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Author Topic: What about competing with Go?  (Read 6567 times)

guest64953

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What about competing with Go?
« on: December 15, 2019, 03:08:45 pm »
You're very similar. Both build a static binary best suited for running inside containers (Docker, Kubernetes,...). But if you wanted to archive that, you have to stop being a shadow of Delphi. You have to add new language features to match Go's and improve IDE support. The Lazarus IDE now, IMO, just a shadow of old version of RAD Studio, and only suitable to develop drag and drop GUI application. It currently not even good for command line application, let alone this kind of application  :-X

guest64953

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Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2019, 03:34:30 pm »
Do you want to continue the safe path, which is a free Delphi compatible compiler like what Liberty Eiffel is to Eiffel Studio, or changing yourself to be something different? If you want to change, you should invest on the correct path. I think you have great potential to be a real competitor of Golang. System programming is the homeland of C, so I think I should stop dreaming about a day we could have Pascal as a system language, side to side with C, to develop drivers, kernel modules,... The Go's path, to be the container's language is more realistic for us. If you still waste time for debating between C syntax and Pascal synax which is better, I think you should continue with the safe way and drop all of new language proposals, because it only make the language looks to be weird, but not actually improve it. This is MHO, listen or ignore it is up to you. Bye  :-*

julkas

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Re: What about competing with Go?
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2019, 03:39:27 pm »
@hunghung, FPC / Lazarus is open source project. You can improve it and make it better.

Thaddy

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Re: What about competing with Go?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2019, 04:07:27 pm »
As far as I know GO is proven to be solvable.
I am not aware of any board game called Pascal.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2019, 04:10:03 pm by Thaddy »
Specialize a type, not a var.

marcov

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2019, 04:13:21 pm »
Do you want to continue the safe path, which is a free Delphi compatible compiler like what Liberty Eiffel is to Eiffel Studio

Yes. Because that is a course agreed on by the bulk of the users and developers. They need it.

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, or changing yourself to be something different?

But that doesn't mean something else is different. Just fork and start. If it is all such glorious thingy, many people will join you.

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If you want to change, you should invest on the correct path.

Who says what we are doing is not the correct path? And what is a correct path? How do you judge the correct path?

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I think you have great potential to be a real competitor of Golang. System programming is the homeland of C, so I think I should stop dreaming about a day we could have Pascal as a system language, side to side with C, to develop drivers, kernel modules,... The Go's path, to be the container's language is more realistic for us. If you still waste time for debating between C syntax and Pascal synax which is better, I think you should continue with the safe way and drop all of new language proposals, because it only make the language looks to be weird, but not actually improve it.

Well, of course Go is being pushed ad nauseam by Google. Both sponsoring, as being used in their daily business.  What do you have to equalize that balance? A few billion in the bank maybe?

We could of course start to develop one of two pascal kernel modules, but really, who would use them?

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This is MHO, listen or ignore it is up to you. Bye  :-*

Think deeper :-)
« Last Edit: December 15, 2019, 08:57:53 pm by marcov »

winni

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2019, 05:29:24 pm »
This is MHO, listen or ignore it is up to you. Bye  :-*

Before I ignore it just one question:

Why is none of the Go compilers written in Go?
Think about it!

Winni

julkas

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2019, 05:45:33 pm »
This is MHO, listen or ignore it is up to you. Bye  :-*

Before I ignore it just one question:

Why is none of the Go compilers written in Go?
Think about it!

Winni
Give your answer.

MarkMLl

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2019, 06:31:55 pm »
Why is none of the Go compilers written in Go?

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The default compiler, gc, is included with the Go distribution as part of the support for the go command. Gc was originally written in C because of the difficulties of bootstrapping—you'd need a Go compiler to set up a Go environment. But things have advanced and since the Go 1.5 release the compiler has been a Go program.
https://golang.org/doc/faq#What_compiler_technology_is_used_to_build_the_compilers

However, I'd still suggest that somebody inclined to propose substantial changes to either the Pascal language or to the aims and management of the FPC/Lazarus projects would be in a far more persuasive position if he had a robust history of fixing bugs and cooperating with the core team. Or put another way, talk is cheap but learning how to design a language and implement a compiler isn't.

MarkMLl
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PascalDragon

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2019, 06:54:59 pm »
However, I'd still suggest that somebody inclined to propose substantial changes to either the Pascal language or to the aims and management of the FPC/Lazarus projects would be in a far more persuasive position if he had a robust history of fixing bugs and cooperating with the core team. Or put another way, talk is cheap but learning how to design a language and implement a compiler isn't.
THIS ;D

ASBzone

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #9 on: December 15, 2019, 07:06:41 pm »
However, I'd still suggest that somebody inclined to propose substantial changes to either the Pascal language or to the aims and management of the FPC/Lazarus projects would be in a far more persuasive position if he had a robust history of fixing bugs and cooperating with the core team. Or put another way, talk is cheap but learning how to design a language and implement a compiler isn't.

MarkMLl


Hey, every task is easy if you're asking someone else to do it. :)


And we know for sure that all these changes would rake in the users and the big bucks.    (Of course, no one ever considers that all of the supposed users who will then flock to the new product won't have their own "hey, it would be great if you just added ..." needs).

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del

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Re: What about competing with Go?
« Reply #10 on: December 15, 2019, 07:27:21 pm »
Three things I've "learned" on this forum:
  • C and C++ are only used for icky things like operating systems
  • Go is a great language
  • Go IS a language

guest64953

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Re: What about competing with Go?
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2019, 05:53:37 am »
Sorry, I know talk is cheap, just show the code so you would review or possibly merge it, or just creating a fork. But with my ability, it's impossible for me to do anything other than talk and lobby. And I think I have lobbied the wrong way, so it has the reverse effect. Everyone hate me now, think of me as a spammer or some trouble maker. Sorry, everyone. I think I should go now  :)

PascalDragon

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2019, 09:31:04 am »
Hey, every task is easy if you're asking someone else to do it. :)
But it's the way it is. This project is developed by users in their free time. People follow their interests (e.g. Florian improving the optimization, Jonas implementing the LLVM backend, me playing around in the parser). If someone wants "Fancy Feature XY" that is of no interest to any of us then they need to go into the initiative, whether this means to implement it themselves or to motivate some third developer to implement it.
And providing someone direct commit access to "our baby" requires trust. Trust that is established by someone providing patches, showing that they care and know how to work together with an established team.

Martin_fr

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Re: What about competing with Go?
« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2019, 09:50:34 am »
Everyone hate me now, think of me as a spammer or some trouble maker. Sorry, everyone. I think I should go now  :)

Not everyone... It is probably very few people, if anyone at, that "hate" you.

Just your idea wasn't liked.
And with the amount of such "ideas" / "lobbying attempts" coming in, reactions are anywhere between annoyed and amused (including maybe a few responses, actually giving proper pro and contra)

MarkMLl

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Re: Escape the shadow of Delphi
« Reply #14 on: December 16, 2019, 10:00:09 am »
But it's the way it is. This project is developed by users in their free time. People follow their interests (e.g. Florian improving the optimization, Jonas implementing the LLVM backend, me playing around in the parser).

And me being a pain in the collective backside of the core developers for the last 15 years or so :-)

Seriously: it's not just that writing a compiler is a big job, it's that /particularly/ when it extends an existing language it's not something that can really be done in one fell swoop: it has to grow organically and build on what came before it.

It's easy enough to build a language and compiler from scratch: that's exactly what Go does. Similarly, it's easy enough to build an operating system from scratch and to offer limited backward compatibility: that's what Windows NT did (and it took another ten years before a sufficient proportion of developers had been taught the error of their ways that it could go mainstream).

But to build something on a venerable language like Pascal that doesn't break backward compatibility is a massive job. And while I criticise Pascal and regret a couple of things left out of it (when compared with ALGOL) and now derided as "too C-like" I do have to defend FPC's core developers since by now their "gut feeling" that some change would either break the language or would require sufficient reimplementation that there would almost certainly be serious bugs- and some of us do actually use this compiler for serious work- has to be respected.

@hunghung: Don't feel bad. Get involved, learn the ropes, learn to distinguish between what's easy and what's not so easy. And just to put things in context, PascalDragon's port of the compiler so that it can use the low-level Windows NT API (normally available for device drivers etc.) is one of the simpler things he and his colleagues have done.

MarkMLl







« Last Edit: December 16, 2019, 10:02:11 am by MarkMLl »
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Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
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