FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

I wonder how prevalent Pascal is in 2016. I've been meaning to write some on a classic Mac OS system I have laying around (just for shits and giggles).

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#5

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

_qbjt wrote: post #4

I wonder how prevalent Pascal is in 2016. I've been meaning to write some on a classic Mac OS system I have laying around (just for shits and giggles).

[deleted]

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#6

Post by baq » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

modern pascal is actually pretty good. it's very unfortunate that it isn't considered sexy. i learned programming on turbo pascal and used to think that pascal isn't a serious language. years later, after seeing that it's not dead and dropping prejudices against it i can see that it lost pretty much only because of its perceived uncoolness.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#7

Post by kazinator » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

trentmb wrote: post #3

systems wrote: post #2

is this new

Mon Jun 27 08:14:36 CEST 2016

That's just the date on someone's excited post to a mailing list, at having discovered http://foundation.freepascal.org.

I don't see any explicit dates in that site's content. Oh, except that the projects have dates on them. Both current and past projects are tagged 2016. Busy beavers! Mid 2016, and already three 2016-dated items are "past projects".

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#8

Post by dmix » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

I wish they chose a better name than "Free Pascal". It makes it sound like a lower-quality version.

After that recent Object Pascal guide was on HN [1] I've been meaning to try the language out. It looks like it might be a nice alternative to using Ruby on some small side projects where I need a quick OO language to work with.

I've grown attached to static types so it looks like it might be a good option. My only concern is whether the tooling has been modernized or not.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12027008

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#9

Post by trentmb » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #6

modern pascal is actually pretty good. it's very unfortunate that it isn't considered sexy. i learned programming on turbo pascal and used to think that pascal isn't a serious language. years later, after seeing that it's not dead and dropping prejudices against it i can see that it lost pretty much only because of its perceived uncoolness.

Or that you have to drop $1,405.00 [0] to get a 'professional' environment.

[0] https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/delp...

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#10

Post by segmondy » Wed, Jul 06, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #6

modern pascal is actually pretty good. it's very unfortunate that it isn't considered sexy. i learned programming on turbo pascal and used to think that pascal isn't a serious language. years later, after seeing that it's not dead and dropping prejudices against it i can see that it lost pretty much only because of its perceived uncoolness.

Language fans can all say that about their favorite languages from the past. ;-)

lisp, prolog, smalltalk, forth, fortran, even ada.

The challenge for programming languages today is not so much the syntax/language constructs but the ecosystem, libraries, community & support.

See php, it has all that and is very successful.

p/s. I write PHP code and believe pascal is a better language.