Pascal is dead?

[BlueIcaro]

Hello, according this:

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/influential-dead-languages/

Pascal is dead, then may be we are all us dead in this forum?

/BlueIcaro

[marcov]

Actually it is a rebuttal to declaring of Pascal is dead. If you look at his "Cause of death" paragraph he mentions Delphi still being high in TIOBE.

At least that is then finally good for something :-)

[440bx]

@marcov beat me to the punch. 

I was going to make the same point.  The author openly states that he does not consider Pascal dead (and it definitely isn't in spite of not being nearly as popular as it once was.)

[Чебурашка]

@marcov beat me to the punch. 

I was going to make the same point.  The author openly states that he does not consider Pascal dead (and it definitely isn't in spite of not being nearly as popular as it once was.)

Feeling is that besides the fact that new languages have been invented, the biggest reason why Pascal is no longer so popular is that in commercial contexts, not all companies like to rely on "unsupported" tools, in the sense that they feel more safe in using a tools that has some other "official" company that guarantees some support for that (as it was Borland or how are Microsoft and Oracle nowadays).

[egsuh]

Yes. Blaise Pascal died in 1662 A.D. at the age of 39. 

Some web-developers say they prefer JAVA because it is cross-platform, which applies to FreePascal as well.  But sadly there are not many Pascal web developers.

[MarkMLl]

In any event: I've heard that more people in China speak English ("after a fashion") than in America. So it might be possible to argue that the major impact of the King's English is that it provided a linguistic framework for a substantial part of the World.

I'd argue that that's the role of Wirth's languages: now that languages such as C and C++ have accepted the idea of strong typing etc., they could be regarded as 'Pascal  "after a fashion"'.

So the King's English and Pascal might only be used in their purest forms by a tiny number of people, but they live on. "After a fashion".

MarkMLl

[loaded]

Pascal is dead, then may be we are all us dead in this forum?

The members of this form, from the youngest to the oldest, will leave the realm of life after a maximum of 100 years.
In this case, we can easily say that pascal has at least another 100 years of life.

[Bogen85]

Well, judging by the backlog of issues for both Lazarus and Free Pascal, and due to more issues being submitted almost every day, one could argue that there is an active community that are expecting to be using both for quite a while.

Who files that many issues on dead projects, or on projects not expected to be around for a while?

It the active individuals involved thought Pascal was truly dead, they would be abandoning it for other projects.

Percentages of users spread across the current active language language projects is not the most important indicator.

Enough active users and developers to maintain critical mass is all that is needed, and the Lazarus and Free Pascal projects still have that.

[Thaddy]

The members of this form, from the youngest to the oldest, will leave the realm of life after a maximum of 100 years.
In this case, we can easily say that pascal has at least another 100 years of life.

I am nearly 65. I turned range checks off...{$R-}
100 seems to be an arbitrary selection not founded in solid science.
Average range in my direct family can be calcutated in the range of 89..106.

I would recommend "Godfriend Bomans, de Honderd jarige" if you are proficient in Dutch, but there is an English translation.

[loaded]

I am nearly 65. I turned range checks off...{$R-}

65 It is the autumn of youth. May God give you a healthy and long life.

100 seems to be an arbitrary selection not founded in solid science.

Yes, it's not scientific, but it's not arbitrary either. It is a number that I have obtained as a result of my observations around me.
Let's recalculate;
I said 100. You said 106. Let the average of the two be 103. Let's go further, let's get 116. Let's do a final calculation, let's smooth out the result, let's get 120.
Whatever the number is, the inevitable truth; Everything that was created will be freed and destroyed.

[Thaddy]

On topic:
I asked chatGPT / OpenAI (my new toy):

Code: [Select]

What is your request?
Is the Pascal language dead?

Please wait for the response, this can take some time:


No, the Pascal language is not dead and is still in use today. It is often used in education, embedded systems, and game development.https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,61668.msg465090.html#msg465090 for the toy code.
Obtain key from openai.com

Or even let the language explain why it is not dead by itself:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. What is your request?
2. write an object pascal class that can explain why the Pascal language is not dead
3.  
4. Please wait for the response, this can take some time:
5.  
6.  
7. type
8.   TPascalLanguage = class
9.   private
10.     FIsDead: Boolean;
11.   public
12.     constructor Create;
13.     property IsDead: Boolean read FIsDead;
14.     procedure ExplainWhyNotDead;
15.   end;
16.  
17. constructor TPascalLanguage.Create;
18. begin
19.   FIsDead := False;
20. end;
21.  
22. procedure TPascalLanguage.ExplainWhyNotDead;
23. begin
24.   Writeln('Pascal is still alive because it is the language of choice for many embedded systems, such as traffic lights and ATM machines. It is also used by many universities to teach students the basics of object-oriented programming.');
25. end;

[Joanna]

Saying pascal and dead in the same sentence is very demoralizing even if it isn’t true. Same goes for IRC. If enough people mistakenly get the wrong idea about anything  it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Thaddy]

Saying pascal and dead in the same sentence is very demoralizing even if it isn’t true. Same goes for IRC. If enough people mistakenly get the wrong idea about anything  it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Ok...
What is your request?
is the pascal language pushing up daisy's?

Please wait for the response, this can take some time:


No, the Pascal language is not pushing up daisies. It is still used in many applications and is a popular language for teaching and learning computer programming.

[Joanna]

Where is pascal still taught ?
 Outside of this forum and irc channel everyone I encounter wants nothing to do with pascal unfortunately. Because employers aren’t hiring for it.

Maybe we are better off without those sorts of people. 

[Leledumbo]

If you Google far enough, this kind of articles appear every year for at least the last twenty years. Nothing new, but nothing really comes true either. Perhaps some of the authors of such an article is actually dead by now, while our beloved Pascal continues to evolve.