Extended Pascal, Object Pascal, Delphi... STOP THE MADNESS!!

[WILL]

Ok now it has been some several years that the Pascal programming langauge has been ran along under the wing of Borland there is a standard set of Pascal that has been established long ago.

But wait? That was in 1990?! Was ist das??? :shock:

Then there was a new draft that came up in 1993.. oh goodie! But wait... never finalized... what the heck! :scratch:

ok... enough messing around are we going to finalize an up to date standard of the new Object Pascal language or not? Seriously, there are so many takes on the 'current language' that its not funny. And Borland has been pretty much doing what it wants with it for the past so many years. Luckily it has done it some great good, but as of late it seems that Borland's priorities are changing and from Delphi 4 on it's been insisting on calling it Delphi instead of using it's original name-sake Pascal.

So what do we do? How do we set the standard straight? Just go with Borland's version call it Object Pascal and be done with it? I don't think this is the solution. We should really get all the major Pascal developers and the fronteer engineers of the current incarnation of the language and lay down a descript and completed standardized set of the perposed Object Pascal langauge that is most popularly used in both Delphi, Kylix and Free Pascal leading edge compilers and set it right!


Here is a link to a listing of the Pascal language standards that have been settled on in such organizations. http://pascal-central.com/standards.html

The lastest being a draft of the precursor to the Object Pascal langauge we know now. Lets get this updated!

[Specis]

I agree with this standardization of the Object Pascal language being required. Not i has basically been Borland/Inprise's baby since the start with few real contesters. But with Borland seemingly wanting to take the language onto the .net platform and FPC being now a serious compiler more than able to stand up for itself its time to actually get an ISO standard on the core language and stop any one group taking the language away in whatever way they see fit.

Now dont get me wrong im not Borland bashing here, Delphi is great i cant fault it sept for the choice to go .net :)

But with this seemingly branch in borlands thinking and there sudden drop of Kylix on linux its now that a language standard is really required before borland take the Pascal language off into .net / avalon land forever and doom FPC or any other implementations of the object pascal language to struggling to keep up with any apparent whimsical changes that borland implement in future incarnations.

[marcov]

I agree with this standardization of the Object Pascal language being required. Not i has basically been Borland/Inprise's baby since the start with few real contesters. But with Borland seemingly wanting to take the language onto the .net platform and FPC being now a serious compiler more than able to stand up for itself its time to actually get an ISO standard on the core language and stop any one group taking the language away in whatever way they see fit.


1) Even if so, I'd prefer two standards. Delphi and Delphi.NET. They are two different languages that inherit from eachother, but have different purposes. At the moment, they are still similar to make crossing over at least doable on paper (leaving important constructs as pointers behind is
not really doable IMHO)



Now dont get me wrong im not Borland bashing here, Delphi is great i cant fault it sept for the choice to go .net :)


Indeed, but even when going to .NET, the Delphi compability doesn't buy you anything. You lose nearly all win32 components, VCL.NET was dead before it begun (look at all examples of new delphi.net apps on the net and in forums, all winforms). Best to keep Delphi and Delphi.NET apart.



But with this seemingly branch in borlands thinking and there sudden drop of Kylix on linux its now that a language standard is really required before borland take the Pascal language off into .net / avalon land forever and doom FPC or any other implementations of the object pascal language to struggling to keep up with any apparent whimsical changes that borland implement in future incarnations.

Borland regards the language as a tool, not a purpose in itself It has nothing to gain by standarisation, not even of the core set.

[Specis]

I dont know how you think exactly, but from that post it seems like you still see that borland view Delphi as Object-Pascal. And that might be true for all i know but from my view with the inclusion of C# in delphi 2005 and the announcement of C++ being incorperated into the next version of Delphi i dont think borland are viewing delphi as the language anymore and more of the complete IDE

Without a standard on the Object Pascal language before all this takes place were will object pascal stand?

Borland fought for so long to get people to recognise the language name as Delphi and not Object-Pascal then now after 10 years of production they seem to have decided that its the IDE again..

But Delphi isnt the only focus here, There is quite a few Pascal compilers out there so some sort of standard should be set before one group decides there taking the language in a set direction.

i dont know about you, but when i think of Pascal / Object-Pascal etc i think of borland and Delphi, we forget Borland wernt the original creators of pascal. Now as ive said they've done some great things with Delphi over the years and yes i love delphi. But i also see that standardisation is required here to maintain an equality amount the various implementations of it. We have to stop thinking of Pascal being Borlands baby.

[Almindor]

This is a big problem. Standardization IMHO wouldn't do anybody any good.
Now, don't get me wrong, I voted yes, but in reality standards are not enforcable and Borland still(sadly) rules the pascal world.

FPC is a great compiler and together with Lazarus it's more than just competition but it's still relativly unknown.

I'm all for standards, but Borland won't let them/ won't abide by them anyhow.

[WILL]

Thats only because Delphi/Kylix is the only 'visibly active' and 'commercially viable' compiler out there. Save a few select others.

Borland is the only big-time powerhouse. Save Free Pascal, but they are not pushing like most of the other more popular opensource projects, like Apache, PHP and MySQL, true it's not a web tool, server or service that is so popular now, but then why is Borland so popular?

The standard needs to be made, weither Borland will follow it is their business, but other compilers will need somethingto stick to. As for if it will help the greater situation, thats up to Free Pascal and the rest of the Pascal world. ;)

[Robert Kosek]

I say standards, because that would let an 'average joe' like me switch compilers easily ... instead of having to completely relearn a new style.

[marcov]

Thats only because Delphi/Kylix is the only 'visibly active' and 'commercially viable' compiler out there. Save a few select others.


Well, let's examine that:

"kylix is visible active" Well, yes, like a cemetary at 12PM on a friday night.

"Delphi is visible active" Yes, current implementation is D2005, and that is very visible while you are waiting for it to start up :-)



Borland is the only big-time powerhouse.


They are not interested in Pascal anymore. And any other entity save Microsoft can't force Borland to do anything.



Save Free Pascal, but they are not pushing like most of the other more popular opensource projects, like Apache, PHP and MySQL, true it's not a web tool, server or service that is so popular now, but then why is Borland so popular?


Borland is so popular because
- the RAD/db part is good. FPC is only starting in that.
- they have a long history. FPC is only just getting visible.
- Borland isn't as popular as it used to be. Compilerteam reduced to two persons.

Apache etc are all corporate sponsored projects with fulltimers on them.

FPC isn't, and that simply makes the growth curve flatter. But it will keep improving.



The standard needs to be made, weither Borland will follow it is their business, but other compilers will need somethingto stick to. As for if it will help the greater situation, thats up to Free Pascal and the rest of the Pascal world. ;)

You can't define a standard btw without breaking Delphi compat. Delphi is much to relaxed about stuff to be able to define a neat standard.

This fits in the delphi profile (focus on RAD, let newbies get away with typo's, and plain out not understand the language, a kind of hold their hand mentality), but doesn't work well with standarisation efforts.

And the only thing that holds the others together is that Delphi compat, and existing Delphi codebases.

[Lightning]

I like standards, they are the only thing keeping the community alive and for the moment they are set by Borland, i have a feeling Borland is going to C/C++/C# since those languages are widely used and i don't expect MS to learn Pascal when they will "eat" Borland.
Borland is slowly killing Delphi and introducing Delphi developers to C# and .NET, i hate that way of thinking, C is not the way to go, but who am i to to say what should we do, i have a feeling that if we don't make some standards soon it will be chaos in the Pascal world, we should not wait for Borland to set new standards, they won't do it, their standards are already too old.