[fpc-other]reputation of Pascal

[Marco van de Voort]

> Okay, then let's start a real discussion here...
> 
> The programming language Pascal unfortunately has a really bad
> reputation amongst programmers and in the hacker scene.

No. In the C and C++ scene. This is not the same thing, even if
they like to pretend that.

> They call
> Pascal a "bondage-and-discipline language". There's even 
> yet a fixed proverb out: "real programmers don't use Pascal".

If you start discussing with them, all this nonsense is founded
on very old standard Pascals.

> For the arguments read the article about Pascal from "The New Hackers
> Dictionary" (aka "jargon file") and the related articles:
> 
> http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/Pascal.html

Written by ESR, a known C advocatist afaik.
 
> Okay, the paper, they refer to is from 1981 and lots of the limitations
> of standard Pascal don't relate to FPC. But then they can say, it's not
> a common standard, so your Pascal is not Pascal, 

There are several compilers that implement it, some of which are free. K&R C
never was an official standard, but that also never stopped anybody.

> it's proprietary, it's not portable.

Let them name the inportabilities. They can't.

Most C isn't portable anyways. They all use propietrary extensions too.

Even GNU does. And since they are not standard, they are proprietary :-) 

> So, what do you think, how can we argue against them?

Don't waste too much time on it. I often engage in language discussions, but
I somewhat like the discussion (an infection I probably got from

> What about publishing our own paper?

Won't help. There are several answers on the "Why Pascal is..." article, and
they rarely get quoted.

Making a nice, balanced advocatism site would make it easier to refer to and counter
some common misconceptions though.

> What else could we do for the reputation of Pascal?

Make great programs. 99% of the trolls don't have a clue, and convincing
them won't help Pascal a bit. Availability of tools, examples and source might.