[fpc-pascal] .NET FAQ

[Bisma Jayadi]

> Current text:
> There is nothing practical known yet about how portable an average .NET 
> code will be. Little experiments with hello world level code mean 
> nothing, that kind of code works with plain C too.
> 
> Proposed text:
> There is nothing practical known yet about how portable an average .NET 
> code will be. Little experiments with hello world level code mean 
> nothing. At this moment object pascal code that can be compiled with fpc 
> is more portable than .NET code that can be compiled with Delphi.

I think the proposed one is better. Agree with you. :)

I'd also like to question this statement on the same page:

 > Moreover that also means that existing apps would have to be
 > rewritten for .NET, since it would take more than a simple
 > recompile with a FPC/.NET compiler.

Why Delphi has no problem supporting .Net without sacrificing backward 
compatibility (too much)? If I'm not mistaken (CMIIW), during Borcon 2005, 
Borland demoed a Delphi 1 application (the famous FishFact demo) that can be 
run on .Net by simply recompile it on BDS 2005. A similar demo is also 
presented when Borland launched Kylix, simply adding a few $ifdef for q-prefix 
and then recompile, the Delphi demo application can be running on Linux.

I know writing FPC port for .Net is far from easy. But the difficulty should 
be on compiler code side only. On the user/app code, it shouldn't cause 
significant changes. Since Delphi and FPC has same language root, object 
pascal, I wonder why existing FPC apps can't be simply recompile on FPC/.Net? 
Of course, I never meant it'd work for EVERY kind of apps and codes, but it 
should work for most common apps.

-Bee-

has Bee.ography at:
http://beeography.wordpress.com