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.

=======================================================

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

  

-- 
=============================
Prof. Harley Flanders
3533 Windemere Court
Ann Arbor, MI 48105-2867
Home: 734 668 1546
harley@umich.edu
=============================