[fpc-devel] Suggestion: reference counted objects

[Boian Mitov]

Attributes are actually one of the biggest revolutions in computing IMHO.
Pascal has one of the oldest, and lets admit it not the prettiest syntax. If 
we want to keep something in as un-pretty shape, we surely can, but should 
it be a goal?
Adding new keywords to any language pollutes the language, and is widely 
considered to be a bad practice. It should be avoided whenever possible 
IMHO.

With best regards,
Boian Mitov

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-----Original Message----- 
From: Sven Barth
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2014 10:52 PM
To: fpc-devel at lists.freepascal.org
Subject: Re: [fpc-devel] Suggestion: reference counted objects

On 21.09.2014 19:17, Boian Mitov wrote:
I openly *hate* the attribute syntax. It's just not Pascal and simply
copied from their .Net compiler, because hey, other .Net compilers do
that just like that... -.-

Also considering that the trunk compiler currently does not have support
for attributes (let's put aside that branch for now) it is definitely
easier to add a new keyword, because the compiler is built in a way to
allow the easy addition of new keywords. Additionally using attributes
would mean that one would need to add detection for special attributes.
And that's more annoying stuff then a keyword is. Additionally this can
be added more safely to other modes (e.g. macpas, which supports classes
as well) than the attributes can.