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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi all,<br>
<br>
There's been recent talk about adding a new dialect and such,
and I just wanna weigh in that I don't think it's a very good call
to split Free Pascal even more.. I believe Free Pascal had such
potential.. And the reason I mention 'had' is the fact that makes
Free Pascal 'strong' also makes it it's biggest weakness and
downfall; The fact that there is no direction and lead, and
everyone can add whatever they want. The difference between Free
Pascal and successful big languages are <b>leadership</b>, <b>roadmap</b>,
<b>community</b>, <b>support</b>. Now I know the usuals will
start immediately thinking 'yes but it's all volunteer, we don't
have the man power' .. Why is many other languages believed to be
more popular?<br>
<br>
<b>Standards</b><b>.</b><br>
<br>
If we had a group of people that designed standards (<i>a
group document??</i>), people like me can see the new standard
and say 'oh, nice I like that feature, I'm gonna implement it'.
Let's say someone else makes a completely LLVM compiler based on
that standard? So what if it's not one program, at least Pascal
would 'survive'. Just like ECMAScript, C++, PHP, most languages
now have a 'standards' document behind it. That's their <b>roadmap</b>.
Their <b>leadership</b>. Design it and the <b>community</b>
will show <b>support</b>. I know I would actually feel like
working towards it, because then I know when they are approved I'm
not wasting my time creating features and such, just to have them
rejected and never implemented. ;)<br>
<br>
I would personally love to add to such standards, and we can add
some of the collective wisdom of ours. :) (<i>I have 22+ years of
experience with Pascal, and I'm sure Florian, Sven, Marco, and
Jonas all have similar if not much more; and would be excellent
at adding to the standard</i>)<br>
<br>
- Dennis Fehr<br>
<br>
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