C/C++ vs Pascal

[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

[dmantione]

Debugging is indeed the achilles heel of FPC; the GNU debugger has proven to be one big annoyance. But using it can't be the problem I think as both the text mode IDE and Lazarus provide the well known TP/Delphi debugging keys. The best debugging experience is probably the textmode IDE, as there is a lot of code in it to circumvent GDB limitations.

[DarknessX]

Well, I don't even use the debugger, so it doesn't bug me much. For that matter, I only recently found that the debugger was there

Thanks for all the comments though. I would like to see a couple 'upsides' to C/C++ though, just to see if its worth my while to try learning it...

[Bijo]

"Upsides?" What upsides? Heh heh

[wodzu]

Thanks for all the comments though. I would like to see a couple 'upsides' to C/C++ though, just to see if its worth my while to try learning it...

It will be hard and my end with endless thread...

However I think that there is one undisputed 'upside': compilation speed

[WILL]

The speed at which a language compiles it dependent on the compiler it's self, thus a moot point. I'd say at best it's a temporary/replaceable plus.