Cross platform done right (native code, no intepreter, no VM). Both IDE and generated code run native just about everywhere, from small ARM boards to virtual machines, and of course x86. As fast as C, decent sized executables, lots of built in or available libraries and components to do a lot of things, from managing databases to low level access to hardware, graphics, sound, etc. And of course it's 100% FOSS.
My last use case was a few years ago when a friend needed to monitor some security cameras, but they were of different brands and needed either their crappy Android/iOS app or a even more crappy XP-only ActiveX control on Internet Explorer, while he wanted to monitor them from a single screen on a Windows 7 PC.
As soon as I discovered the right URL for each one to grab their video feed, I arranged a window container in Lazarus dropping there a bunch of media player components, each one linking to a camera, a few other controls and bingo, he could fire up the application and have the mutiple camera view on a monitor.
If it compiled more modern languages such as Nim, Rust or Crystal it would be perfect, but even by current standards Object Pascal it's still really powerful.
What's the Lazarus experience like for cross-compiling to other platforms? E.G. how hard is it to build a working result for Windows, OSX and Linux (maybe BSD) from Linux or BSD?
I don't recall having to cross compile, since the IDE itself runs on so many platforms. For not too complex projects, or not resource constrained hardware, importing the project and compiling it directly on the target might be the quickest solution.
Note for prospect Lazarus users: they use their own widget toolset that looks quite dated and doesn't really feel native, especially outside of Windows.
They don't integrate Qt widgets or other frameworks properly.
Cross platform done right (native code, no intepreter, no VM). Both IDE and generated code run native just about everywhere, from small ARM boards to virtual machines, and of course x86. As fast as C, decent sized executables, lots of built in or available libraries and components to do a lot of things, from managing databases to low level access to hardware, graphics, sound, etc. And of course it's 100% FOSS.
My last use case was a few years ago when a friend needed to monitor some security cameras, but they were of different brands and needed either their crappy Android/iOS app or a even more crappy XP-only ActiveX control on Internet Explorer, while he wanted to monitor them from a single screen on a Windows 7 PC. As soon as I discovered the right URL for each one to grab their video feed, I arranged a window container in Lazarus dropping there a bunch of media player components, each one linking to a camera, a few other controls and bingo, he could fire up the application and have the mutiple camera view on a monitor.
If it compiled more modern languages such as Nim, Rust or Crystal it would be perfect, but even by current standards Object Pascal it's still really powerful.
https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Screenshots
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Free_Pascal
https://www.devstructor.com/index.php?page=tutorials