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Thread: Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

  1. #11

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Didn't know that :? What are those wrong choices if i may ask?
    * Killing products with active user communities. Notably Turbo Pascal and Kylix. Note we started coding Free Pascal because we and the world did need a Turbo Pascal successor.
    * Underestimating the power of the bits. Borland had a 32-bit compiler when the world had already converted its software to 32-bit systems. They did so without Borland tools. Codegear will have a 64-bit compiler when most software is already converted to 64-bit, again without Codegear tools.
    * Going with .NET and wasting valuable resources on being two stepts behind Microsoft all the time.
    * Not doing improvement on their compiler for years (has to do with .NET)
    * Introducing questionable improvements into the language
    * Releasing buggy Delphi versions
    * Killing the Delphi help system

    Want more?

  2. #12

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    In some good news, two indicators indicating programming language popularity show interrest in Pascal is increasing:

    Tiobe TPCI index:

    At the beginning of 2007, I thought C# and D would become the winners and Perl and Delphi the losers. C# was indeed one of the big winners, and Perl one of the big losers. But the forecasts for D and Delphi were completely wrong. There has been no breakthrough for D. On the other hand, Delphi reclaimed a top 10 position...
    http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

    Ohloh language popularity statistics:

    http://www.ohloh.net/languages/14

  3. #13

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Introducing questionable improvements into the language
    Ah, in which sense? It has made quite some nice improvements to class definitions. I think the operator overloading is more Pascal-like and intuitive than their FPC equivalents, but indeed less powerful in some situations.
    Sure FPC is racing ahead(I love the generics in FPC. I can't get enough of specialized TFPGMap's ) but overall I've liked Delphi more than I have of the competitors on the Pascal market
    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Releasing buggy Delphi versions
    You've got a bit of a point there. Delphi 7 was the epitome of a nice IDE. But Turbo Delphi Explorer likes to crash on me on completely random occasions
    Peregrinus, expectavi pedes meos in cymbalis
    Nullus norvegicorum sole urinat

  4. #14

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by JSoftware
    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Introducing questionable improvements into the language
    Ah, in which sense? It has made quite some nice improvements to class definitions. I think the operator overloading is more Pascal-like and intuitive than their FPC equivalents, but indeed less powerful in some situations.
    Sure FPC is racing ahead(I love the generics in FPC. I can't get enough of specialized TFPGMap's ) but overall I've liked Delphi more than I have of the competitors on the Pascal market
    I could make a long list, but some of the features I find most disgusting:
    * Accepting 0 as a valid pointer value
    * Dynamic arrays have pointer semantics, but value syntax
    * Records can have methods
    * Proprietary, less powerfull operator overloading syntax
    * Making pointer dereferencing optional
    * Constant arrays have set syntax

  5. #15

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Accepting 0 as a valid pointer value
    Come on, it issues a warning at least
    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Records can have methods
    Ah, great stuff. You'll have to incorporate this into FPC. I love it!
    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Dynamic arrays have pointer semantics, but value syntax
    * Constant arrays have set syntax
    Could you elaborate on those two?
    Peregrinus, expectavi pedes meos in cymbalis
    Nullus norvegicorum sole urinat

  6. #16

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    I could make a long list, but some of the features I find most disgusting:
    [...]
    Well, they are still features, aren't they? Surprisingly, some of this stuff I've been using in Delphi for quite a long time, but when porting some code to FPC I've been quite annoyed at its extremely strict syntax resembling old days of Turbo Pascal (e.g. MyItem^.Hello instead of MyItem.Hello).

    Actually, I see features introduced to Delphi language by Borland/CodeGear as a big plus, in addition to improved IDE in BDS 2006 / Turbo Delphi. Their move for .NET has been seriously a mistake.

  7. #17

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    I learned real programming with Pascal. So thanks to Pascal I could understand and learn other languages as well. That's why I love it.

    I'm happy watching how much FPC and Lazarus have advanced, and I'm starting to love them over Delphi... Once I thought about leaving Pascal, but today it's just amazing to compile my engine in Windows, Linux and DOS just clicking a button. I even recovered code I wrote back in 1998 (10 years ago!!). So cool We will have Pascal for a long long time.

  8. #18

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by JSoftware
    * Dynamic arrays have pointer semantics, but value syntax
    * Constant arrays have set syntax
    Could you elaborate on those two?
    [pascal]
    var a,b:array of byte;

    begin
    setlength(a,1);
    a[0]:=1;
    b:=a;
    b[0]:=2;
    writeln(a[0]);
    end;
    [/pascal]

    A and b are basically pointers to arrays, but because they don't use a pointer syntax, the above result is unexpected for many.

    [pascal]
    procedure a(const b:array of byte);

    begin
    end;

    begin
    a([1,2,3,4]); {Set constant or array constant?}
    end;
    [/pascal]

    Now in this example things are pretty clear, but if procedure a is in a different unit, it is not clear what that constant means.

  9. #19

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower
    Actually, I see features introduced to Delphi language by Borland/CodeGear as a big plus, in addition to improved IDE in BDS 2006 / Turbo Delphi.
    Borland/Codegear have introduced great features, no disagreement about that. What I did want to state is that they lost their sense of good taste and the language is more baroque than it should have been. They are going to need vision to evolve the language help it remain competitive, but completely lost that, look at the list of recent new features, they are all from .NET. Now I don't say anything .NET is necessarily bad, but you need to be able to think independently and that I haven't seen from Borland/Codegear for a long time.

  10. #20

    Is Pascal is Still My Lovely Language?

    Quote Originally Posted by JSoftware
    Quote Originally Posted by dmantione
    * Records can have methods
    Ah, great stuff. You'll have to incorporate this into FPC. I love it!
    Ever heard of packed objects?
    Too bad fpc doesn't support bit packing in packed objects or methods in records, but i guess you can't have it all at once yet
    This is my game project - Top Down City:
    http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com...y-Topic-Reboot

    My OpenAL audio wrapper with Intelligent Source Manager to use unlimited:
    http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com...source+manager

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