Object Pascal decline?

[marcov]

Incidentally, I was horrified to discover that on (Google Groups's) comp.lang.pascal, the last post dates back to 2004!!! I am really struggling to make any sense of that.

That's because it was deprecated long before 2000 when they split it into multiple subgroups (like comp.lang.pascal.misc). Google groups still allows posting via the website, but it is a dud group in this century.

Which just demonstrates (again!) how careful you must be with webgathered statistics.

[vicot]

I wonder why sourceforge mirror downloaders are mostly from Russia...

That's another interesting aspect of the question. I was already thinking about that. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the majority of Lazarus users are from Russia and from developing countries. That may be due to the fact that the adoption of programming languages in the West is dictated by different trends, which push for Java, C++, etc. It's a matter of politics, in the end.

[sam707]

@Vicot

its neither matter of politic, neither of price , gnu c is also free. I think if russian peeps prefer pascal it is certainly NOT because they are under development (they also sent men in space). It is more simple =

their minds are structured in a logical way able to raise Chess Wordwide Champions AND they are not lazy at spelling in their own sophisticated language, so they dont mind to make compact obfuscated source codes like C, prefering clean readability for later maintenance.... that also is part of high structured logic brains.

[marcov]

I wonder why sourceforge mirror downloaders are mostly from Russia...

That's another interesting aspect of the question. I was already thinking about that. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the majority of Lazarus users are from Russia 

IIRC a few years back, the Russia government made a massive deal with Embarcadero for Delphi licenses to be used in Russian universities. It is probably mostly educational use.

[vicot]

@Vicot

its neither matter of politic, neither of price , gnu c is also free. I think if russian peeps prefer pascal it is certainly NOT because they are under development (they also sent men in space). It is more simple =

their minds are structured in a logical way able to raise Chess Wordwide Champions AND they dont are lazy at spelling in their own sophisticated language, so they dont mind to make obfuscated source codes like C, prefering clean readability for later maintenance.... that also is part of high structured logic brains.

Your explanation is certainly interesting. It reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypotesis in linguistics [1], but in the reverse.
Only, it does not explain why Germans are not equally avid users of Pascal, since they are also very logically oriented.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis&redirect=no

[sam707]

you are wrong !!!

I did see many german sites around delphi and pascal, the worst european country that do not get that much involved in pascal is France

[skalogryz]

Your explanation is certainly interesting. It reminds me of the Sapir-Whorf hypotesis in linguistics [1], but in the reverse.
Only, it does not explain why Germans are not equally avid users of Pascal, since they are also very logically oriented.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis&redirect=no

Face it, both FPK (usage if K is intentional) and Lazarus are authored by Germans

[sam707]

yeeep skalogryz

russian,german, deep structured logic brains... that is why, I guess, they enjoy Pascal language.

as I am from France but I learnt English/German at school, that sounded like an evidence

English = better for practical things and technology

German = better for organizing

French = better for feelings and heart

(this is well known and a friend of mine who is a Writer and a Teacher from Ireland, speaking 6 languages confirmed it. She is awesome Lady, translating herself her books)

[typo]

At least in Brazil french language has already been a language of science. Maybe in USA too.

[vicot]

Face it, both FPK (usage if K is intentional) and Lazarus are authored by Germans

Are there many colleges in Germany that teach Delphi / Free Pascal (today)?

[sam707]

I said that one day to one of my employees (I then fired him because he refused to work and learn, just expecting all will come easy to him)

"you need a school to learn? NO ! you need a Willingness ! Most of what I learnt, I got it by my Willingness ! I would say, along my whole life, 10% at school, 70% by myself".

I do not refer a school grade when I need someone, I refer his/her Abilities, thats truely pretty veeeery different !

[Nebula]

the worst european country that do not get that much involved in pascal is France

Pretty ironic considering where Blaise Pascal was from 

[marcov]

Face it, both FPK (usage if K is intentional) and Lazarus are authored by Germans

I think Dutch vs  German speaking is in the magnitude of 1:1. FPC core a bit more dutch speaking, Lazarus a bit more German. 

In the past Dutch was the more dominant one, I think now with recent new committers the balance maybe is slightly towards German.

[vicot]

I said that one day to one of my employees (I then fired him because he refused to work and learn, just expecting all will come easy to him)

"you need a school to learn? NO ! you need a Willingness ! Most of what I learnt, I got it by my Willingness ! I would say, along my whole life, 10% at school, 70% by myself".

I do not refer a school grade when I need someone, I refer his/her Abilities, thats truely pretty veeeery different !

This is all reasonable, what you wrote. But my point was: what are the programming languages taught in German colleges? I assume that Java, C++ etc are not merely learned by means of willingness, on one's own. They are mostly taught in colleges. Why is it different with Delphi/Free Pascal? Because today that is not the policy.
Of course, I am not saying that Java and C++ are better. I am only saying that the popularity of languages is much influenced by policy considerations. Another poster confirmed this when he said that Delphi was popular in Russia because there was a large contract in Russian colleges.

So, I believe that one way of reversing the decline, in addition to improving the language, with its libraries and documentation, would be to improve the public image of the language. That is, advocacy and marketing. But this raises the question: how does Object Pascal actually compare to Java/C++, honestly?

[zeljko]

I said that one day to one of my employees (I then fired him because he refused to work and learn, just expecting all will come easy to him)

"you need a school to learn? NO ! you need a Willingness ! Most of what I learnt, I got it by my Willingness ! I would say, along my whole life, 10% at school, 70% by myself".

I do not refer a school grade when I need someone, I refer his/her Abilities, thats truely pretty veeeery different !

This is all reasonable, what you wrote. But my point was: what are the programming languages taught in German colleges? I assume that Java, C++ etc are not merely learned by means of willingness, on one's own. They are mostly taught in colleges. Why is it different with Delphi/Free Pascal? Because today that is not the policy.
Of course, I am not saying that Java and C++ are better. I am only saying that the popularity of languages is much influenced by policy considerations. Another poster confirmed this when he said that Delphi was popular in Russia because there was a large contract in Russian colleges.

So, I believe that one way of reversing the decline, in addition to improving the language, with its libraries and documentation, would be to improve the public image of the language. That is, advocacy and marketing. But this raises the question: how does Object Pascal actually compare to Java/C++, honestly?

Here in Croatia, Java/C++ is mostly used for teaching at universities, but I don't think that anybody can learn real programming there. My young coleague learned Java and started with Lazarus without problem. Why ? Because you must learn somewhere basics of OOP and then it shuold be easy to switch to any other OOP language (of course with additional learning, syntax etc etc), and that "easy" part is Willingness as sam707 said. I've met programmers (just finished university) which cannot write simple Hello world program in vi editor (no matter if it's Java/C++/OOP or anything else) - they're lost without VisualStudio/Eclipse whatever. They know theory but practically their value is equal to 0. So, yes, willingness is most important part.