[fpc-devel] for-in-index loop

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2013, Paul Ishenin wrote:

> 25.01.2013 11:47, Василий Кевролетин пишет:
>
>> May be you understood what I'm from university in wrong way. It does
>> *not* mean what I need to quickly do any changes anywhere. It means what
>> I have resources /(time, motivation, direct support of very good
>> programmer) /to improve good open project. Work will not have any good
>> value for me if results of work will not have any good value for other
>> people.
>
> That's good that you have resources and motivation. The question is where to 
> apply them.
>
>> I understand why you don't want to support bad features. But I don't
>> understand why reasonable extension of existing feature (which will not
>> break compatibility and which exists in other languages) is bad ? :)
>
> You need to look at another Michael mail where he claims that he was against 
> for-in loop feature when it had going to be implemented. So no suprise that 
> he is against extending it now.
>
> Michael, please don't demotivate our potential compiler developers :)

Paul,

Sorry, but I most certainly will do this.

It is not because it is technically possible that it must be allowed or done.
The use case presented is SO MARGINAL that it does NOT justify another language feature.

less is more:

WITH EACH ADDITIONAL "FEATURE" WE ARE BUTCHERING PASCAL MORE AND MORE.

Borland/Inprise/Embarcadero is doing bad enough, we do not need to add it.

Delphi 7 object pascal could be learned very easily. Nowadays with all the "features" added
you go, try and explain pascal to someone. Say it is 'nice and readable'.

Well:
It is simply no longer true. Java, Javascript and C have become more easy.

Simply because we are afraid to say 'No sorry, you are on the wrong path'.

If he wants to help, Alexander Klenin had better put his students to useful tasks.

There are plenty to choose from. 
He said maybe he'd look after fcl-stl. The silence since was deafening.
He said he needed a arbitrary precision math library: Well, get started !
Both should be perfectly within grasp of a student.
If he has students, let them work on that.

If they must develop a 'language extension' for practice, using FPC: great.
But that does not mean it should be added to FPC's distribution.

Pascal needs more useful libraries. More platforms.
But definitely *not* even more shady language features.

Language features can of course be added, but PLEASE with a broader use case.

Once more: simple is beautiful.

Free pascal becomes less so with each of these "features".

Michael.