Re[3]: [fpc-other]reputation of Pascal

[Nikolai Zhubr]

Hi there,

Tuesday, 04 June, 2002, 21:38:42, Paul Yanchenko wrote:
[...]
> pascal. For example, I don't know how can I made .VXD driver for
> windows. Main skate of C is that C - language for system programming.
> Also, C-compilers allows to build embedded applications and so on.
> Maybe pascal should go to system language?

I think .VxD problems are rather Mr. Gates' problems, not Pascal's :)))
Now seriously. This generally seems to be an interesting point.
Several years ago I wanted to have fun and created some *very* small
(test-purpose) 32-bit "operating system" (ok, control program) for my
i486, which was able to provide some file access, console I/O, and run
some simple text-based executables. Just kind of demo. Well, actually I
even managed to run FAR (text-mode user shell for Windows, similar to
GNU's Midnight Commander) with it. The "operating system" binary size
was 180K, it booted in half a second, and - applause, please - it was
coded in Pascal (mostly, + assembler). Well, more precisely,
in Borland's Pascal 9, mostly known as 'Delphi 2.0'. This was before I
got to linux, so the project depended heavily on closed-source win32
tools and I got stuck missing some important compiler features and
finally found that win32 operating environment design is somewhere
brain-damaged. At that point the project died. (Later, I found I was
a bit brain-damaged too :)
Still, I personally have a feeling that modern Pascal (like Borland's
or FPC perhaps) is in partucular suitable for building and maintaining
a _large_ project such as an operating system. Why not? Does anyone
know some real obstacles, or perhaps such kind of project exists
already?
-- 
Best regards,
 Nikolai Zhubr