[fpc-pascal] Syntax changes suggestions

[R0b0t1]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 4:08 PM, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal
<fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
> R0b0t1 <r030t1 at gmail.com> schrieb am Mi., 18. Juli 2018, 21:46:
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 2:04 PM, Ryan Joseph <ryan at thealchemistguild.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >> 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.
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>>
>> You can make the function yourself.
>
>
> You can't, because the main point of the intrinsic was that the parameter
> that was in the branch not taken was not evaluated at all just like with the
> if-statement. Normal function calls will always evaluate the parameters.
>

I understand, but you can get close. That is why I mentioned type
safety. Ignoring those things seems kind of anti-Pascal way.