[fpc-pascal] Syntax changes suggestions

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018, Ben Grasset wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:20 AM, Sven Barth via fpc-pascal <
> fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org> wrote:
>>
>> Because a feature might change the language in a way that's not in the
>> spirit of the language. Look at how Delphi implemented attributes: they're
>> declared in front of the types, fields, parameters, whatever, simply copied
>> from how C# implemented them while in the spirit of Pascal they should have
>> been *after* the declarations.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sven
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> fpc-pascal maillist  -  fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
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>>
>
>
> C# itself is heavily inspired by Delphi though, as it's another Anders
> Hejlsberg project. I fail to see what the "spirit of the language" has to
> do with anything as far as attributes, either.
>
> Shouldn't the attribute tags just be put wherever it's easiest for the
> compiler to deal with them?

Exactly our point.

That would be behind the declaration, where all other modifiers are put
(default, stored, nodefault, or all procedure and variable modifiers)

Deciding to put them in front of the declaration broke years of tradition,
and most certainly was not leveraging existing compiler infrastructure.

>
> I think the vast majority of people care far more about how *useful
> Pascal actually is in real life* than they do
> about whether or not it fulfills some not-well-defined notion of "spirit".

I think even D7 pascal is useful in real life. I could easily work with it
still today, and need none of the things introduced afterwards. I am still
as productive as I was with D7.

Things that change my productivity are libraries to accomplish tasks, 
not language features.

>
> Also, as far as I can tell, most of the people who use FPC would consider
> the Delphi way to be the correct or normal way of doing things in the first
> place.

For the features they introduced first, maybe.

But for operator overloading and (IIRC) generics, FPC introduced them first. 
FPC also introduced the ObjC dialect to be able to import the native interfaces 
of Mac.

Delphi decided to go another way in all of these cases. 
Were they correct or normal ? I don't think so. 
Did they consult with us ? No, they did not.

While we definitely want to be Delphi compatible, I don't think we're in
any way less of an authority on all things Pascal.

With the brain drain in Embarcadero of the last years, these days I would even claim the opposite.

Michael.