<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_extra"><font size="4"><br></font><div class="gmail_quote"><font size="4">On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Johnny Billquist <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bqt@softjar.se" target="_blank">bqt@softjar.se</a>></span> wrote: </font><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><font size="4">Pascal is also pretty far down the list. In some ways, Pascal will cause you bigger problems.</font></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><font color="#0000ff">Traditional (pure) Pascal - a very very true (and sad) observation. </font></font><span style="font-size:large"><font color="#0000ff">Although, I still have a soft spot for it and think its the best >>teaching<< language ever (beat's Python, Java and C/C++ which seem to be what most of the young folks learn first].</font></span></div></div><div><font size="4"> </font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><font size="4"> String handling is often rather restricted and weird in Pascal.</font></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#0000ff"><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">I agree with you. What Wirth has in the report is pretty simplistic (and I hated it). </font></font><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:large"> In fact, later Pascal's added pretty sophisticated support for strings -- but... in lots of different ways -- I remember at Tektronix on the early 1980s we counted about 10 different Tek Pascal's (at the same Hatfield/McOy party we also counted over 30 different HP Basics). The different Pascal extensions of course was a huge downfall of Pascal IMO -> there were too many differences and not enough commonality. But alas Pascal/Modula/Sail/Ada (and BLISS) et al lost to C for economic reasons not really technical ones [says a long time programmer that has written way for C code than anything else in my life].</span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4" color="#0000ff"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="4"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000ff">That said, the good news is that Free Pascal [ <a href="http://www.freepascal.org">http://www.freepascal.org</a> ] which Dan wants to use supports most of the modern Pascal extensions, and in particular the "Delphi" & TP flavors</font></font></div></div></div></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',Arial,Verdana,sans-serif"><font size="4" color="#ff0000"><i>"The language syntax has excellent compatibility with TP 7.0 as well as with most versions of Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces). A Mac Pascal mode, largely compatible with Think Pascal and MetroWerks Pascal, is also available. Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading, global properties and several other extra features."</i></font></span></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4"> </font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><font size="4"><span class=""><br></span>
Well, of those choices (including Pascal), I's say that C++ would probably be the easiest to target.</font></blockquote><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><font color="#0000ff">I have to laugh when I read this. I actually disagree on that observation and I admit I'm a little surprised to hear it from a European - many (most) of my European trained colleagues in the technical languages team here hate C++ and wonder out loud why the Algol family did not win ("You damned Americans didn't know <insert your favorite comment here>").</font></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><font color="#0000ff"><br></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><font color="#0000ff">It's funny we were just arguing about this at lunch last Friday. One of them was calling the designers and implementors of a large programming system "incompetent" for picking C++ when they could have used Modula-II or ever Ada in those days. </font></font><span style="color:rgb(0,0,255);font-size:large">[Check out a great treatise: </span><font size="4" color="#ff0000">"<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">The big problem we face isn't coordinated cyber-terrorism, it's that software </span><span class="il" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">sucks" - </span><a href="https://medium.com/@felixsalmon/this-is-a-very-lightly-edited-version-of-my-gist-spiel-3fb7eee4c4e5" target="_blank" style="font-family:'Intel Clear',sans-serif">https://medium.com/@felixsalmon/this-is-a-very-lightly-edited-version-of-my-gist-spiel-3fb7eee4c4e5</a> </font><font size="4" color="#0000ff">]</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4" color="#0000ff"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4" color="#0000ff">Anyway, for someone comfortable with Pascal or Modula for similar family, I think using Free Pascal should not be much different than using C++ -- you pretty have all of the same tools at your disposal. It's about how much you know how to bring to bear on the problem.</font></div><font size="4" color="#0000ff"><br></font></div><div><font size="4" color="#0000ff"> </font></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class=""><font size="4"><br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I''ll probably go with freepascal as I have tons of libraries I've<br>
written already.<br>
</blockquote>
</font></span></blockquote></div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><font color="#0000ff">That seems like as good a reason as any I have heard.</font></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4" color="#0000ff"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4" color="#0000ff">Clem</font></div><br></div></div>