[fpc-pascal] Syntax changes suggestions

[R0b0t1]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 3:57 PM, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal
<fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
> 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.
>

To go along with this, as it is all of the dialects of Pascal
supported by FPC make for a difficult to understand language
interface. Some of the "open" "standards" supported have very warty
featuresets already.