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Thread: I'm Back

  1. #11
    PGD Staff / News Reporter phibermon's Avatar
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    I think that from what I've seen, you're doing an awesome job. since I've joined the community I've seen this site go from strength to strength to become an excellent resource for *all* programmers. OOP can be read and understood by anyone who codes and the techniques and discussions here are useful on all kinds of levels.

    There are all kinds of skill sets and lots of great ideas and the community is growing in strength!

    All kinds of exciting developments in the OOP world will bring an influx of new coders. XE2 will see many new people picking up the language and Firemonkey will see many of them realize that graphics is not the impossible topic they imagine! thanks to the hard work of people such as Dr. Norman Morrison (http://pp4s.co.uk/index.html) more and more institutions will adopt and re-adopt OOP as the learning language of choice. It really is the best, here in the UK Pascal was the main educational language for a long time and there's very good reasons for that! OOP teaches you far better than C or Java, how to think about your code in a generic manner. An OOP coder will always have an easier time picking up a new language than someone that started elsewhere. It was designed by a genius for that very reason!

    Umm, sorry getting off topic

    So yes! I think you're doing an excellent job, this place has become a big part of my recreational life as it has for many others and it's thanks to your hard work that the community shines as it does

    The age of PGD is upon us! *insert age of empires soundtrack here*
    When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie - that's an extinction level impact event.

  2. #12
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Thanks guys, it's nice to hear my efforts do have an impact.

    Well attracting new Pascal programmers is the thing isn't it? I'd like to get more schools on-board with Dr. Morrison's PP4S project. I was even considering a paid set of courses on getting started in game development with object pascal that we could offer to those interested in really learning how to get started. It would be really low cost and not certified or anything, but it could be something fun that PGD newbies could do to get started making games with Object Pascal.

    Mac is another thing I'm trying to help cultivate (heck I bought one last year) but at the same time I don't want to make Windows users feel less important here. PGD is and always has been an "all inclusive" club for Pascal (any dialect) programmers (and other game designers/artists/musicians) who want a community to be able to share ideas and learn about making games. (and other tools that help make them too)
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  3. #13
    PGD Staff code_glitch's Avatar
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    Over the holidays, I got the chance to meet some family and friends - some of which are over at Uni doing various PhDs. I also came across something interesting: Pascal is heard of, but from their perspective a pascal programmer that uses OpenGl etc... Is like a mystical guru of the deep that has a big white beard and makes magic happen. Once I pointed out it was the founding father of Delphi and related to Ada and etc, I think we may see a troop of new converts for various reasons - just doing my 'propaganda' distribution for the community
    I once tried to change the world. But they wouldn't give me the source code. Damned evil cunning.

  4. #14
    Thanks guys, it's nice to hear my efforts do have an impact.
    They absolutely do! There wouldn't be much of a community left, if you weren't doing things like the news wrap-ups and the pascal gamer mag.

    All kinds of exciting developments in the OOP world will bring an influx of new coders. XE2 will see many new people picking up the language and Firemonkey will see many of them realize that graphics is not the impossible topic they imagine! thanks to the hard work of people such as Dr. Norman Morrison (http://pp4s.co.uk/index.html) more and more institutions will adopt and re-adopt OOP as the learning language of choice. It really is the best, here in the UK Pascal was the main educational language for a long time and there's very good reasons for that! OOP teaches you far better than C or Java, how to think about your code in a generic manner. An OOP coder will always have an easier time picking up a new language than someone that started elsewhere. It was designed by a genius for that very reason!
    To be honest, I don't entirely get this part. You're talking about it as if OOP is a language, while it's a paradigm. So how does OOP teach you better than C/Java? I'd say that C has nothing to do with OOP and is usefull in totally different areas, while learning java is almost the same thing. Java is one of the most Object oriented languages I've seen until now.

    Overall I agree with you that OOP gives developers a very comfortable and easy-to-use approach creating good software. If I were to create a software product, 99% chance I'd use an OOP language. That being said, I think it's worth it to look in other directions. For example, the functional programming paradigm. Langauges like OCaml or Haskell are harder to learn/use, but the programming model has some very interesting properties that normal OOP doesn't have (Like high reliability, easily parallelizable etc).
    Coders rule nr 1: Face ur bugz.. dont cage them with code, kill'em with ur cursor.

  5. #15
    I think he meant Object Pascal, not Object-Oriented Programming. OP instead of OOP

  6. #16
    The way to attract or convert people to OP in general (or in my case Delphi), I know of only one.

    They need to be shown from the beginning what ridiculously amazing things you can do with it, making games being probably the top attraction. I have been trying to get family members and friends interested, even in just programming or scripting in general but to not much success.

    My brother is still fiddling with that darn object/scripting engine thing you get through steam (not sure what it's called), but the language looks reasonably complex and he is good at it, it's just a matter of getting him interested in building something from scratch instead of playing with someone else's toy lol.

  7. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Chesso View Post
    My brother is still fiddling with that darn object/scripting engine thing you get through steam (not sure what it's called), but the language looks reasonably complex and he is good at it, it's just a matter of getting him interested in building something from scratch instead of playing with someone else's toy lol.
    Building something from scratch is a lot more dificult than just using some good scripting language. IMagine that you need to build a game with only the basic units (no graphics engine, no sound engine, etc.). Even thou you are a skiled programer it wouldn't be an easy job for you. No imagine how dificult it would be for a beginner.
    I myself hasn't tried convincing my friends to begin programing, becouse most of them aren't much in computer and use them only for web surfing any maybe to write a document using Word. And that is about it.
    But there is one friend wich showed a litle interest in programing. So I showed him a few basic functions (conditional clauses, loops, events). In about an hour I managed to teach him enough to build a small program where he was changing color off different controls, resizing them, moving them aound the form, etc. But unfortunatly he lost interest soon afther that when we tried to go on more difficult tasks. Well I don't blame him. He is 55years old guy who has never done any programing before, who actualy started using computers only after he bought one for his son.
    The rate of how quickly he gasped the basics shows how good OOP laguages are.
    The biggest advantage of OOP programing language is easy understandable logic that it uses. And why is it so easy understandable? Becouse it is very similar to the logics that we use in real life all the time (if you want a chair to be on different location you need to move it, the same logic aplies to changing positions of some objects in OOP).

    @Chesso
    As for your brother, don't try to force him too much, becouse you might just achive an oposite effect. Maybe it would be better if you guys try to join your knowledge and build something similar that your brother uses. Maybe your brother can even help you build better one becouse he would probably like to have some more function implemented. Eventualy he might get interested in object pascal becouse he would like to extend the capability of ypur project by himself.
    Yes I know that making something like this is way from easy to do but in the end it might pay off big time.

  8. #18
    I've been watching CodeRage 6 this week. I was thinking about how cool it would be to do a webinar for FP/Lazarus and have language demonstrations, middleware presentations, and application demos, including games.

  9. #19
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Murmandamus View Post
    I've been watching CodeRage 6 this week. I was thinking about how cool it would be to do a webinar for FP/Lazarus and have language demonstrations, middleware presentations, and application demos, including games.
    Something like this could be achieved if enough people are interested and willing to contribute. Doing a live presentation might not happen to be honest, but I can't see why an online series of talks on game development and Object Pascal tools and libraries couldn't be put together. I know people in different areas that could contribute and present different topics ranging from language-specific to game design to working with or showing off a series of development tools that can be used.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  10. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Murmandamus View Post
    I've been watching CodeRage 6 this week. I was thinking about how cool it would be to do a webinar for FP/Lazarus and have language demonstrations, middleware presentations, and application demos, including games.
    I considered arranging something similar for the Mac Pascal community a year ago, but I didn't get around to it, fearing that the community was a bit too small and not quite likely enough to care. Maybe I was unnecessarily pessimistic. Anyway, this community could be a better place for such projects.

    Because I think it is a good thing. We need to communicate what we are doing, and too much lands only as small bits and pieces, and you never really know if a certain package is worth the time. With good presentations, one could get brief, to the point introductions that might actually provide the information needed to pick the packages that suits ones needs.

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