[fpc-pascal] Does FPC 2.8.0 can actually still be called Pascal ?

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Martin Schreiber wrote:
> Am 01.03.2013 07:56, schrieb Jürgen Hestermann:
>>
>> Am 2013-03-01 04:41, schrieb dmitry boyarintsev:
>>> All the new "strange" features doesn't really matter as long as:
>>> 1) the backward compatibility is in place (and or guidelines are given
>>> how to make the code compatible with minimal efforts)
>>> 2) executable size doesn't suffer much ;)
>>> 3) the new target is supported and the existing code can be applied to
>>> it.
>>>
>>>
>> The problem with this is that you cannot read code written by others
>> anymore
>> unless you learn *all* details about the large number of added 
>> "features".
>> And that's meanwhile like learning 2-3 other languagues and no longer
>> the easy to learn Pascal of earlier times.
>>
> Agreed 100%. I think this is a very important argument against to add 
> not necessary extensions to the language.
> I would try to unify existing features and make them "orthogonal" 
> instead and move advanced tasks into libraries.

I don't think that's possible in the general case, unless the parser 
etc. are completely rewritten to allow things like the <generic> or 
(tuple) notations to be defined in the same way that operator overloads 
are today. And in any event, there might be so much overhead stuffed 
into e.g. stackframe handling to support features that the compiler 
doesn't know aren't being used "nearby" that performance and 
maintainability both suffer.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]