Interesting discussion, no doubt.
Frank's original question: should GNU Pascal live/die?
This evolved into compiler writing, other languages, OS, etc.
Let me state my interest: I am committed to programming in Pascal on Windows. I am not interested in C, D, E, LLVM ...
I write large scientific programs that do things.
I am not interested in programming to test the programming environment, which many of the discussants here seem most interested in.
All programming languages move on,and develop; I do not understand the interest in going back to standards of long ago.
The only good suggestion I have seen in this discussion is to merge GNU Pascal and Free Pascal, to avoid the duplication of effort now going on. I do not think the result will ever be competitive with Delphi (which hardly anyone here mentions).
As to O/S, the following statistics should interest everyone:
OS Platform Statistics
Windows XP is the most popular operating system. The Windows family counts for almost 90%:
2010 Win7 Vista Win2003 WinXP W2000 Linux Mac June 19.8% 11.7% 1.3% 54.6% 0.4% 4.8% 6.8% May 18.9% 12.4% 1.3% 55.3% 0.4% 4.5% 6.7% April 16.7% 13.2% 1.3% 56.1% 0.5% 4.5% 7.1% March 14.7% 13.7% 1.4% 57.8% 0.5% 4.5% 6.9% February 13.0% 14.4% 1.4% 58.4% 0.6% 4.6% 7.1% January 11.3% 15.4% 1.4% 59.4% 0.6% 4.6% 6.8%
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
You would think from the amount of ink flowing here about Linux that it must be 10 times as popular as it actually is. Note that Windows consistently scores about 88-89%.
Delphi however does support Linux.
Turbo Pascal evolved into BP, then into Delphi.
Like it or not, Delphi is the best Pascal system going out there, pricey indeed; well worth it in my opinion. It's IDE is remarkably good, its compiler is blindingly fast. Do you know that Delphi is checking your source code as fast as you write it, and instantly flags syntax errors?
I find it important to write for Windows without actually knowing Windows; Delphi is excellent for that; I have found it really hard to write Windows programs in GNU -- it has been so long since I looked at Free Pascal/Lazerus, that I am not sure if it is even possible there.
Delphi is not perfect; that is partly why it is updated almost annually. For instance, its treatment of operator overloading is poor compared to that of GNU Pascal (or Free Pascal if I remember fight). It has expanded the Exit command from function bodies to have a parameter: the function result. This is useful: more so than returning to the GOTO wars of yesteryear.
HF
PS
For the sake of clarity in this discussion, could someone please make a glossary of the many acronyms therein. I do not recognize half of them.
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Frank Heckenbach wrote:
Hi everybody,
since GPC development has mostly stalled, I've thought about if and how its development could be continued. Here are my current thoughts about it. Since the text is quite long, I put it on the web: http://fjf.gnu.de/gpc-future.html
As I write there, I don't see much future in the current way of developing GPC, but also alternative development models will not be a task for a single person. In other words, without some new contributors, there is probably no chance for GPC development to continue.
I don't really know how many of you currently use GPC, and to what extent and in which ways, e.g., do you use it just to maintain some legacy code, or are you actively writing new applications?
So in order to tell whether continuing GPC development is worthwhile, I'd like to know who of you would actually care about major new features in GPC (as opposed to just preserving the status quo), and who would be interested not only in using GPC, but also supporting its continued development, either by actively contributing to it, or -- perhaps in the case of companies that use GPC -- by paying for continued development.
If it turns out there is no sufficient amount of interest, I'm afraid to say it's probably better to put an end to it now rather than further dragging along. (Of course, the existing GPC versions will continue to be available, and anyone who wants to can use and modify them, which the GPL already guarantees, but without prospects for the future, I would then retire from GPC development and start to rewrite my own Pascal programs in other languages.)
Frank