[fpc-other] Pascal dialect -- was: Re: fpc-pascal Digest, Vol 72, Issue 12

[Jonas Maebe]

On 04 Jun 2010, at 20:37, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

> On 4 June 2010 19:51, Jonas Maebe wrote:
>> 
>> As I said in the mail you replied to (first paragraph I wrote): FPC and Delphi
>> are part of the same ecosystem. If you keep looking at it as if it is about
>> "us versus them", you will probably remain unhappy forever with how
>> FPC evolves, because it will always seem as if we are doing various things
>> out of servitude to Embarcadero and its horde of evil Delphi users.
> 
> Maybe you haven't noticed, but neither Borland, CodeGear or now
> Embarcadero gives a toss about Free Pascal.

I don't think that the extent to which Embarcadero cares or doesn't care about FPC is relevant. FPC and Delphi are part of the same ecosystem by virtue of them supporting virtually the same language and run time environment. And as I've tried to explain, supporting the same language and run time environment has advantages both for the FPC developers (by lack of an official standard to aim for, a de fact standard is a nice alternative guideline) and for the Object Pascal programming community (code reuse, less fragmentation, ...). Embarcadero loving, hating or ignoring us is besides the point.

> They see it as a
> competitive compiler, hence the reason they are getting there act
> together now, and implementing missing feature.

I think that Apple's success in the consumer space and Linux' success in the server space (and more and more also in the consumer space, albeit still relatively limited compared to the alternatives) has more to do with their decision to support those platforms than the fact that we support them.

> Also why they are
> implementing their own versions of a cross-platform compiler, instead
> of working with Free Pascal and reusing it for non-Windows platforms.

They'd probably have as much trouble as you, if not more, in getting everything they want/need in the compiler and RTL. They could also fork it, but the downsides of that combined with other consequences (such as no ability to integrate the compiler in their IDE without releasing the IDE under a GPL-compatible license) would probably not weigh up to simply modifying a code base they already know through and through.

> If there was any relationship between the two compilers, then
> Embarcadero (f**k I hate that long name) could very easily have
> implemented Generics in the syntax FPC came up with first, but no,
> they had to break the compatibility - for their gain, so FPC needs to
> play catch-up again or be told they are incompatible. Generics is just
> one such example.

Generics is a bad example. A Delphi version with generics came out a couple of months after FPC got them. That means that they probably started working on them before we did, and that they would have had to switch to our version somewhere during their quality assurance phase.

> You are living a dream if you think they care about FPC, so why the
> hell care about them. FPC is a good product, you don't need Delphi (or
> delphi compatibility) when you have FPC.

Waarom spreken we Engels hoewel we elkaar ook verstaan in het Nederlands/Afrikaans?


Jonas