[fpc-pascal] Syntax changes suggestions

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

>> don't like looking at such C code, so why would I want that in Pascal

This is not my fight because TBH I'm inclined to avoid novel language 
features until I know that using them won't impact on some of the older 
kit I try to keep stuff compiled for.

However, I do wish that people wouldn't resort to that same old 
chestnut. There ought to be a Pascal discussion equivalent of Godwin's 
Law: "sooner or later in any debate about a language feature somebody 
will complain that it's too much like C".

Frankly, who cares? are we really all so insecure that we can't 
accommodate even the suggestion that "our opponents" occasionally have a 
good idea?

Besides which, in-block declarations predate C: it's the way that 
ALGOL-60 did it. And ALGOL-60 put the type before the variable in a 
declaration, had in-expression conditionals and so on: all things I've 
seen rejected offhand as "too much like C".

So come on chaps, at least get your history right and say that you 
prefer the Pascal way and won't have any ALGOL crap messing it up.

Pax vobiscum.

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

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