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

[Marco van de Voort]

> Please note that I am advocating Lazarus for the project.. I was
> responding to the project leader's (defacto at this point) call for
> pros and cons of each language.  I and one other gentleman suggested
> FPC/Lazarus.  I posted here precisely because I do not know what
> constitutes a "modern" language.  I am not a programmer, just a
> chemical engineer who has done a lot of programming (mostly in
> Fortran), but who switched to delphi -> kylix -> Lazarus for my own
> projects.
> This is a community project... no companies are currently involved. 
> The project is a continuation of an existing codebase which was
> written in python. Few of the people want to continue it in Python. 
> Several want to use C#.  Two of us know and love Lazarus.

This is exactly like I expected. Still the end conclusion stands. Go with
the language of the (group of) people you expect to contribute most. 

Also be wary of people (in the community) suggesting languages they do not
daily use.
 
> The application would involve calculations, database access, and a
> graphical user interface (visio like diagramming interface)... for
> reference you can look at
> http://www.aspentech.com/industry_solutions/oilgas/product.cfm?IndustryID=23&ProductID=274
> (scroll down for screen shot)

Ah, Aspen. Yeah, used that during my studies, though not "oil and gas". If
you need help with from FPC from time to time, just drop me a note. Would be fun
to do something with chemical engineering again. (did it for 3 years before
I switched to IT)  

I also have some experience with numeric calculating in pascal, and
inherited a pascal lib of relevant numerical routines from my Uni, so be
sure to also run numerical math problems over this list. (it's in
packages/extra/numlib, but unfortunately the docs are still untranslated in
Dutch. I can pick out specific routines and translate/document them if you
need them)