Moving On

May 28, 2008 10:52

Reg Braithwaite was writing not long ago about how we can be the biggest obstacle to our own growth. It made me realize how I've dropped things that I was once a staunch supporter of ( Read more... )

syndicated, cpp, tech, psyche

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Comments 13

hub_ May 28 2008, 15:49:00 UTC
Borland tried to make Delphi on Linux. It was Kylix and was a spectacular failure. The main issue is that the compiler was proprietary.

There are 2 implementation of Pascal in Free Software and at least one of them implement the Delphi extensions to object pascal:
http://www.freepascal.org/

The other seems to be willing to standardize on something:
http://www.gnu-pascal.de/gpc/h-index.html

Having done programming in Modula-2 I can attest that C is sometime very clumsy and too low level and Modula-2 provided a lot of facilities impossible to get with C.
C++ is a different story, but in a lot of cases it is probably not the right tool, despite the fact there is nothing else (ie Java or C# are far too slow / bloat, thanks to the VM). And that's a niche that could full-filled.

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pphaneuf May 28 2008, 19:49:32 UTC
Oh, I know about Kylix (and how it's dead now), but that's not what I said: a libre GCC front-end, contributed back to the FSF and using that in their product (similar to how Xcode uses GCC).

I've used both "popular" free Pascal compilers, back then (find me!). FPK Pascal is kind of wacky, and is suffering from not having enough attention on its back-end (as in "it's not GCC"). It would need to open up and leverage the work of outside experts, I think (maybe use LLVM as a back-end, for example).

GNU Pascal is not too bad, but quite backward, having only very minimal support for Delphi, the most recent thing that's fully supported is Borland Pascal 7.0 (ISO Pascal is a useless joke, a teaching tool at best, nothing like ISO C or C++).

No, I think that in order to get enough traction, it would need to be the Delphi compiler, not a second-up, and only Borland has that power. I'd be very surprised if they did ( ... )

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hub_ May 28 2008, 20:06:42 UTC
Today I'd go with Free Pascal. They also have Lazarus which seem to do the other part. One of their aim is really to be Delphi compatible, but not only.

Free Pascal is also the compiler that saved the old fart Pascal developers on Mac after Metrowerks dropped Pascal support a while back.

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pphaneuf May 28 2008, 20:18:46 UTC
Just not enough weight behind any of the Pascal ones, I'm afraid... Borland has the key to changing that, but they're too afraid to use it.

If someone was totally twisting my arm and forcing me to use Pascal, I'm not sure which one I'd take... A decent Pascal support with Free Pascal, or a decent backend with GNU Pascal? I guess I'd try Free Pascal first, hoping that fast machines will cover up any optimization suckage. ;-)

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pphaneuf May 28 2008, 20:04:24 UTC
C is dying, IMHO, especially as C++ is almost perfectly a superset (there's a few things that you might still need C for if you're doing something like XIP on some embedded platform, but the next version of C++ should fix this and make it entirely redundant).

If you count web applications, JavaScript is quite big, and the server-side is often scripted as well. There are things like PyPy for Python, and some applications either have big chunks of scripting that you don't really see (big games are a notable example). The client that BitTorrent.com makes is all Python, if I'm not mistaken, and it's pretty hard to tell.

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hub_ May 28 2008, 20:07:46 UTC
C is dying? Tell that to the GNOME people.....

*shrugs*

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pphaneuf May 28 2008, 20:15:30 UTC
I'm not claiming people are reasonable!

What I am claiming, though, is this: if you take a non-trivial C application, rename all the .c to .cc, fix the incompatibilities (if any, things like variables named "class", for example, but by design, there should be very few), and you'll have a ton of warnings that are helpful and will make the program better.

That strategy alone made me look like a genius on a few occasions at the job I had in France, getting me a few "how did you catch that?!?" puzzled looks (oh, the subtlety of confusing two enums of differing types!). ;-)

And the GNOME people are often seen gasping at straws, with things like Python and Mono. I think there's quite a few of their people who know it too, deep down...

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madamewoo May 29 2008, 03:56:03 UTC
hihihi, what i love about you is that with anyone else, this beginning :

Reg Braithwaite was writing not long ago about how we can be the biggest obstacle to our own growth. It made me realize how I've dropped things that I was once a staunch supporter of.

would have been the prelude to talking about letting go of being shy, or certain personal habits, or whatever.

But no -- you go right on to talk about pascal programming. this made me laugh so much!!!! :-)

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pphaneuf May 29 2008, 13:54:20 UTC
Well, it's not like I've ever been a staunch supporter of being shy!

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madamewoo May 30 2008, 04:40:07 UTC
Ou c'qui a de la gene, y'a pas de plaisir!

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pphaneuf May 30 2008, 14:03:09 UTC
Zactly!

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