[fpc-pascal] Syntax changes suggestions

[Sven Barth]

Ryan Joseph <ryan at thealchemistguild.com> schrieb am Mi., 18. Juli 2018,
21:37:

>
>
> > On Jul 18, 2018, at 12:44 PM, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal <
> fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
> >
> > And to give you a slightly different example: around a year ago or so I
> implemented a IfThen() intrinsic that works like the if-statement, but as
> an expression (like C's trinary ?: operator including not evaluating the
> branch not taken). The majority of the users seemed to like it, but reasons
> against it surfaced and so I reverted it again.
> >
>
> That’s pretty disheartening honestly. So there was a useful feature users
> could be leveraging but it was turned down because it didn’t fit into some
> paradigm or something like that. Sorry to hear that.
>

Due to it essentially being an overload of IfThen in the Math unit there
was the possibility of confusion not to mention that it would be the only
function like construct that would not evaluate all parameters. When I'm
going to add it again I'm probably going the Oxygen route and use an
if-expression enabled with a modeswitch 🤷‍♀️


Since I’ve been using FPC in 2003-2004 the language has never forced any of
> its new features on me and I can still program Pascal like I did when I
> started in the 90’s. Forcing me to use features is where my line is crossed
> but I struggle to understand why we’re withholding good ideas from users to
> this extent.
>

The problem with any language feature is this: even if I don't use it
someone else will and I'll sooner or later have to read such code. So in
that sense any language feature is forced upon everyone.

Regards,
Sven

>
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