[fpc-pascal] Object pascal a "Modern Language"

[Marco van de Voort]

> "My personal objective is not just to put out a simulator, but a fast
> and efficient simulator.  Furthermore, personally, I do not consider a
> program portable if it is written in a language which very few can
> understand.  A modern language such as any of the .NET languages will
> meet the efficiency objective but portability remains an issue.  While
> I do have the Visual Studio .NET and I am happy with it, I understand
> that not everybody has it and it is not cheap.  I looked at the
> Lazarus project and (at least at a first glance) it is indeed very
> "Visual" and will likely do the job.  It will however, limit us to
> Pascal which is not really a modern language.  For those of you who
> are in favor of using Lazarus, can you assure the rest of us that
> Pascal has been modernized? "

IMHO the fatal flaw in this reasoning is that this opinion simply
regurgitates some IT management blurb, and doesn't really tailor a choice of
language to your needs.

There are three different arguments that I would mention in your response:

1) While not nearly as bad as Python, there are potential performance issues
in using managed languages. This is not just raw calculating speed, but also
startup time, memory usage (not unimportant in scientific calculations with
large datasets!).
Worse, doing something about it often means doing speed dependant calculations
in a non managed language in a DLL. So you potentially force contributors to
learn a new language, and later have to partially back out again.

2) The only somewhat jusitifyable choice for "modern" programming languages
in the IT sector is hiring. One can debate if .NET and Java are new
generations, or just a glorified old hat, but the main point is that they
_are_ prolific.

However that is not a 100% simple situation:
- First availability must be seend relative to demand (C# programmers
are the only programmer on the US top 10 most wanted list, J2EE has been so
in recent years). A lot more supply, but also a lot more hiring.
- Also, these languages are mainly business (read DB apps) oriented, and much
less scientifically. Pascal has been a scientific language for years.
-  Are you going to be hiring anyway? Otherwise I would inventorise
first which suitable language is most common in your community and choose
that (Pascal, Java, C# or not). It would be stupid to e.g. offend your most
worthwhile potential contributors with a wrong language choice.

IOW, don't be fooled by a simplistic mantrum, but do the research what
language is most suitable, and what's available in your community.

(your actual question is pretty much unanswerable till you define "modern")