[fpc-devel]Re: [fpc-pascal](Fwd) poll

[Noah silva]

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Johan Blok wrote:

> > The delphi took the most work (to fake out a CRT unit), and was still easy
> > compared to trying to get anything to work under GNU Pascal.
> > 
> I used Free Pascal for some time for a new project, and I'm now using
> GNU Pascal. I believe Free Pascal is better if you want's to port code
> from TP/Delphi or when you want to use it there also. But GNU pascal has

This may be to some extent true, but they claim it to be borland
compatible, and not only that, but in the Man page they take a egotistic
attitude about it and say that those who would disagree to it's
compatibility are "pendants" - as if fancy words and put-downs can make up
for the physical lack of compatibility.  Also they bluntly state that you
shouldn't use the other compilers because gpc is "better".  Seems a bit
concieted to me.

> some advantages, which I like:
> - it's no problem to use C code

To me this isn't a theoretical advantage, but it can be an advantage in
the real world where so much is done in C.  The problem here is that
people will put off porting things to pascal that should be.  One example
is that I recently ported a C API for a TCP stack over into Pascal so I
could write an AIM clone using it.  Obviously if I could use C code, this
would have been easier, but I definatly prefer to have the Pascal unit I
have today.

I do have respect for the ease that might come if you were writing a
primarily C application and you had a bunch oc code that was in pascal
that you wanted to include into it.

> - they provide a better Regular Expression unit

that's probably true ;)

> - operator overloading

that's definatly more of a C thing than a Pascal thing.

> - scheme types

I don't know anything about that.

> - a better CRT unit with extensions, in my experience the CRT unit of
> Free Pascal has several problems on linux, and I don't like the new
> ocrt, which also had problems.

I have noticed some minor problems with the CRT unit also, but I am sure
they will be fixed eventually.  I havn't used the new unit.
 
> If you don't use a tool like Delphi, then the extensions of the Pascal
> language with properties and so on makes no sense,

Properties make sense to me, but I typically don't use delphi style
objects, but TP7 style ones, because I compile a lot on TP7 and Pure
Pascal on Atari, so I don't use properties often, though I would if the
compilers I use all supported them.

> in my opinion. Also I
> don't like classes, because I want to bee all pointer usage explicit.

With turbo 7 style objects, I always use the pointers explicitly.  I think
some compilers can mask this (like delphi and VP), but I think FPK doesn't
by default.

I am not saying GPC isn't usefull for anything.  But to me, in this day
and age, a pascal compiler is only usefull if it is basically borland
compatible.  If you only claim ISO, fine (but what is that usefull for,
other than teaching some of those pascals don't even have Units).  If you
claim borland compatibility, you should be able to compile basic TP7
designed programs fine.  Like I said, I challenge anyone to get my matchup
program to compile in GPC.  IF someone does, note how many changes you
have to make to the source to get it to work. 
 
> Johan Blok

thanks,
   Noah Silva