Hacktoberfest

[Eugene Loza]

Don't forget that https://hacktoberfest.com/ is on, you can add hacktoberfest topic to your repositories, and hacktoberfest labels to your issues.

You can find projects in Pascal participating in Hacktoberfest on GitHub by

https://github.com/topics/hacktoberfest?l=pascal&o=desc&s=updated

(and this and previous years there are way too few of those )

Unfortunately GitLab doesn't seem to support searching by "pascal" language. By trial-and-error figured out code language for Pascal: https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/hacktoberfest?language=49

[Joanna]

Is there any way to get gitlab to stop pretending that pascal language doesn’t exist? It doesn’t even have delphi either.

[Bogen85]

Is there any way to get gitlab to stop pretending that pascal language doesn’t exist? It doesn’t even have delphi either.

As far as things like Hacktoberfest goes (on GitHub and GitLab) it is mainly for open source related software development.

So Delphi would not qualify there... Yes, you can develop open source projects strictly Delphi, but they are useless to anyone wanting to use the source code using open source tools (unless they can use them with Free Pascal).

As far as GitLab and Pascal...

Here are the languages they openly recognize for hacktoberfest:

• Any
• Batchfile
• Blade
• C
• C#
• C++
• CMake
• CSS
• Dockerfile
• Go
• HCL
• HTML
• Java
• JavaScript
• Jupyter Notebook
• Kotlin
• Makefile
• Objective-C
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• SCSS
• Shell
• Swift
• TypeScript
• Vue

They don't openly recognize Groovy either:
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/hacktoberfest?language=24

Or Rust:
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/hacktoberfest?language=46

And Rust and Groovy are currently far more popular than Pascal.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-top-programming-languages-2023

[Bogen85]

Is there any way to get gitlab to stop pretending that pascal language doesn’t exist? It doesn’t even have delphi either.

https://gitlab.com/explore/projects?name=pascal&sort=latest_activity_desc

They recognize pascal.
Just not in the dropdown list.
Kind of pointless to have a dropdown list with every programming language (open source or not) because many pages using that list would be >99% that list, and <1% other content.

[Bogen85]

Is there any way to get gitlab to stop pretending that pascal language doesn’t exist? It doesn’t even have delphi either.

Definitely recognized, even have their own tags:
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/freepascal
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/Pascal
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/fpc
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/Delphi

It it just kind of pointless to put every topic into a single drop down.
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics

hacktoberfest is a topic...
https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/hacktoberfest

The problem is the search interface is kind of limiting, as you can't sufficiently search for topic tags in a topic.

So, not a conspiracy against Pascal, just limited search options.

[Eugene Loza]

To be fair, GitHub also doesn't have Pascal in the drop-down list of languages. But its search URL has a human-readable language string where one can input "pascal". On the other hand GitLab uses Linguist's non-standard codes (different from GitHub and I couldn't find any table) and it's only by trial-and-error one can get to Pascal = 49 (and you won't even get the confirmation that you've guessed correct: just look at search results and see that "yeah, all those projects are written in Pascal").

At the beginning of the month I've made an issue for GitLab to allow inputting the language in a human-readable format https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/426880

But to be even more fair, one can't fill in all the languages in existence into a single drop-down (it will not be user-friendly). However at least providing a way for advanced users to input the language manually without having to brute force the numeric ID may be a good solution. Of course one can still argue why "Dockerfile" is considered a popular filter while "Pascal" isn't

[paweld]

github allows you to search by language:

Code: [Select]

Hacktoberfest language:Pascal


[Joanna]

Even if it’s possible to access pascal it shouldn’t be necessary to “do tricks“ to get around their deliberate exclusion of the language in the selection.
 .

But to be even more fair, one can't fill in all the languages in existence into a single drop-down (it will not be user-friendly).

I’m not familiar with How comboboxes on websites Work.
Don’t they have any autocomplete feature? If so the number of items should not Be a problem unless it’s ridiculously large.

Their not including it in the list could be taken as a hint that they only want languages in the list being used. Perhaps someone could contact them and clarify. ... there are languages in that dropdown that I’ve never even heard of before.

Thanks for links bogen85, I’m glad that the rest of gitlab isn’t excluding pascal.

[Bogen85]

Even if it’s possible to access pascal it shouldn’t be necessary to “do tricks“ to get around their deliberate exclusion of the language in the selection.

They are not singling out out Pascal.
As I pointed out the same tricks need to used for Rust and Groovy, which are more popular than Pascal. Especially Rust.

On a side note: The Linux project officially added Rust as a language that can be used Linux kernel development. Prior to that C was the only officially supported language.
Pascal will likely never be added. C++ will likely be never be added, and C++ is far more popular than Pascal. Is it a Linux project goal to hate on Pascal? No. Does Linus Torvalds speak disparagingly about Languages he does not like or understand? Yes. And he is not shy about that.

But I don't see language bigotry as the reason why Pascal is not in Gitlab's Hacktoberfest language drop-down list.