Increasing traffic on PGD...

[Cybermonkey]

Sorry, if I barge in as I am rather new here, but please do not drop support for Freepascal. I am not interested in Delphi but searching for good tutorials for FPC. Most good libraries (e.g. Asphyre) seem for Delphi only. The only exception is ZenGL.
It was mentioned that in the Language Stats http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/conte...pci/index.html Delphi is quite popular but as far as I can read the item is named

Delphi/Object Pascal

which refers to Freepascal/Lazarus as well (Object Pascal).
Well, I am also interested in mobile developmet (Android/iOS) but again: if a tutorial is made please with Freepascal.
Just my two cents from a newbie.

[Carver413]

Educating new members is the best way to insure new members stick around. most of us don't have the luxury of school training. and what classes are out there for delphi/fpc users anyway. any good group takes care of it's own. what is really needed is a modern opengl code base to work from some sort of wikki to organize it. DGL has a nice setup but most of us don't speak German and goggle does a poor job of translating.

[Eric]

the item is named which refers to Freepascal/Lazarus as well (Object Pascal)

IIRC the FreePascal entry was merged not long ago, but there is still a "Pascal" entry, and I have no idea what it covers.

[LP]

Sorry, if I barge in as I am rather new here, but please do not drop support for Freepascal. I am not interested in Delphi but searching for good tutorials for FPC.

How did you infer from me suggesting to promote more materials for Delphi, to drop support for FreePascal? Seems like a irrelevant thesis fallacy.

I disagree, this is because they still have choice that you can capture new recruits.Though in that reguard Delphi starts with a severe disadvantage as there is no "free" option anymore besides Lazarus.

I don't recall that there was free version of Delphi before Delphi 6 personal and it was still popular. Also, you may wonder why many developers, myself included, are paying a thousand dollars (!) for a product, where they could have simply used a supposedly free alternative.

In addition, Embarcadero is offering (similar to what Borland did) Delphi versions to academic institutions at huge discounts (90%-97% discount).

I disagree here too, institutions are in practice either universities (where they usually don't have any serious grasp of game programming) or work-sponsored (and bosses ain't gonna pay for game programming).

This is a common misconception. There are many institutions, including the one I was in, that have a very strong software engineering program. This program makes you competent not only for game development, but for any software development in general. After you finish, you can also optionally opt for M. Sc and even D.Sc. degrees, which are highly competent as well. Yes, studying is not easy here at ITESM, you will probably have to study overtime, working on projects at night and so on, but it's totally worth it.

Sure, there are some universities where some teachers stink, but this is part of life. In one point or another, you will have a lousy teacher, a business partner that is a jerk, a boss that stinks or even a president that sucks. This, however, does not mean that you should put away the education.

Just by getting first university degree, you can get a work as software engineer for an average salary of $55,000 ($4500 per month for Software Engineer) in US. A higher position requiring more advanced degree gives $115,000 ($9500 per month for Software Architect). Average salary for Game developer is around $80,000.

Also, many universities worldwide have a scholarship program. In my own case, 12 years ago when I went to study Computing Systems Engineering, I've got scholarships from many universities in US, Canada and UK, many of which included 100% of study coverage plus staying expenses. This is still the common case for many students that are wiling to put all their effort to learn and build their careers.

Being a software engineer, learning new/different language is a trivial task, since programming language now is just a way to translate your architecture/design into code (and there are tools that can help you).

Educating new members is the best way to insure new members stick around. most of us don't have the luxury of school training. and what classes are out there for delphi/fpc users anyway. any good group takes care of it's own.

Sorry, but what you imply is simply laziness. If you have enthusiasm, interest and are wiling to learn, you can always get a scholarship in one of universities with a good computer science program. Here in Mexico, lower class students with family earnings of less than 1000 $MXN per week ($80 per week) can still get to the university almost for free and if they are talented, even get paid to study (!). [Granted, some prefer to consume drugs and shoot their neighbors instead, but that's another story]

Plus, if you get to study to university, you can always opt for Delphi Academic Program and pay roughly $100 for a Professional version.

[Cybermonkey]

Sorry, I answered to the post and hit accidently the back button of my browser so everything is lost. Anyway, I wrote that I am not a studied man but a simple hobby programmer. I can hardly find Freepascal ressources for game development in the net but Delphi and Delphi everywhere. So, maybe one can empathize my fear that this place will be pure Delphi eventually.

[SilverWarior]

Sorry, I answered to the post and hit accidently the back button of my browser so everything is lost. Anyway, I wrote that I am not a studied man but a simple hobby programmer. I can hardly find Freepascal ressources for game development in the net but Delphi and Delphi everywhere. So, maybe one can empathize my fear that this place will be pure Delphi eventually.

It seems that Delphi is quite popular in Germany but since my German is werry bad I have no use of those. So I myself am facing similar problem of having dificulties to find necessary game development articles for Delphi.

[WILL]

Well I can assure everyone that PGD will not become a support group purely for any one singular IDE, compiler or platform. In fact I believe that the increased development towards new platforms might be what's been making core Delphi developers think otherwise. There seems to be this odd conception amoung Pascal developers that you have to choose either one of the tools or the other. I'd use Delphi on my Mac if there was a native version. Maybe it will come, maybe not, but until then I use Lazarus.

My support goes to the language. And other dialects of the language.

There has been a lot of Delphi relevant topics posted in the News section, but not as much news as I'd like being posted there. Part of that is because I've been away and busy doing my real job which supports my family and unable to spend the time I'd love in finding new and cool things going on with ALL Pascal game developers. This is where I really need your help.

Since we have been airing fears; I kind of fear that the PGD News section/RSS isn't as popular as it should be. Not sure who here reads from RSS syndication feeds or subscribes to DelphiFeeds.com. I've put PGD up for inclusion to these feeds, but it seems we didn't get enough votes. Should enough people sign up and have us added, that might finally put us on there.

The only time that we do make it on there is when someone like Eric Grange or Jon Lennart Aasenden mentions something we've posted. I think our RSS feed for news is very valid, but noone else has spoken up about it. Here is the thread http://delphifeeds.uservoice.com/for...-com-news-rss- Apparently 3 votes won't do it. So who here actually wants PGD on DelphiFeeds or thinks we should be on there?

Go here and vote about it please! http://delphifeeds.uservoice.com/forums/14264-feedback

[WILL]

BTW, I've slimmed down the Forums a bit. I don't know if I want to merge all the development tools together much like I don't want to merge all the library-specific forums either. Sure it would make it seem even smaller, but there is a reason we made each forum for all of them. Maybe moving discontinued ones to an archive of some kind instead.

[Andru]

Here is the thread http://delphifeeds.uservoice.com/for...-com-news-rss- Apparently 3 votes won't do it.

"Idea has been closed"...

[LP]

Since we have been airing fears; I kind of fear that the PGD News section/RSS isn't as popular as it should be. Not sure who here reads from RSS syndication feeds or subscribes to DelphiFeeds.com. I've put PGD up for inclusion to these feeds, but it seems we didn't get enough votes. Should enough people sign up and have us added, that might finally put us on there.

Honestly, I've never used PGD's syndication system or any other syndication system for that matter except for what I added to my Blackberry, but even that one I rarely read. For some reason I always preferred to interact with the forums and news sites directly. Maybe you should open a poll about this?