[fpc-devel] type discussion

[Sebastian Kaliszewski]

Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
> On Thursday 02 June 2005 13:04, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> 
> 
>>However, in general Pascal has poor developer productivity when
>>compared to modern languages like python and C#.
> 
> 
> In terms of _written_ or in terms of _working_ lines of code? :->
> 

Both in fact as they are directly correlated.
The studies show that in high level languages (C nothwithstanding) there is 
very evident but simple correlation -- number of programmer errors per 
language construct (typically in not obfuscated code it's very close to the 
number of not empty & non comment source lines) is independent of the 
language. But languages do differ significantly wrt. how many constructs are 
required to solve particular programming problems.

C++ (pre stl) was worst there, Python, Perl & likes were the best, Java was 
not that bad but still about 30% worse thatn Python (C++ was 100% i.e 2x 
worse). The biggest boost to effectivanes was bring by introducing automated 
memory management (i.e. getting rid of explicit memory freeing). So even 
languages with ugly C-ish syntax like "Perl the awful" can beat otherwise 
elegant & clean languages. Hence probably the greaytest impact on Objective 
Pascal productioveness would come from allowing programmers to declare 
classes like self managing (self freeing, not needeing explicit destructions).


rgds
-- 
Sebastian Kaliszewski