C/C++ vs Pascal

[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.

[wodzu]

[quote="Robert Kosek"]

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. 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.

Why extremely dissapointed? Of course every of us (CG think different here;P ) would like to have more focus on Win32 but if they have puted so much effort into .NET let them finish this 2.0 release. Than will come time to Win32 and improvements, I hope ;-) If you can test D2007 do it, you will see its a really nice edition.

The one thing which amaze me is that how single user can contribute to the Delphi. First new memory manager and now Generics
:shock: . 1 year before CG Personally I don't care about that. I care for faster Win32 compiler but will it ever happen? It seems FPC is gaining advantage here with every release which is great. If it will only have better GUI

[Robert Kosek]

I'm disappointed because CodeGear thinks .Net is important, and is delaying the next VCL/Pascal Delphi version to ~2 years away. And worse still, the added features are nothing big, helpful, or worthwhile in the long run. I have never actually made a cent from what I do with Delphi, so unless they update the Turbo line (like I hope they will) I'm stuck with a hugely buggy compiler. I honestly don't know what to do. I like Delphi and want to continue using it ... but the price tag on 2007 is kind of crippling for little improvement aside from a more stable IDE and additional VCL components. Etc.

That's why I'm disappointed. I don't really want to switch to FPC because, like I said before, I feel like the support structure isn't there. The fact it is and works for those already using it is irrelevant -- as leaving it there will never encourage newbies like myself to take the step.

[dmantione]

You sound a bit like the guy that kept insisting for 10 years that Free Pascal was no viable alternative for Turbo Pascal because it couldn't compile his 16-bit assembler code.

[Robert Kosek]

No, I'm a guy who wouldn't mind the change, if he felt there were actually enough people to answer his questions. And yeah, I have read a lot of the FPC documentation -- but I'm still left with many questions. If I have a problem or Delphi related question I know 4x as many places to ask as I do for FPC; not to mention the fundamental differences between FPC and Delphi.

I've written a few FPC applications already which you can find here, and formerly on my own site. But it takes me almost 3x as long to program just because of language differences.

I already know, and have known for a good 2 years, that FPC is viable and a decent alternative. Barring filesizes and enhanced XP skinning compatibility in Lazarus (try the demo of WindowsBlinds with Lazarus and you'll see why I don't use it; my custom skins freak the whole application out) of course. I have already threatened CodeGear that I'll go full out FPC if they don't tell me what they're going to do with Turbo Delphi -- no update, - 1 User.

[DarknessX]

I actually prefer plain old FPC. Not sure why, but in the long run, it will help me a lot. Only thing, is I have no clue just how to use the debugger, so I don't use it at all :O It makes bug-finding annoying, but when you finally track down the bug, its so fulfilling