Comment by boznz
1 month ago
I stopped using the Lazarus documentation a year ago when the AI prompts (which seem to be trained on the actual documentation) became easier and faster to use.
Also AI also seems to get above average results with pascal code generation IMHO.
Interesting, which AI system are you using?
This doesn't match my own experiences, I've tried a few times to ask about Pascal and the results have always been appallingly bad. From nonsensical syntax (sometimes mixing in C-style syntax), to made up unit and object names, I'm surprised if it can even manage a correct "hello, world".
By comparison, Python generation can be pretty decent (not that it can't run into the same issues, but it is less frequent). I always assume it's because Pascal's online presence is gravely reduced compared to other languages. It is still a fairly popular language, but I'd wager most Pascal written is not published online.
The main issue is they often try to write code using dated/unsupported packages, but simply asking them not to use any out of date components or units will give you a baseline to do most things or from first principles.
Gemini 2.5 was the last one I used for generating an interface to a really old OLE based SCADA system, the base code it generated required almost no re-work to read and write the interface.