C/C++ vs Pascal

[dmantione]

In what way is the current Delphi compiler still superior? So, I think when has to be answered with "now" if we are looking at the compilers.

[JSoftware]

I think the Delphi compiler has a few things I would miss in FPC. But most of those are the new additions like class variables and all the OOP goodness

On the RTL side I think FPC is still a bit more clunky and heavy to work with. On several occasions I've managed to crash the compiler when working with some exotic libraries and stuff. (This is a while back so I don't know if the problem persists and didn't know where to report such bugs)

The FPC community also seems a little hidden and/or old-fashioned. Is there actually a specific Freepascal community?

[dmantione]

Well, the mailing lists and 800 and 500 members and get hundreds of messages per month. There are 12000 user accounts in the community system with a about 200 messages per month. The Wiki is actively used. So, yes, I think there is a Free Pascal community and it is rather large.

There is and has always been a link to the bug tracker on the front page, so I don't think it can be so hard to find out how to report a bug.

[wodzu]

What I don't like on freepascal site is the forum engine. It has not changed from years. Any particular reason to stick with it instead of some newer engines? I think community suffers a bit because of it. Or maybe its only me;-)

[dmantione]

There are more people have that commented on the forums both in positive as in negative way. Technically the system is one of the most advanced you can find; it wouldn't make sense to drop it, but there is quite a bit you can do with the UI, i.e. http://www.virtualmin.com/forums/ has the same engine, but a totally different presentation.

I prefer the categorized Q&A over for example a threaded or UBB styled UI like PGD has though. If somebody has ideas, they are welcome though.

[Robert Kosek]

There are more people have that commented on the forums both in positive as in negative way. Technically the system is one of the most advanced you can find; it wouldn't make sense to drop it, but there is quite a bit you can do with the UI, i.e. http://www.virtualmin.com/forums/ has the same engine, but a totally different presentation.

I prefer the categorized Q&A over for example a threaded or UBB styled UI like PGD has though. If somebody has ideas, they are welcome though.

Categorized Q&A is good for nothing if there is no age sorting, and no answers. I asked something a long, long time ago and was never answered. The wiki-esque forum is horrible to anyone not already used to using it. I won't pretend to like phpBB, I loathe it in fact, but there is a distinct difference. The Virtualmin forum is superior to the FPC one as it still retains some similarities with a forum. My only advice to you is to try this forum, punBB, if you like the style -- if I wanted to use FPC's forum I'd sooner go to a newsgroup.

This isn't meant to be insulting, but to give a hint as to why I'm just not interested in learning FPC if I feel the support structure largely isn't there. Going through 3 ]extremely[/i] disappointed. After about 3 times of just me asking, plus the 8 other requests by other people, CodeGear still has not said what their plan for the turbo line is.

I think I like FPC's operator overloading better, if I can overload the implicit/explicit operators then I love FPC's operator overloading, and the ability to use the -=/*= style assignments like C. But it isn't enough to get me to come over yet. Lazarus creates bloated applications, and FPC's smallest Hello World application turns into a 230kb app. I wrote a tokenizer and basic program/scripter based off console input in Delphi and it compiled to about 42kb -- no comparison there.

But, again, considering the future direction and subsequent descent of Delphi, Lazarus and FPC may become our only hope. I hate selling my hope on one compiler -- that's what has happened with Delphi and look where it is going now.

[Setharian]

FPC is a bit superior to the D06 lineup, specifically the Turbos in my case, as it is more stable. Turbo Delphi will crash easily for me, without trying even, and I get stuck with all sorts of bogus errors that prove that Delphi was indeed written in C++. But, I heard that D07 was incredibly stable in comparison to its predecessor. Having looked at the roadmap for the future releases of Delphi I can only say I'm am extremely disappointed.

in the first sentence you meant Lazarus and not FPC I guess FPC IDE cannot be even compared to the Delphi one I own D2007 and I am very satisfied with it, so far no crashes at all....I got 3 exceptions, 2 of them were caused by the fact that some files were marked as read-only and they could not be overwritten.....it's also fast (apart from Code Completion ), load times are also a lot better than previous versions (if you spend 2 hours rebasing packages the IDE loads it's even better )...so overall it's a very good product (finally), yet it can get even better....when it comes to the roadmap - I don't like it neither, all "goddies" are planned for next year or the year after which is kinda too far away, people have waited long enough....on the other hand you also have to take into consideration that they are a new company and Highlander was already being worked on in the "old Borland" with clear .NET focus and it wouldn't make sense to abandon almost finished features....Unicode VCL and RTL are great and I think CG cannot bring those features any sooner than next year considering all the facts but Win64 support in 2 years is the main "show-stopper" for most of the people....I hope they'll at least release DCC64 pre-release or something with Tiburon....

operator overloading in FPC is nice yet maybe too "non-OOPish" but it does its job well....when it comes to +=, -=, etc. operators, I really do not like them that much, they should have stayed with C....there is one thing I like about FPC and that it is commited to be a competitor with C/C++ more than with C#...as a result it is introducing features which helps you write faster code in a nice manner unlike CG which is fighting with C# and it is bringing OOP features which are nice but either result in slower code or are just syntactic sugar...

[WILL]

Daniel is right, the FPC/Laz site is very well integrated together with everything that the developers are hooked into. Though I can't say I share the same love for the UI.

What might help is some sort of alternative interface or 'skinning' where a participant can choose their preferred UI for the forums. Unfortunately, that would mean adding some new scripts to the site. It really would help to welcome new users though.

But anyways getting back on topic; The IDE is not a part of the compiler it's self. Nor is it a factor into the language. It only goes to implementation which is a fruitless point to argue when discussing like things.

[JernejL]

They are bit aligned. Don't save the last byte of memory, save the last bit of memory :rambo:

[pascal]
program bitpack;

{$bitpacking on}

var aacked array[0..15] of 0..63;

begin
writeln(sizeof(a));
end.
[/pascal]

daniel@laptop:~> ./bitpack
12
daniel@laptop:~>

so, what does it return for just 4 bits in the record?

also, FPC & LAZ have pretty active IRC channels.

[dmantione]

In such case, sizeof will return 1.