus]

I would also caution against starting on GUI programming too early.

+1
(few years ago I have teached programing on school in our city. I am not 
a techaer, but school lost teacher and was not able to find someone else)
I have used FreePascal + Lazarus for my courses, but we have used only 
project type of "Program" (so no LCL GUI), exactly for reasons what was 
mentioned.


I understand, that black/white window does not look modern. You can 
introduce 2 courses:

1. Introduction to Pascal (Object Pascal)
2. GUI programing

L.

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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Tony Whyman via Lazarus]

When I read your post ,it sent me back to read the Introduction to 
Nicklaus Wirth's original "Pascal user Manual and Report" where the 
opening paragraph says:


"The development of the language Pascal is based on two principal aims. 
The first is to make available a language suitable to teach programming 
as a systematic discipline based on certain fundamental concepts clearly 
and naturally reflected by the language. The second is to develop 
implementations of this language which are both reliable and efficient 
on presently available (1975) computers".


Certainly the intent was a very good match for what you want and IMHO 
that intent was fully realised.


If you can find it, I would recommend getting hold of a copy of what is 
now an ancient text "Pascal - An Introduction to Methodical Programming 
- Findlay and Watt - ISBN 0 273 01220 7 (Original Edition) now 
978-1857283648". First published 1978. This used to be the definitive 
text for learning Pascal and somewhat to my surprise still seems to be 
available from Amazon in its 3rd Edition.


When I looked down through the content list the order of play and 
presentation still seems just right for a first course in programming. 
It does not deal with Object Oriented programming or even "Units". ISO 
standard Pascal will still some time away but that anyway should be the 
next semester.


I would also caution against starting on GUI programming too early. If 
the students don't have a grasp of fundamentals then they will get lost 
very quickly. Perhaps the best approach is at the end of each subject to 
translate the simple procedural program they have been working on into a 
GUI program as a whole class exercise.


From having myself developed many courses in Data Communications over 
the years, I would also always try and make sure the students understand 
the context, the background to what they are doing and why.


Somehow you need to get Boolean Algebra in there as well. Findlay and 
Watt give a primer on this in chapter 5, which is probably about the 
right stage after having done the basics. And then, of course, there are 
Turing Machines...


Have fun

Tony Whyman

MWA


On 12/10/16 19:10, Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:

Hello everyone,
I am a professor of "introduction to programming". Currently we are 
working with matlab and c.


Today I had a meeting about doing the module more interesting to the 
students. Currently we teach algorithms making console applications 
and usually I receive questions like "Why don't we do something more 
modern?".


I recommended that we should use Pascal in General and Lazarus in 
particular to teach how to create rich GUI Applications and to my 
surprise the idea was well recieved. Now I have to make suggestions 
about how to prepare the module starting from zero. Students do not 
know how to program and I need to include subjects as: variable 
declaration, operations, if, while, for, functions and procedure, 
arrays and multidimensional arrays.


I would love to know what you think about making the transition from 
console to GUI.

This is an exciting opportunity I'd love to make it right.

Regards




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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk via Lazarus]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Chris Kelling via Lazarus <
lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:

> I'll tell you, after years of doing top down modular programming, it took
> me a little time to adjust to event driven programing.  It wasn't until I
> used a FOR loop on a form to collect the input that I realized what the
> difference is.
>
> For a beginning student, you can approach it in two ways - teach
> programming concepts or just teach the language.  This is what I learned in
> my Computer Science classes.
>
> I had a couple of classmates who were hot shots in JAVA by reading the
> tutorials online.  Where as their mastery of JAVA was impressive, they had
> no concept of what they were doing in the context of programming.  This was
> a data structures class, and concepts and how to apply them was totally
> lost on them.  Their code was sloppy, inefficient, and very hard to
> troubleshoot.
>
> One exercise in my C class called for creating a linked list.  I used
> recursion, which took my instructor off guard.  He said it wouldn't work,
> and I asked, "It worked on all my tests, should I stop doing it this way?"
> He looked at my code again, get a huge  smile and remarked that
> I used recursion.  I said yes, the pre-req for the course was programming
> I and II, which is where we learned recursion.  He still have me more
> credit because most students were using some king of loop
>
> The point being, the language doesn't matter except for syntax.
> Programming is programming.  That being said, more to what you asked.
>
> To understand how the more advanced concepts work and are used, there
> needs to be a broad base.  I still write a lot of my logic in a unit and
> then add that unit into a project.  Defiantly start them off making simple
> console programs just to demonstrate the concepts.  I'd do it via the
> Lazarus IDE so they get used to that environment.  After they have the
> basic concepts, introduce what Lazarus is - a group of libraries extending
> FPC into the visual design.  They should have enough of a grasp on the
> concept of say arrays to understand how a
> list control works, or how you can use conditional branching (both IF
> -THEN-ELSE and CASE) to check for radio button and check box states.
>
> But then again, I'm not a professional educator.
>
> -Chris
>
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 2:10 PM, Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:
>
>  Hello everyone, I am a professor of "introduction to programming".
> Currently we are working with matlab and c.
>
>
> Today I had a meeting about doing the module more interesting to the
> students. Currently we teach algorithms making console applications and
> usually I receive questions like "Why don't we do something more modern?".
>
>
> I recommended that we should use Pascal in General and Lazarus in
> particular to teach how to create rich GUI Applications and to my surprise
> the idea was well recieved. Now I have to make suggestions about how to
> prepare the module starting from zero. Students do not know how to program
> and I need to include subjects as: variable declaration, operations, if,
> while, for, functions and procedure, arrays and multidimensional arrays.
>
>
> I would love to know what you think about making the transition from
> console to GUI.
> This is an exciting opportunity I'd love to make it right.
>
>
> Regards
>
>
> --
>
>


I have taught mostly Fortran programming to the students ( with Cobol , but
, less frequently ) in a University ( Pascal in another University ) .

In those days , there was no any GUI programming facility like Lazarus .

When GUI is started , it was assumed that the students may learn more
effectively . My opinion is that such an assumption is misleading , because
, it is very easy to generate a GUI program . When it comes to perform some
, let's say , data processing , it is becoming necessary to write some
Pascal procedure parts ( or procedures ) within GUI program . In that part
, the students becoming helpless because they do not know how to write such
procedures or parts .  To help to the students , my opinion is that , a
double way approach should be used :


First teach how to program in plain Pascal , for example , input - process
- output in a console program which is easy to write  . After the students
have learned what can be down , embed main steps of this console program
into a Lazarus ( GUI ) program . In that way , the students will learn how
to write an algorithm in Pascal and test it in a simple console program ,
and then how to make it a GUI program .


They in that way learn how to generate a GUI program . Sometimes by
beginning from a console program or directly beginning a GUI program and
improve its procedures supplied by Lazarus generated sources , they will be
able to develop a software by selecting whichever way is easy and suitable
for them .


Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Re: [Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Paul Breneman via Lazarus]

On 10/12/2016 01:10 PM, Adrian De Armas via Lazarus wrote:

Hello everyone,
I am a professor of "introduction to programming". Currently we are working
with matlab and c.

Today I had a meeting about doing the module more interesting to the
students. Currently we teach algorithms making console applications and
usually I receive questions like "Why don't we do something more modern?".

I recommended that we should use Pascal in General and Lazarus in
particular to teach how to create rich GUI Applications and to my surprise
the idea was well recieved. Now I have to make suggestions about how to
prepare the module starting from zero. Students do not know how to program
and I need to include subjects as: variable declaration, operations, if,
while, for, functions and procedure, arrays and multidimensional arrays.

I would love to know what you think about making the transition from
console to GUI.
This is an exciting opportunity I'd love to make it right.


As an electrical engineer (starting study at age 14) I've always enjoyed 
learning programming when it is *combined* with hardware.  There are 
links to two such projects at the top of this page:

  http://controlpascal.com/tutorial.htm

There is a link near the bottom of that page to *ideU* which might be 
one way to transition from console to GUI.


Please keep us informed about how things progress!

Regard,
Paul

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