Give Pascal a Second Look

[440bx]

What is fpc unable to do exactly ?

It's not about what it's unable to do, it's about how much time and effort it takes to perform a particular task using FPC (or any other language for that matter.)

For instance, when I need to process text, 90+% of the time I use AWK because, I can write a small AWK "program" in a few minutes that would probably take 3 to 5 times longer in FPC (and that's because I can cut and paste from some of my past programs.)

FPC is a nice tool but, just like a nice screwdriver, it doesn't make a good wrench.  Trying to fit square pegs in a round hole is not easy no matter how perfectly square the pegs are.

[silvercoder70]

Back again...

On the 2nd look ... imagine that you are in the supermarket and in one of the aisles are programming languages to pick from. You see the front cover of the box labelled Pascal (FPC or Delphi) and keep walking. Your rationale for moving on could be one of many (and some based on myths or previous experience or what you were told). And perhaps 1/2 minute later you come back and read the back side of the box about what it can do, etc. and perhaps you realise that some of your perception might be incorrect? Or not as bad as you thought.

I also an advocate of using the right tool for the job. Where 440bx mentioned using AWK, for some quick and dirty tools will use Python or Php.

I was also not asking shops to replace whatever language they use with "Pascal". However, there is also an argument in learning different languages - for example through Lisp you might get an understanding of recursion, or with Prolog and logic processing. Whether you use these in a professional sense or not is a different question!

Someone made a argument/comparison about latin and being a dead language etc. Let it (Pascal) die.

Yet people will still study that (Latin) and this can be helpful when learning other languages, and working out the meaning of words and many other advantages.

With "Pascal" ....

[Joanna from IRC]

The good thing about fpc is new tools can be added to our so called tool chest. I don’t think of fpc as a single tool but many tools. When pascal was first invented there was no such thing as event driven programming or gui. Everything was a console program running on a mainframe computer.

Fpc has evolved from the original pascal to be something better and can evolve further in the future if the need arises. While I’m definitely against recklessly implementing every new trend from other languages into pascal, I think we can learn some things from other languages and use them in pascal. I’m particularly fond of the c++ style //comment and the lcl componets which very much remind me of Visual Basic.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t even come close to knowing everything that there is to know about fpc and and yes I do “cheat by using sqlite”. Because there is no sql version written in pascal so far as I know. If there was I would like to try it.

I think that many of the naysayers about pascal don’t know much about it and think it’s still that simple language from the 1980s only good for teaching.

I don’t usually waste my time talking to naysayers about pascal {Because they make me angry} but I have gotten some of them to come post here on the forums because I thought that a dialogue between naysayer and experts is interesting to read. One naysayer even told me afterwards “oh I didn’t know pascal could do those things”. Many people who hate pascal seem to know very little about it when it comes to a technical discussion.

If fpc has shortcomings I think there are technical solutions to fix this rather than giving up and running off to some other language that offers “more libraries”. We can make our own libraries for things we need can’t we? Sure it might require a little extra effort upfront but I think it’s worth it .

[Handoko]

I don’t usually waste my time talking to naysayers about pascal {Because they make me angry} but I have gotten some of them to come post here on the forums because I thought that a dialogue between naysayer and experts is interesting to read.

Being angry does not help in the situation. People have doubt usually because they do not understand or have not collected enough information about the thing. We should explain and provide the information for them. That may not be able to convert them to use Lazarus/Pascal but the information is written, other visitors will read the information in the future and that can be useful for them.

[LV]

Hey all,

So I wrote a little article on giving pascal a second look on my blog page, and decided to post it onto the r/programming forum on reddit. If you are bored and have nothing better to do, have a look here

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gganlz/why_pascal_deserves_a_second_look/

and share some love for Pascal. Not sure what I expected, but did not expect many comments really.

I liked the comment on your article:

"When I teach, I mainly use C and C++ because it is the best choice of the languages the students know. When I write for myself, or prototypes, I always use Pascal (FPC). It is fast, intuitive, easy, and with features that makes it far superior to C++."

[Joanna from IRC]

I don’t usually waste my time talking to naysayers about pascal {Because they make me angry} but I have gotten some of them to come post here on the forums because I thought that a dialogue between naysayer and experts is interesting to read.

Being angry does not help in the situation. People have doubt usually because they do not understand or have not collected enough information about the thing. We should explain and provide the information for them. That may not be able to convert them to use Lazarus/Pascal but the information is written, other visitors will read the information in the future and that can be useful for them.

I agree. Getting angry doesn’t help anything.
I am just not the right person to talk to people who dislike pascal.

If anyone would like to volunteer to help, by all means I’d love to have you around and I will not interfere with your efforts.

I  want to learn from/help people who are interested in pascal.

[silvercoder70]

Hey all,

So I wrote a little article on giving pascal a second look on my blog page, and decided to post it onto the r/programming forum on reddit. If you are bored and have nothing better to do, have a look here

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1gganlz/why_pascal_deserves_a_second_look/

and share some love for Pascal. Not sure what I expected, but did not expect many comments really.

I liked the comment on your article:

"When I teach, I mainly use C and C++ because it is the best choice of the languages the students know. When I write for myself, or prototypes, I always use Pascal (FPC). It is fast, intuitive, easy, and with features that makes it far superior to C++."

I thought that was interesting also!