[fpc-devel] Extend the libraries people!

[Florian Klaempfl]

Kornel Kisielewicz wrote:

> Angelo Bertolli wrote:
> 
>>> What makes python interesting are the many classes it offers by default
>>> to perform standard tasks, especially in the text treatment department;
>>> regular expression stuff etc.
>>>
>>> The same goes for most languages; Mostly it's not the language syntax
>>> that determines the productivity factor; it's the number of standard
>>> available routines.
>>
>>
>>
>> Exactly!  Thanks for brining this up.  If you just want more people to
>> use Pascal, just
>>
>> 1) Make it simple
>> 2) Have lots of nice tools
>> 3) And most of all, have lots of units to do different thing
>>
>> It's the libraries, functions, objects, etc. that really attract
>> people.  Why do you think Java got so popular?  It certainly wasn't
>> because it was lightning fast or easy to write.  It was because the
>> "standard" libraries that come with Java (despite Sun's insistance to
>> try to talk about the two synonomously) were so extensive.  Ever since
>> C and its concept of including libraries, it's been obvious that this
>> is the main attraction for people.
> 
> 
> Okay, agreed. But what is there that can be done? I mean, yes -- there
> are many things that can be done by Pascal guru's, but is there anything
> to be done by a typical Pascal programmer? (without the knowledge of
> similar C libraries) I'm a FreePascal programmer that would really like
> to contribute to the project (for all it has given me) -- but with the
> lack of compiler/linux related skills I don't see much I could do.

- create good container classes (map, hash, trees etc.)
- write a bcd classes
- extend e.g. the convutils stuff
- look at your own work which could be abstracted and being interesting for fpc
- write docs for the already existing packages

Just a few ideas :)