Modula-2, Oberon, Component Pascal? The pascal family

[MikeS]

Hello Pascal Game dev'ers,

I'm searching for something new as far as programming languages are concerned. I've used pascal, object pascal ala freepascal and delphi, but I see there are many other evolutions. I really like the pascal family of languages, as opposed to the C family. I like being able to read my code, that's my main reason for sticking with this family of languages.

My question is though, where do I go after pascal?

Overall, I'm looking for the language:
-Most modern
-Most used in commercial applications
-Most powerful
-Most resources to learn**

Emphasis on the last point, I want a language I can learn. The more books I can find the better. I also want a language that offers power. I don't want to be limited in what I can and cannot make. In other words, if I want to someday make an operating system, I don't want the language to limit me. I also want something modern. Modern in the sense that the language considers Object oriented programming, and perhaps even .Net library integration(But not tied to either of these features). Finally, if the language has hit on these three things, I'm sure there's some commercial applications out there.

Perhaps someone could even enlighten me on the history of these. Basically what I've found is that Niklaus Wirth has pretty much mastered the science of language creation, and he's touched on the three languages I've listed above. What's the newest, what's the future?

Thanks for any help!

[WILL]

Check out RemObject's Oxygen (aka Chrome) for the .NET platform.

You can even work with XNA, thanks to Dominique Louis' contributions here. (which means XBox 360, Zune and Windows XP/Vista/CE) Not a lot of games development with it just yet, but I'm sure that it wouldn't be too different from working with Delphi or Lazarus compilers.

[JSoftware]

Either go for some RemObjects, Freepascal or Zonnon.

Zonnon is a fairly new language that looks very much like oberon but includes some new funky features. It's .Net based and Mono based. I like it

[Mirage]

Overall, I'm looking for the language:
-Most modern
-Most used in commercial applications
-Most powerful
-Most resources to learn**

These are different languages.

Most modern is probably Composita.
Most used in commercial applications is Object Pascal (Delphi).
Most powerful and most suitable for OS creation is Active Oberon.

Only Object Pascal and Component Pascal have good enough well-known implementations for programming applications.

Object Pascal actually is not Pascal at all. It's mostly like Modula-2 with (too) few elements from Oberon and of course from Borland.

[WILL]

So... why do you want to migrate from Object Pascal anyhow?

[MikeS]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

I'm really looking for something that has lots of learning resources. The pascal family has a nice style, and I like the readability of things. I want to start getting into more low level programming, and was just a little bit scared that Pascal didn't have the resources C has. In my university, we are going to be pursuing low level programming(Operating Systems, compilers, etc.) in C. If I can convince my professor that Pascal or some other pascal language has the same capabilities, then I will be able to do my assignments in Pascal or a Pascal like language. Since my grades depend on this though, I really need to make sure there are enough resources out there that I can master the language, and there won't be any limitations.

Surely with enough inline asm, I assume these low level tasks will be possible. However, I might as well code purely in asm to do these things right? Well, wrong in the following cases. I think the trade off of combing pascal-like-language+asm vs. C+asm will help me maintain my code. I also think that compilers such as Freepascal will allow me to target many many more hardware platforms than just pure asm code.

Hope this helps clear a few things up. I was looking at OSdev, and I see that they do indeed have some resources on developing a kernel with Pascal.

Can anyone recommend some good books for learning Pascal or Oberon? I have found a book on Oberon that walks through building an entire operating system and compiler, but worry Oberon is not a language that is growing very fast(perhaps even shrinking). Right now my choice for a language will either be Pascal or Oberon, so can anyone else talk about there experiences as well.

Again, thanks for the quick and helpful replies thus far!

[JSoftware]

You can easily make an OS with Freepascal. You can do that with Oberon too but with Oberon you are a bit more limited as you, AFAIK, need to have a compiler in the bootloader which limits you to the Oberon Bootloader.

With Freepascal you have pretty much unlimited possibilities. I've made my os work on x86 and x86_64.
If you want anymore information about OS development you can go to osdev.com or eventually hit me with a PM

[Mirage]

There is a very interesting OS written using Active Oberon - BlueBottle.
http://bluebottle.ethz.ch/

Here you can find a lot of really good books on programming, including ones about Oberon and Pascal:
http://europrog.ru/ilog.html

[WILL]

Object Pascal is the only Pascal-based language that has as many resources out of the whole bunch. Through the Delphi, Chrome/Oxygene, Free Pascal tools to name the more popular ones, it has really grown into a verbose language with capabilities that surpass C and equal C++. In fact C# is, in part, a derivative of the Object Pascal language style of OOP.

It is being extended even today with Code Gear's newer versions of the compiler. However it is the longest running language to remain, still unofficial. Yup, there is only a proposal written of the language standard with the organization that is the big authority on programming language standards.

Despite that, this has managed to be be limited to only a few hiccups that get picked up from compiler to compiler. ie. Chrome to Delphi, Delphi to Free Pascal...

Troubles aside, like all computer languages have anyways, Object Pascal is really your best bet for an alternative to C-based languages. Unless you actually want to consider something based off of BASIC. :lol: But thats up to you...

[MikeS]

Hi Will, thanks for the inspiring post. The trouble is, whenever I look for object pascal books, all I find are delphi books that are concerned with Applications design(forms, windows, menubars, etc.). Can anyone recommend any books that are going to teach me some hard core computer science level books(introductory to advanced). I'm not at all interested in dragging and dropping windows forms, but as I mentioned above, compiler design and operating system design. I've got all summer to dig into books, so I'm all ears.