[fpc-devel] Pascal Standard, and what we can do.

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sun, 19 Jul 2015, Den wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>    There's been recent talk about adding a new dialect and such, and I just 
> wanna weigh in that I don't think it's a very good call to split Free Pascal 
> even more.. I believe Free Pascal had such potential.. And the reason I 
> mention 'had' is the fact that makes Free Pascal 'strong' also makes it it's 
> biggest weakness and downfall; The fact that there is no direction and lead, 
> and everyone can add whatever they want.  The difference between Free Pascal 
> and successful big languages are *leadership*, *roadmap*, *community*, 
> *support*.  Now I know the usuals will start immediately thinking 'yes but 
> it's all volunteer, we don't have the man power' .. Why is many other 
> languages believed to be more popular?

Why do you say there is no support ? 
There is. Mailing lists, forums, and even a company that offers paid support.

>
> *Standards**.*
>
>    If we had a group of people that designed standards (/a group 
> document??/), people like me can see the new standard and say 'oh, nice I 
> like that feature, I'm gonna implement it'. Let's say someone else makes a 
> completely LLVM compiler based on that standard? So what if it's not one 
> program, at least Pascal would 'survive'.  Just like ECMAScript, C++, PHP, 
> most languages now have a 'standards' document behind it.  That's their 
> *roadmap*. Their *leadership*.  Design it and the *community* will show 
> *support*.  I know I would actually feel like working towards it, because 
> then I know when they are approved I'm not wasting my time creating features 
> and such, just to have them rejected and never implemented. ;)
>
> I would personally love to add to such standards, and we can add some of the 
> collective wisdom of ours. :) (/I have 22+ years of experience with Pascal, 
> and I'm sure Florian, Sven, Marco, and Jonas all have similar if not much 
> more; and would be excellent at adding to the standard/)

What stops you from starting such an effort ? 
You can start e.g. by adding the tuples idea which was discussed on the mailing list several years ago.
I have 28 years of Pascal experience which is completely at your disposal...

Michael.