FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#81

Post by PeCaN » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 3:56 PM UTC

revanx_ wrote: post #69

PeCaN wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works with Delphi and C++Builder for a job… yeah, it's the single shittiest development environment ever conceived by man, and they charge exorbitant prices for it. It's actually gotten so bad that my company is opting to migrate to C# for future development, in spite of our long investment in Delphi.

I wouldn't say that the IDE is shit, but it certainly isn't as good as VS, what issues do you encounter to make you say that?

- C++Builder: Compiler ICEs regularly

- Both: No undo in the UI builder

- Delphi: There are about 3 different ways of adding an existing file to a project. They seem to differ in how they track dependencies.

- Both: Project files periodically get corrupted.

- Both: Renaming a control on a form by only changing case causes some references to the control not to be updated.

- Both: No customizable keybindings

- C++Builder (might be true with Delphi too): The debugger periodically crashes.

- C++Builder: Sometimes the project fails to build and gives a bunch of errors in system headers. The solution? Close the IDE and open it again.

Those are just the big ones. There are a million tiny annoyances that add up to be very frustrating.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#82

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:07 PM UTC

eggy wrote: post #54

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used both professionally. I'd say that "begin" and "end" may be clearer than "{" and "}", but less typing wins when you're writing a lot of code. Writing "if" statements without short-circuit operators is both tedious and error-prone. So, yeah, I like the C syntax. It's not a question of "ugly", though. Pascal is tedious. It's more work to write. And, of the kinds of tedious I've complained about here, it's not…

Ruby seems to be quoted as an elegant language, and it certainly has its followers, and the number of Ends (vs. Begins in Pascal) are just as numerous, yet this is never cited. Syntax is definitely a personal preference. I know multiple PLs from different families, and even then, I still prefer a certain syntax.

> Ruby seems to be quoted as an elegant language, and it certainly has its followers, and the number of Ends (vs. Begins in Pascal) are just as numerous, yet this is never cited.

Well, except that the cascade of ends is a frequent complaint about Ruby, rather than something "never cited".

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#83

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

clouddrover wrote: post #58

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used both professionally. I'd say that "begin" and "end" may be clearer than "{" and "}", but less typing wins when you're writing a lot of code. Writing "if" statements without short-circuit operators is both tedious and error-prone. So, yeah, I like the C syntax. It's not a question of "ugly", though. Pascal is tedious. It's more work to write. And, of the kinds of tedious I've complained about here, it's not…

> Writing "if" statements without short-circuit operators is both tedious and error-prone. By default both Delphi and Free Pascal perform short-circuit evaluation of boolean operators. The Delphi and Free Pascal documentation has more: http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Berlin/en/Boolean_s... http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Berlin/en/Expressio... http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/current/ref/refsu48.…

Ah. When I used Pascal, it was back in the old days. The single most horrific problem was that the size of an array was part of the type of the array, so it was literally impossible to use variable-sized arrays. But I didn't whine about that one, because I knew that it was fixed as early as Turbo Pascal.

grumble grumble kids get off my lawn...

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#84

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

JDuntemann wrote: post #57

I loved Pascal instantly because my first language was mainframe APL, followed by some weird in-house macroassembler that Xerox was using on its 8080-based business boxes. Compared to APL, Pascal is not only elegant but transcendent. Verbosity bothers me not at all (I used to write COBOL too) because I like being able to read and understand what I've written six months after I set it aside. You couldn't do that with…

> I'm creating a FreePascal edition of my ancient Turbo Pascal book

Getting my hands on an early edition (first or second, I'm not not quite sure) of Complete Turbo Pascal in my teens is a big party of why I ended up as a programmer.

I'm glad to see its still alive, and hopefully still inspiring new programmers.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#85

Post by vram22 » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

boduh wrote: post #70

vram22 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I had read maybe around a year ago on their site that Embarcadero had plans to bring out a Delphi version with Linux support. Not sure what happened to that, and also now that they have been bought by Idera (which I only saw from the recent thread here about Modern Object Pascal).

They stated plans for Linux server support in Delphi but no GUI apps for Linux.

Thanks. An example of poor business thinking, IMO. That's basically putting on blinkers and saying "oh, Linux is only for servers", which is pure bull - unless they had some valid technical reason for not wanting to support GUI apps on Linux.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#86

Post by mamcx » Thu, Jul 07, 2016, 10:55 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51

mamcx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is interesting that people that "like" the c-like syntax consider pascal "ugly". The opposite is also true.

I've used both professionally. I'd say that "begin" and "end" may be clearer than "{" and "}", but less typing wins when you're writing a lot of code. Writing "if" statements without short-circuit operators is both tedious and error-prone. So, yeah, I like the C syntax. It's not a question of "ugly", though. Pascal is tedious. It's more work to write. And, of the kinds of tedious I've complained about here, it's not…

> less typing wins when you're writing a lot of code.

This probably is part of the reasons: People that optimize for write instead of reading.

However, after python I consider "begin/end" marks redundant with indentation...

But then some people hate clear code, and prefer mess with the layout!

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#87

Post by emmanueloga_ » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

JDuntemann wrote: post #57

I loved Pascal instantly because my first language was mainframe APL, followed by some weird in-house macroassembler that Xerox was using on its 8080-based business boxes. Compared to APL, Pascal is not only elegant but transcendent. Verbosity bothers me not at all (I used to write COBOL too) because I like being able to read and understand what I've written six months after I set it aside. You couldn't do that with…

Are you updating your "Assembly Language Step By Step" book any time soon?

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#88

Post by e12e » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 2:22 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83

clouddrover wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing "if" statements without short-circuit operators is both tedious and error-prone. By default both Delphi and Free Pascal perform short-circuit evaluation of boolean operators. The Delphi and Free Pascal documentation has more: http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Berlin/en/Boolean_s... http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Berlin/en/Expressio... http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/current/ref/refsu48.…

Ah. When I used Pascal, it was back in the old days. The single most horrific problem was that the size of an array was part of the type of the array, so it was literally impossible to use variable-sized arrays. But I didn't whine about that one, because I knew that it was fixed as early as Turbo Pascal. grumble grumble kids get off my lawn...

I think this is an important point - I had a year of Object Pascal as introductory programming by accident sort of - as I spent a year at another college. It was the last year they continued to use Object Pascal (moving on to Java, I believe). Having had some exposure to Java, C and assembler before - I felt Object Pascal made much more sense than C. Meaningfully higher level than assembly, and much easier to grasp the difference between reference/value/address than in C. I know what * and & means in C, but it just felt more natural in Pascal (it's been so long that I don't remember the particularity of the syntax/semantics ...).

Basic "original" Pascal is very much a teaching language first, and a "real" language second. But the small tweaks (or big, depending on your point of view) to Object Pascal/the default dialect for Free Pascal makes a world of difference IMNHO. So, I think someone can both agree that early Pascal (or plain Pascal) is uncomfortably verbose and rigid, while at the same time think that modern Free/Object Pascal is a great language to work with.

I wonder if there's anyone working on a Pascal back-end for Nim? In some ways is seems like a "waste" that the default target is C.

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#89

Post by e12e » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

vram22 wrote: post #37

avhon1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard of this book before, so I found it: "FreePascal from Square One". http://www.copperwood.com/pub/FreePascalSquareOne--08-06-201...

Cool, just downloaded it - thanks. Had a quick look at the book. He says: "Yessir, the book you’re reading has been around the block a few times since I began writing it in November of 1983—which I boggle to think was over thirty years ago. It’s been through four print editions and on paper sold over 125,000 copies. It’s been translated into five languages." I had said recently, here (in another HN thread): https://n…

Just calling out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12047005 in case you missed it :-)

Re: FreePascal and Lazarus Foundation

#90

Post by e12e » Fri, Jul 08, 2016, 2:29 AM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #60

This is from my personal experience, YMMV. Programs written in Turbo C ran faster than programs written in Turbo Pascal, that's why it lost in the MSDOS world. As an example, WWIV was a very popular BBS in the 80s and early 90s that included source code, so it was popular with a large group of hobbyists. It was originally written in Turbo Pascal but when converted to Turbo C and ran noticeably faster. Other BBSes (Te…

One of the optimization goals for the design of Pascal was compile speed - single pass compilation source > link > binary. That usually also meant less optimizations. On the other hand, Turbo Pascal was really popular as glue code for programs and demos written predominately in assembler for speed... so there's that.

I wonder if a rewrite of WWIV from Pascal to Pascal would've yielded similar speedups, or if it really just was the optimization passes that made all the difference. If so, one might think that a Pascal compiler that targeted C might have been an (almost) as good solution at the time.