[fpc-devel] Delphi anonymous methods

[Martin]

On 04/03/2013 03:49, Boian Mitov wrote:
> Yes, really!
> Then again this is over 4 mln mines of code after all. :-D
> Thank you for letting me know what closure is :-D . Can you imagine, 
> me being component vendor for over 16 years and not knowing what 
> closure is :-D.
Did I? Wow, I didn't know I did. Didn't mean to neither. I was just 
checking, if you accidentally used the wrong word. (Happens to everyone, 
even the very best / so no judgement implied)

> Anonymous methods lead to a different way of thinking altogether and 
> allow you to do things that you can't even imagine with closures ;-) .
> And they make the code infinitely easier to read, especially if like 
> me this is a huge codebase ;-) . After all we sell well over 400 
> components not to mention some of our other Delphi based products ;-) .
> Sure, if you have small code you can do just fine with closures, as I 
> have for many years, then again I did just fine without having 
> classes, and objects in the old days, and also did fine in the older 
> days in Assembler :-D .
> So according to this logic, we really should be doing everything in 
> machine code (as I actually did briefly 24 years ago :-D ), who needs 
> new features such as those whatmacallit... ohhh yeahh... "compilers" 
> :-D .
Well I give you the benefit of the doubt, and believe you. But that does 
not help me, because I still do not know which case you are talking 
about.... So for my benefit, please enlighten me with an example.

 From your above statement, I take, that you already used closures, and 
that the big improvements really happened of a result of anonymous methods.
Just to be save, let me state the obvious: We are talking of dropping 
the function name; and introducing the ability, to declare the function 
anywhere within the code (probably the latter being the important). That 
are the 2 only things, that anonymous methods do offer? (OR am I missing 
anything?)

If so then I do not see how they save 20000 lines?
- The name is part of the declaration line, SO it should not affect the 
line count at all). Unless you always write the name on a separate line 
(which I would consider a very special case)
- the place of declaration also does not change the line count.


> -----Original Message----- From: Martin
> Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2013 7:38 PM
> To: FPC developers' list
> Subject: Re: [fpc-devel] Delphi anonymous methods
>
> On 04/03/2013 01:47, Boian Mitov wrote:
> Really, just by dropping the names? Or did you mean, you did all that by
> using closures?
>
> Closures, do not need to be written/declared in the middle of other code
> (in-line)