Give Pascal a Second Look

[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.

[Joanna from IRC]

Not all your commenters seem to like pascal though 

[Bogen85]

Not all your commenters seem to like pascal though 

So? Such is a lot of discussion of any topic on reddit.

Pascal gets equal treatment.

[Bogen85]

Seems all generally positive to me.

I don't consider most of the negatively as bad, much of the of the criticism looks valid to me.

Many of the commenters do like Pascal.

[bytebites]

The most negative comment about Fpc got most upvotes.

[Bogen85]

The most negative comment about Fpc got most upvotes.

There are times when I was younger that I shared a lot same sentiment of the negative commenters. (In regard to Pascal).

I used Pascal late 80s (school and work) and again late 90s (school), and then started using free pascal a lot for hobby stuff 4 years ago.

I briefly looked into free pascal around 2008 give or take year or so. It actually felt alien/archaic to me at that time, despite having used it quite a bit earlier in my life, because I'd been so immersed in other programming language environments.

I don't read Reddit regularly.

Between 10 and 20 years ago had I participated in a discussion like this particular Reddit one, I could see myself being among the upvoters of the negative comments, and maybe even one of the negative commenters.

[Joanna from IRC]

I don’t really have Reddit account but I sometimes go there to read and people say that it has a lot of bots posting?

[silvercoder70]

Not all your commenters seem to like pascal though 

funny that *rolling eyes* sigh

[silvercoder70]

Not all your commenters seem to like pascal though 

So? Such is a lot of discussion of any topic on reddit.

Pascal gets equal treatment.

Not as much as the trendy languages. Unless you mean equal treatment regarding +ve and -ve comments?

[Joanna from IRC]

Reddit seems like a constant feed of new threads. It things can get buried in there. I guess it does have search capability though.. 6.6 million members. I’m guessing most don’t post it would probably crash their server if they did. 

Anyhow thanks for trying to promote pascal 

[Bogen85]

Not all your commenters seem to like pascal though 

So? Such is a lot of discussion of any topic on reddit.

Pascal gets equal treatment.

Not as much as the trendy languages. Unless you mean equal treatment regarding +ve and -ve comments?

I'm not talking metrics. I'm just saying redditors come with their own biases, legitimate for not, based on experience or based on hearsay, whatever, everything is critiqued and opinions given, and they void up down on what was said. I'm not a redditor, I just occasionally read reddit threads and typically never participate.

OK, as far as trendy languages go, try using Free Pascal in a work place where one more of the trendy languages have momentum in the service and product offering, and tell me how that works out for you.

• It has to be marketable to greater peer groups to get their buy in
• it needs all the devops tooling the other languages have
• It needs the library/package offerings required by the services and products being offered
• it needs to fill a void left by the other languages
• It needs to not make things harder overall
• and more...

For many "a second look" is dependent on all of those items being satisfied (well, 2-6 before 1 can be done)

So a second look for Pascal is no different than a first look in workplaces where some of the trendy languages are already being used.

"I will only work in places where I can use and promote Pascal" is not going to work out of a lot of people... Especially for those where hobby programming, is not a high priority for them, or they are not in work sectors where GUI RAD tools are in high demand, or is not in a purely academic setting.

[Bogen85]

For what it is worth, I use CudaText in afore mentioned work environments (ones where the trendy languages are used).

And if co-workers ask about my use of it, "What editor is that? ..." the resulting conversation may or may not result in them considering looking at Pascal for the first time, or a second time as is the subject of this thread.

[Joanna from IRC]

It often seems like getting people to use pascal is similar to getting people to vote for candidates from smaller political parties. People just have self fulfilling prophecies about oh that isn’t a valid choice , nobody else is doing it. Let’s stick with the popular things that are not very good that have a chance of winning.

I see no reason at all why a major employer could not have their software written in object pascal and be perfectly fine just like Skype did before it was taken over.

All these accusations about pascal being inadequate do not coincide with reality yet they persist.

[Bogen85]

All these accusations about pascal being inadequate do not coincide with reality yet they persist.

They don't coincide with your reality I guess is the case.

Lots of things set the tone for Pascal being where it is now compared to where it was in the 70s, 80s, and still somewhat in the 90s.

In many sectors there are a lot of thing needed that require specific libraries.
None of the libraries are available for pascal.
To do something with an existing supported language that requires a week of development effort for 2 people could easily require 10 people and 6 months of effort to create all the needed libraries and or bindings.
So you decide to go with pascal, and it costs a whole lot more, takes longer, and eventually you run out of money and your customers go elsewhere.

That is the reality. Pascal is one of many language choices. It is better than some and worse than others, it all depends on what you need it for.
(Worse in some situations can simply mean there are no libraries and you need the job done in a week, not 6 months with 5 times the people).

Libraries is not the only things, there is more advanced tooling for packaging, betting reformatting, analysis, etc, that already exist for other languages, that does not already for exist for pascal as the same robust or advanced options.

Once again, could those be written in Pascal? For most, likely yes, but it might also require a lot more libraries.
Who is going to pay for all that development?
The customers that you are losing business to?

[Joanna from IRC]

What is fpc unable to do exactly ?

Here is another perspective.. fpc was created from the volunteer work of many people. If you think that fpc needs more libraries, why not give back to the community by creating the libraries needed ? What’s with this sense of entitlement people have where they just want to take and and take and never contribute? They just want everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Free libraries possibly containing who knows what are preferable to writing your own reusable libraries ? Are the libraries even opensource? Are they audited to check for security flaws and malware? Nevermind, No need for that it will cost extra money 
The abundant freebie libraries that you’re so fond could have back doors  and vulnerabilities in them that will carry over into your finished project.

What is that expression ? cheap fast good , you can only have two.

Cheap and fast is fine so long as it’s not being used to control anything serious.