[fpc-other] Goodbye, and thanks for the fishes

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Marco van de Voort wrote:
> In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:
>> But I suppose all this begs the question: if one decides not to use 
>> Object Pascal, what are the viable alternatives?
> 
> While hobbywise, I won't let go of FPC (and Wirthian languages) that
> quickly, professionally it is different.
> 
> Currently, for me it is not really a problem (small company, my preference
> has the most weight), but there was some discussion a while back of hiring
> more programmers and cooperating with certain other (SCADA like) companies,
> so there was some discussion.

The SCADA package we inherited was written in a bastard mix of three 
versions of MS C, plus a spreadsheet in MS Pascal and assembler 
interfaces to an IBM communications controller. I replaced it by Delphi 
code with PostgreSQL as backend, and am completely impenitent.

> In my case the only viable alternative is C++, but I'm somewhat embedded
> with a bit of realtime requirement. Sometimes I think it would be easier
> even now, but I have previous MFC experience, and that still scares me a
> bit. (IOW, if you go back to C++, what will you use as GUI?)
> 
> In my previous job, I was more standard business apps, and then the only
> viable alternative is C# IMHO.
> 
> One doesn't have to like it, but if I'm leaving Pascal because it is too
> tiring to defend being in a niche, then you won't pick up some other niche,
> and the above are (to me) the only viable choices. 

But is MS really committed to C# and .NET, and if not could it drown 
Mono etc. out of spite? Which leaves C++, which as I see it has the same 
issues as Object Pascal except that lots more people use it.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]