I came across this link by chance. Wow, I never knew there was that many Pascal Compiler implementations. A lot!

http://pascaland.org/pascall.htm

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I came across this link by chance. Wow, I never knew there was that many Pascal Compiler implementations. A lot! http://pascaland.org/pascall.htm

Well, reduce it to the compilers that are still maintained, and the list is far less impressive... :-(

Ralf

Remember, Pascal is merely a TEACHING language, unsuitable for commercial software development, which is why we have C. :)

Mark Emerson wrote

Remember, Pascal is merely a TEACHING language, unsuitable for commercial software development, which is why we have C. :)

Yeah, right... >:-}

Ralf ;-)

Remember, Pascal is merely a TEACHING language, unsuitable for commercial software development, which is why we have C. :)

And why should that be the case? What are the outstanding feature of C that make it so supperiour? It's illogical and hard to maintain syntax? Or is it just that it was available for free on all unix systems?

Yes, it is available everywhere.
And it is easier to copy unix code then.

Remember that it is still not easy to come to freepascal. You have to configure a debian testing system and apt-get lazarus and so on... Nearly nowhere the lazarus package is preinstalled.

Remember, Pascal is merely a TEACHING language, unsuitable for commercial software development, which is why we have C. :)

That's what I'm going to change. I've told my friends and collegemates about Pascal superiority (suitable for any programming needs, GUI, WebApps, Server, etc.) and they don't know about it at all because what they know is what their teachers or lecturers say, (without any further research, of course), and becomes a doctrine that makes Pascal look bad in their eyes.

Yes, it is available everywhere. And it is easier to copy unix code then.

And harder to port it to Windows without Unix (POSIX?) environment emulation (including headers, etc.)

You have to configure a debian testing system and apt-get lazarus and so on...

you don't need lazarus just to use fpc, and I don't need that debian testing system on my kubuntu.

Nearly nowhere the lazarus package is preinstalled.

other popular languages are often don't come preinstalled as well.

leledumbo wrote

you don't need lazarus just to use fpc, and I don't need that debian testing system on my kubuntu.

Which editor do you use?

Zitat von Rainer Stratmann :

Standard user distributions do not install any development software. This is how linux distros work and is the same for every devel software, not only lazarus.

Some distros allow to create your own custom install CD/DVD. This is used for network installs or for pools.

Maybe it is possible write a linux "installer", which analyzes your system and downloads and installs all needed packages.

Mattias

2009/10/12 Rainer Stratmann :

Which editor do you use?

I'm not the one you replied to, but I can answer based on my experience. I never use APT for FPC or Lazarus because they update packages to slowly. I work directly from the Git mirror repositories.

* If I'm at work or home, I use Lazarus IDE.
* If I remote access another PC, I use mcedit (built-in Midnight Commander's editor) or Free Pascal's Text IDE or sometimes even gEdit.
* When in a pinch, I will use vi (but then I am seriously disparate).

Yes, these are the reasons for having C in the first place. But it is not because of the beauty (stict logic) and the features of the language. Just the opposite: C is popular *even though* it is an awful concept.

In our previous episode, Rainer Stratmann said:

Try compiling some Unix C code on Windows.

Give me Free Pascal any time :-)

2009/10/12 Marco van de Voort :

+1

...and Try compiling some Unix C code on Unix/Linux/etc. I always battle. Give me Free Pascal too! :-)

PS:
Wow, did this message thread take a turn. I was simply impressed by the "unknown to me" amount of Pascal compilers over the years. I only knew about Turbo Pascal and Virtual Pascal for OS/2, in my younger

Regards,
- Graeme -

_______________________________________________
fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/

It is like the video cassettes.
Betamax and Video2000 were the better quality,
but VHS was the most popular cassette.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_2000
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formatkrieg_(Videorekorder) (sorry in german language)

> C is popular *even though* it is an awful concept. It is like the video cassettes. Betamax and Video2000 were the better quality, but VHS was the most popular cassette.

Yes, sadly this is true (same with Microsoft pressing one awfull OS after the other into the market). Not always the best wins. Good marketing is important. The mass does *not* look behind the scene but follows what others do or what the marketing tells them.

2009/10/12 Rainer Stratmann :

You don't need Debian Testing. My system is Debian Stable (i386) since 2001/2002. Never have had a serious problem installing Lazarus/Freepascal.

Gustavo

How do you install Lazarus/Freepascal with apt or else? I am a friend of userfriendly software...

"Jürgen Hestermann" :

And why should that be the case? What are the outstanding feature of C that make it so supperiour? It's illogical and hard to maintain syntax?

Its "Compile anything, crash everywhere." interface. :P

Vinzent.

2009/10/12 Rainer Stratmann :

Download fpc-2.2.4-3.i386.deb.tar and lazarus_0.9.28-0.i386.deb.tar

tar -xf *.tar
dpkg -i *.deb <- as root

Gustavo

Hmm, currently I am also learning Oberon.

No any language requires an IDE. I use vim. Others might use emacs. These are enough. What we need is a simple editor (if you like, GNU nano or simply "cat > 1.pas" is okay) and a compiler. They can make the world, although not that efficiently.

Not the best always win. It is the truth. About why Pascal "lost" the war (In the accent of some people. I highly doubt it.) is complex. IMHO, on the hand, the Bell Lab wrote Unix in C and C was then "binded" to the OS. On the other hand, Mr. Wirth created a lot of new languages in the following years: Pascal(<1970), Modula(1975), Modula-2(1979), Oberon(1987), Oberon-2(1991), etc. The style of all the following languages differ a lot from that of Pascal, while Modula and Oberon differ relatively little, which makes Modula and Oberon a little hard to be spread.

I don't agree with the idea that "BEGIN...END" determines the failure of Pascal, as syntax completion is for that. Both "BEGIN...END" and "{...}" are finished in the same time if they were done by computer. On the contrary, it is part of the way of Pascal being elegant.

2009/10/13 Gustavo Enrique Jimenez :

Its very amusing to me when I meet people who are also developers and tell them I use object pascal and they look at me like I just told them I was using punch cards.

I just tell them...

ObjectPascal: Strong like C, Easy like VB.

That blank look in the eyes of the C crowd is so strange. Lots and lots of people shy away from C/C++/etc since it is so obviously bad, but they don't know about Pascal so they go to slow scripting languages. They sure are happpier there than with C, but Pascal would be so much better in many cases.

I usually don't say that I use Pascal, I say that I use FPC. Then they don't understandand what that is and think they missed something. And they sure have.

FPC: Faster to compiler, faster to run, faster to write, faster to debug... We should print T-shirts with messages like that.

/Ingemar

But you guys all seem to be forgetting what I wrote near the beginning of this thread, Pascal is merely a TEACHING language, which is why we have C. :)

Most people aren't interested in truth (e.g. that Pascal is a vastly superior language in almost every respect). They are instead interested in what is popular, politically correct, and has been artfully propagandized into their gullible, small minds from a source they believe to be an "authority" (e.g. REAL programmers don't use Pascal).

All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed,
second it is violently opposed, and
third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Getting small-minded people to wake up on almost any topic, from programming languages to global politics, is the stuff of revolution. And that is the BEGINing and the END.

Mark Emerson

Correction... I should have said " (e.g. that *the FPC implemention of* Pascal is a vastly superior language in almost every respect)." Sorry.

Mark Emerson

Its also a manpower issue, and the number one reason I make my living writing C nowadays rather than Pascal. You can post an ad for a C programmer and get 1,000 applicants, if you post an ad for a Pascal programmer you might get 5, at least where I live. While I have argued that those 5 are probably better programmers than most of the 1,000, those that do the hiring don't care. They worry that if one guy gets hits by a bus, they won't be able to find anyone to replace him. That's also why I don't do much programming in Forth anymore (although I am working on one project with it as I type).

Jeff.

You can post an ad for a C programmer and get 1,000 applicants, if you post an ad for a Pascal programmer you might get 5, at least where I live.

Yes, that maybe true. But how has all this started? As far as I know, C was not that popular in past (at least not on Windows). Instead (Turbo) Pascal was a widely used language. Suddenly this turned. May have come from Linux, where C was standard. I don't know.

If memory serves... Microsoft for first few version of DOS used assembler. This proved expensive for Microsoft as the number of people willing to program in intel assembler was quite limited. Microsoft kept hearing about this C programming language which students at MS were talking about. It was essentially free and the number of people willing to program was high, and their cost (because they were students) was low. Microsoft converted to C.

The reasons that C was popular was quite simple. It was free to universities and colleges so professors did not have to pay compiler licenses to IBM, Xerox, Control Data, etc. This made it quite popular with faculty. C requires little or no discipline to program in. So the typical zit faced 18 year old socially outcast student loved it as well. The perfect eco-system :)

So like many things that originate from US (but not all) it was the law of the cheapest solution. So today we have C, C++, and Java (a toilet trained version of C++) to use.

</Step_off_soap_box>

In our previous episode, J�rgen Hestermann said:

As far as I saw it, it was simple:

- C was used in IT, specially in America.
- Pascal was used in engineering and science, specially in Europe.

Engineering stopped programming by hand, and moved to Matlab and more specialized tools. Moreover, there was a consolidation in IT, and many of the surviving companies were American, with a C/C++ legacy.

2009/10/16 Marco van de Voort :

The thing that cuts it for me, at least, is that in linux, if you need to hack the kernel, drivers, bootloader, or even just use anything in /dev, it's a lot easier to use c. Also, it targets a greater number of architectures. We've made the mistake of writing code in pascal that we later needed to port, but had to re-write. It's come a long way, though, and armel port seems to be quite usable nowadays.

Henry

"Jürgen Hestermann" :

> You can post an ad for a C > programmer and get 1,000 applicants, if you post an ad for a Pascal > programmer you might get 5, at least where I live.

Yes, and guess what: Odds are that there are more than 5 good ones out of the 1000 C-programmers than a single good one out of the 5 Pascal-programmers.

Yes, that maybe true. But how has all this started? As far as I know, C was not that popular in past (at least not on Windows). Instead (Turbo) Pascal was a widely used language. Suddenly this turned. May have come from Linux, where C was standard. I don't know.

It has never changed. It always has been that way.

Same goes for any programmming language which claims to be better than C. You know what: Being worse than C would be quite an accomplishment.

So the real choice is not: C or Pascal, but C or "any language". Statistically that means half of the people choose C - and the remaining half chooses a language out of thousands of others.

Vinzent.

How about creating a "Holy War" page at the freepascal wiki and moving all notes from this thread there?

The page can be become a good source of arguments in all kind of Pascal vs C (or any other language) battles :)
As well as good historical notes about pascal language.

thanks,
dmitry

2009/10/16 Jeff Wormsley :

Its also a manpower issue, and the number one reason I make my living writing C nowadays rather than Pascal.  You can post an ad for a C programmer and get 1,000 applicants, if you post an ad for a Pascal

Any programmer worth hiring should find it relatively easy to switch to another language. Or and least become proficient in it in a relative short period of time. The basic principles apply to all languages, it's just the tool-chain and syntax that differs.

Graeme Geldenhuys :

Any programmer worth hiring should find it relatively easy to switch to another language. Or and least become proficient in it in a relative short period of time. The basic principles apply to all languages, it's just the tool-chain and syntax that differs.

Yes and no. The mindsets of the languages may differ. Try talking about typing with a C-programmer and with an Ada-programmer and you'll see what I mean.

That's why the question should not be: "Which language do you know?", but rather "What other languages do you know?" It tells me more about the mindset of the programmer than any "previous 10-years experience with $LANGUAGE".

That's why here Pascal-programmers generally have a better reputation than C-zealots. In a land where pointers and dynamic memory allocation are (mostly) forbidden, C doesn't get you very far. :)

Vinzent.

2009/10/17 "Vinzent Höfler" :

So, moving from C to Pascal, the programmer just need to learn these techniques, which really doesn't amount to much for an experienced programmer.

I think Graeme's point was that if you have a good grasp of software design and programming techniques, you can write good software in whatever language you choose. I have seen this in practice, so I agree to an extent. Obviously the programming paradigm of the language you choose will have an influence, so the old saying of choosing the right tool holds.

Henry

Henry Vermaak wrote

I think Graeme's point was that if you have a good grasp of software design and programming techniques, you can write good software in whatever language you choose.

Absolutely. But there's also the catch: With people only knowing C where should this knowledge come from?

Vinzent.

Vinzent Hoefler wrote

Absolutely. But there's also the catch: With people only knowing C where should this knowledge come from?

Documentation.

I have been programming solely in Object Pascal for the last 9 years. I dab in Java every now and again (but not for any production software). I also read a lot of C/C++ code which I rewrite into Object Pascal for whatever reason. So just like me being able to read and understand languages I don't earn a living in, so should C,C++,Java,C# etc developers be able to read and understand Object Pascal.

A quick study of some language reference docs and a few examples should be all you need to get started.

A quick study of some language reference docs and a few examples should be all you need to get started.

The general rules are easy to learn. But to be productive you also need to know about environments (IDE etc.), available libraries and their usage (which already differ between Delphi and Lazarus), bugs (and their workarounds) and OS dependencies and maybe even need to have lots of own code which you can reuse. So only getting the basics of a language is not enough IMO. And then it *does* matter whether you are used to program in a certain language (on a certain OS) or not.

Graeme Geldenhuys :

They do (sometimes at least). Still they write it as they would do in C.

A quick study of some language reference docs and a few examples should be all you need to get started.

A quick study of the language reference doesn't tell you why types suddenly are important. Why visibility isn't global anymore. Why modules are compilation units and not include files etc. pp.

Those ideas can be totally new to a C-programmer. - And then they start moaning about the awkward syntax of "begin" and "end"... ;)

Or, as the old saying is: One can write Fortran in any language.

Vinzent.

Good point there. Anyone who only knows one language is likely to be unable to adapt even to the changes in that particular language. For us who have moved between languages, it is more natural to adapt.

Don't learn a language; learn to program. Big difference. I think C and Java are particularly bad choices to teach programming, and learning just the one that "they use in the industry" only makes you narrow-minded and limited.

/Ingemar

Hello,

Please continue this thread to the fpc-other mailing list. This list is for discussions about *programming* in Pascal and FPC, and moreover language advocacy threads have a tendency to drown everything else by the sheer volume of posts they elicit.

Thanks,

Jonas
FPC mailing lists admin

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I certainly agree, but that is a very hard thing to prove to those who hold the purse strings, who tend not to be the technical types. Unfortunately, the term "buzzword compliant" is all too real. They know the terms used in the industry, and Pascal doesn't tend to come up that often, unlike C or Java or any of the numerous scripting/interpreted languages (Ruby, Perl, Python, etc.).

I don't claim to be a "good" programmer in any particular language, but having used several over my lifetime, I'm familiar with where the similarities and differences lie. Some programmers can't seem to grasp multiple languages effectively, similar to how some people have trouble learning a second (or more) speaking language, but like you say, the better ones have no trouble with it.

Jeff.