[fpc-pascal] Feature Announcement: Function References and Anonymous Functions

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 28 May 2022, Hairy Pixels via fpc-pascal wrote:

> I’ve had some time to play with this now and my first piece of feedback is that given my experience with other languages, the most common usage of closures is by passing them as arguments to functions.
>
> Compared to the other languages I’m using now I’d say that we should be inferring more of the context of the receiving function type and not requiring the programmer to type out the full function header as in the example below (especially in the case there are no local variables declared).
>
> Sort(function(left, right: Double): integer
>                  begin
>                    if left < right then
>                      result := -1
>                    else if left > right then
>                      result := 1
>                    else
>                      result := 0;
>                  end);
>
> It’s hard to say what the best policy is for Pascal but some combination of the function/procedure keyword, parameter type names and return type could be omitted or shortened in various ways.

Ah...

The desire to make a programming language terse and unreadable as a consequence.
If you want that, use C#, Javascript or one of the ubiquitous languages for bracket fetishists.
Scala & Rust top the bill in terms of unreadability.

So no, that's a "No pasarán".

Pascal is verbose and explicit, it enhances readability & clarity of code. 
Any proposal to undo that, is not acceptable.

If it was not for Delphi compatibility, I would kick out anonymous functions
outright. Local functions can fulfill the need for closures perfectly,
which results in more readable code as far as I am concerned.

Michael.