Were to start?

[WILL]

Hi moonblade, welcome to PGD!

Well it's official; 2 Jason's agree, Delphi is an IDE. :thumbup:

I don't want to restate what has been accurately said before, but just a tad more info as to how this 'Delphi language' thing came up; When Borland made the move from DOS to Windows the Delphi IDE tool was launched. This was way back when OOP was new and magical mind you. The idea to call the Object Pascal language "Delphi" came a few years & versions of it's launch. Which is what caused all the naming confusion. 2 trains of thought; 1) name the language off of the compiler and 2) name the language of a published standard.

Incidentally, noone, not even Borland has had the new revisions of the Object Pascal language standardized. So this is why you'll hear this debate almost endlessly. :?


Barring that, it's an awesome language to code it! With the 3 top compilers; Free Pascal, Chrome and Delphi, you can write a game for a ton of platforms; Including Win32/64/CE, Linux, MacOSX, GBA, NDS and GP2X. Even, almost, XBox360.

Probably the best place to start is getting familiar with the 'Object' part of the language. If you already know the concepts then it shouldn't take too long at all, just a few differences in the way that C-based languages do it.

So you can really start where you'd like, provided you have the main language concepts down. I'd recommend having a look through our Articles section and also the Library where we keep a pretty decent list of material there. We are going to be adding a Books section soon, that should have a fair selection if you prefer a physical book.

[dmantione]

Pascal has a future if:
1) It has a good social network to promote it.
2) It can do things its competitors cannot do.

I'm somewhat positive about (1), since there is quite of Pascal advocacy around and sites like PGD help people doing great things in Pascal. Yet, on the other hand, languages like PHP and perhaps Ruby, have a much larger social network.

For (2), we do have some important things. For example FPC's Win64 support is big weapon fact that the open source world is going to awe on once we lauch the big PR guns. Language wise we've some cool things too. Simple things we take for granted, for example units are revolution to C programmers. The language is still evolvong. And last but not least, Pascal has got good IDEs.

[moonblade]

Ok. Thanks for all your help guys.

I think i'll start here on PGD, and then see were it takes me.

But you haven't heard the last of me. Count on it.


M.

P.S.: Is there a big difference between the compilers and is one of them "best" and "worst"?

Robert-> very nice!! that looks very good. :shock:

[Setharian]

basicly there are 2 possibilities....DCC which comes with Delphi IDE and FPC which can be used with Lazarus IDE....if you do not plan to do cross-platform development, Delphi IDE is probably the best choice otherwise FPC + Lazarus is the way....ultimately it depends on your needs...when it comes to code generation, both compilers generate very good code....

FPC: www.freepascal.org
Lazarus: www.lazarus.freepascal.org
Delphi: www.codegear.com more specificly http://www.codegear.com/downloads/free/turbo

note that Turbo Delphi (any version) is completly free, but it has 2 limitations - you cannot install IDE experts and you cannot register custom design-time components (which is the most annoying thing, that's one of the reasons why I bought Delphi 2007 for Win32)...

[moonblade]

Ok. Thanks a million.

M.

[WILL]

Yeah Setharian pretty much has it. But better to think of it as if you only plan on making things for Windows with Delphi. If you are running Lazarus or Mac OS X then you'll want FPC/Laz.

The other thing is that Free Pascal and the Lazarus IDE [size=9px](a version of Free Pascal comes packaged with the installation, no extra setup required)[/size] are completely free and updated often. There is no paid version so it's limitless.

Another one that was not mentioned, but is very capable for making games is the .NET compiler Chrome. It's flavor of Object Pascal is almost the same, but it also has some .NET constructs that make it vary from the others a bit. It only does .NET, but recently it's been able to work with XNA, which in case you haven't heard allows you to develop for the XBox360. A juicy proposition for the budding Pascal game developer dreaming of making a game for a game console.

[L505]

Pascal has a future if:
1) It has a good social network to promote it.
2) It can do things its competitors cannot do.

3) if more developers say they use modern pascal tools and offer consulting
4) if more developers are less humble about using modern pascal and display in big bold fonts that they use modern pascal, not standard pascal

And not that this will help as much but:
5) if more developers stop Linus and Eric S Raymond from taking cheapshots like this, and also notifying these people adds publicity (bad publicity is good publicity if you handle it right) for modern pascal.
6) if someone makes a standard locked on a certain date, such as Pascal 2010 standard. I know standards can be complete BS, but it is like a patent.. people fall for them and they work.. businesses trust a language with a standard. Even if it doesn't feel right to make a standard, it is just something that should be done, even if it essentially means nothing to FPC/Delphi developers directly.