[fpc-pascal] Need three things

[ik]

Hi,

I'm talking from my own knowledge and experience, and not in behalf of
anyone else...

On 8/12/07, JK Smith at Grid-Sky <jksmith at grid-sky.com> wrote:
> Three things needed in FPC:
>
> 1) Garbage collection. Anybody who's worked on apps with objects of objects
> of objects of objects will see the value in this. If CMEM is used, can the
> Boehm garbage collector be used? Even a resurrection of the split-heap stuff
> into something more generalized (mini-heaps) could help here.

As a Java developer, I can say that GC is one of the worse things ever
invented ... The reason is simple, you never can force the GC to take
place (you can try, but it will not work all of the time), but if you
already know when you want to free the objects, why not just free the
object in the first place ?!
Another good practice is to free every created object, so I really do
not understand why we really need to have this, however if there will
be a good argument, I might agree.

>
> 2) Contract programming. We have to be able to show proof of correctness in
> code to prove the business value of FPC. This will be a major theme for the
> business side of software development in the future.

I believe that by changing the name to something catchy, and to make
some marketing for the "new" language (and some new buzz usages for
it) will create a much better effect. This Friday, I was at an open
source conference, and when I mentioned the word "Pascal" people
wanted to move along to a new subject... there is no problem with the
language... only with the way it feels for some people.

>
> 3) A new concurrency model. Multi-core programming adds a layer of
> complexity, plus the future of computing is all about where I can buy or
> steal a unit of computing power for my app.

Sounds good for me, when do you start working on this one ? ;)

>
> Ok, one more: 4) I miss array slice syntax (str:= s[2..7];) from the Stony
> Brook M2 days. So much more concise than Copy().;

Let me please quote Marco and say "this is a synthetic sugar", or at
least sort of.. it's not like there is no way (without creating your
own function) to do this... but if you really want, please write all
the pro and cons about it, and if people will think that the pro's are
better then the cons' I sure that more people will agree...

>
> 2) and 4) could probably be handled by pre-processing. Anybody else thought
> about this stuff?
>
> James
>
>


Ido
-- 
http://ik.homelinux.org/