[fpc-pascal] Pascal is alive!!??

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Daniël Mantione wrote:

> 
> 
> Op Sun, 25 Feb 2007, schreef Michael Van Canneyt:
> 
> > On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Tom Verhoeff wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > To round this off: we are overhauling our CS curriculum, and fortunately
> > > there is a small core of Pascal supporters.  Personally, I favor
> > > FPC/Lazarus, some others still believe in Delphi.  Maybe we will
> > > produce some new Pascal material that could find wider usage.  (Food
> > > for another thread.)
> > > 
> > > To summarize the needs:
> > > 
> > >   *  Tools: contest-friendly IDE; STL-like library
> > 
> > What do you need from STL ? What is lacking ? 
> > 
> > I program daily and, disregarding GUI classes, all classes I ever needed are 
> > in the FCL.
> > 
> > So please elaborate. You can assume (correctly) that I don't know anything
> > about the STL other than that it's a "standard template library". 
> > (which - to me - sounds like something an offset-printer would use ;) )
> > 
> > So a list of classes and what they are supposed to do would be nice.
> 
> It is not that the FCL is lacking, the STL simply allows template 
> programming, i.e. you can simply declar a linked list of a random object 
> and use a for loop to iterate over them. 

You can do this with a standard list. The only thing you must do extra
is a typecast... I fail to see the gain.

> Now the FCL certainly has a 
> linked list, but is a different way of programming: declaring inherited 
> classes, calling the foreach method to call helpers, etc...

Well, what stops us from adding such a singly linked list ?
I've proposed it several times now. No one does it. 

To my ears that sounds as 'not really needed', so...

> 
> Perhaps the fgl will satisfy Tom's needs, but I'm a bit sceptical. The FCL 
> is there, you are just not allowed to use it in contests...

By the same reasoning, a C++ programmer should not be allowed to use the STL,
or a C user the C library. That's simply ridiculous. You use the tools that
come with your compiler...

Michael.