Congratulations on your projects, Graeme!
When Blaise gets an IDE, make sure the editor component is modern, pleasant to work with (like vscode, for example) and with proper support for fonts. All things that Lazarus missed.
We need more people to check out free pascal compiler and it's IDE Lazarus. The more you learn, the more you see they are excellent in many ways. https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
I appreciate the work put into this study, but it is not necessary to spend money. Just think of how many fat people you heard of that got past 70.
And compare that with the number of people that got to see very long age.
Opening a new tab and searching for very old people pictures should clear things up for anyone. For free.
Today people make software with only financial gains in mind.
The software is not made with passion, by passionate professionals.
Someone should start a list with crappy software like these, and a list with highly optimized and efficient software. I propose Total Commander for Windows, Spinrite.
I like the concept of directory players. I don't want playlists, my files are arranged in directories just fine.
I use players like 1by1, VUPlayer, Resonic. Straightforward, usable players.
I miss this functionality in foobar, implemented as native, not cumbersome plugins that need a lot of tinkering.
Even though I appreciate the work that must have gone into the creation of the icons, I do not like them at all and I would not consider using them, ever. Why would I look all day at black and white wire-frame icons?
I consider colorful icons to be beautiful, ones that closely follow the color and shape of original objects. Like Haiku icons, for example.
https://www.haiku-os.org/development/icon-guidelines
IMO the author of this article is right about what he is saying.
And I am glad I am not the only one who sees the increased inefficiency of software and thus computers.
Different times have different fashions and programming is also very influenced by fashion. But it seems like Free Pascal survived and Lazarus and fpc seem like a sane alternative, worth taking a look at.
Necromancer's Dos Navigator [NDN] is a clone of the famous "Norton Commander". It uses an easy to use and learn text-mode interface, is highly customizable, and has a lot of features.
Features:
Long File Names Support
Multi-windowed interface
Comprehensive File Manager
43 types of archives+images supported
Powerful customizable editor with 3 code pages support and syntax highlight
Hex-editor with code pages support
Huge strings support
Regular expressions
Spreadsheet communications
Fully 32/64 bit version
Multi-configuration
Very often updates
Linux port
KolibriOS & MenuetOS port
Also OS/2 & HaikuOS port
Built-in flat assembler
and more...
I have been using Firefox for many years in Windows and in Linux. Indeed it is much slower than Chrome, but I cannot ditch it because:
- I need tab scrolling;
- I need a separate search box, where I can install and use different search engines. Google search started being crap about 5 years ago.
The way I see it, sooner or later, if the fakes are getting better and better and if differences are becoming so hard to spot, it might be ok to buy fakes. Especially if the difference in price would be greater than that in quality.
This way producers of fakes would be encouraged to make them better, becoming a strong competition.
Total Commander is on a whole different level of refinement and optimization.
Double Commander is good, indeed, but has some rough edges.
DC uses some components that are made by different authors and that are not that flexible and users ask for features which are beyond what those components can offer. So this is a dead end since nobody is updating/adapting the components so the features could be implemented.
DC has only two listed active developers, one of which is the author and the other one is new and fixes mostly Mac problems. If someone knows Free Pascal and Lazarus IDE or is interested in contributing, it would be to the benefit of all the users. I imagine it is not a trivial task to keep this program running on Windows/Linux/Mac with only two people.
For Windows, Unreal Commander is also good.
Also Free Commander, but it is the slowest of all the orthodox file managers.
I am not a fan of Far Manager, but since this is an orthodox file manager, here are some good alternative GUI managers for Windows: Total Commander, Double Commander, Unreal Commander, FreeCommander XE, MultiCommander.