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

[Den]

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?

*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/)

- Dennis Fehr

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