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Kylix vs. gcc Development
Remote writes: "Borland has a paper [.pdf] by William Roetzheim comparing development and maintenance costs of software development using Kylix and gcc. Bottom line is that applications written with gcc are twice as expensive (timewise) both to write and to maintain, and about 50% more expensive to document. The comparison was done using parametric modeling techniques but the author claims that his tool has 7% accuracy. While I don't do Pascal myself, I wonder if the same would apply after they port C++ Builder to Linux and compare it to something like KDevelop + gcc."
Borland sponsored and is distributing this study -- take it for what you will. Interested parties can still produce useful studies, and may even be in the best position for collecting this sort of data. But whether Kylix matches your development environment or licensing philosophy is up to you.
In other words... we just released this tool. Nobody has used it enough to give us real figures, but this company, who also couldn't possibly have real figures (for the same reason), thinks that we'll save you a bundle.
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I just noticed something even worse, the guy who wrote the article works for the company that makes the costXpert tool. So, Borland publishes a white paper written by the maker of the tool that says that Borland's software will reduce your development costs. Absolutely useless.
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
And from the paper:
Seven percent accurate? Sounds like the most accurate statement in the paper.
Even my lowbie sorceress in Diablo is more accurate with her staff than poorly-worded results like that.
On a more serious note, Borland releasing a white-paper with data pulled from a mostly-unknown delphi application should raise flags in anyone's mind. But don't for a second think that they're the first, or the last, to do it.
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I hate to burst you guys' (gals'?) bubble, but for many things, Delphi/Kylix/Pascal is much simpler to code than C. Just like VB is quicker to write than VC (for simple stuff). Just like PHP is simpler than Java Servlets but equally limited.
Let me give you an example you can't refute : C++ is easier than assembler for nearly everything. Nearly. See the pattern here ? By definition, higher level languages should be easier to code for than low level languages. C is a rather low level language, VB is a high level language, and Pascal sits somewhere in between balancing simplicity with functionality. Kylix is cloned from Delphi, and Delphi is based upon Pascal, therefore Kylix code is _usually_ easier to write than its equivalent graphical C code.
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Furthermore, I suspect (from my experiences with Delphi in a previous life) that gcc will be much faster for certain types of applications. Like those with no GUI, for example. Horses for courses.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Pascal ~1971
C ~1970
C++ ~1985
Pascal was designed with simplicity as a design goal. That trade off is a lack of functionality. It is really only used as a teaching tool b/c of this.
C++ is a robust OO language.
Anyway, my rant is that you implied that C++ is a lower-level lang, when, in fact, it is considered a higher level lang.
Your point of Pascal being simplier to write is correct, however there is much (MUCH) less one can do with it.
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Kylix is based on Delphi (95), which is based on Borland's OO extensions (85) to Pascal (71). From what little exposure I've had to it, Delphi's relationship to Pascal is more along the lines of Java's relationship to C, than C++'s.
A little offtopic, but what the hell...
Anyway, my rant is that you implied that C++ is a lower-level lang, when, in fact, it is considered a higher level lang.
To which I must say that it may not be wise to measure the level of a language by it's syntactic ability to make higher level abstactions (which is clearly possible with C++), but rather with how deep you can dive with it, which would naturally make C++ actually as low level language as C.
Though, I must say that C++ is a fairly odd son in the field of languages. Everything goes, where you can make high level OO code you can also stick to asm inlines making it also in a reasonable way as low level as it gets.
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So is Object Pascal.
Not only that but Borland is currently the only major developer/distributer of pascal compilers. They've also done an excellent job of keeping thier implementations consistent with previous releases. What does this mean? Well there's no standard for them not to follow (cry to somebody else when your ansi compliant code won't conpile with your tool of choice) & with a single guiding vision the language (and it's tools) have an amazing degree of self consistency. anyone who thinks that you can't do alot with a few simple tools, rather then a fat lot obscure/poorly documented/poorly implemented ones, obviously hasn't played a lot of chess. This isn't to say that i hate c++, I've just noticed that most of my c++ code looks a whole heck of a lot like c with some "convience" features - it's the only way to write the stuff so somebody else can figure what the hell is going on. There are a whole load of really neat-o (and often usefull) features they just don't get used a whole lot "day to day". Example, templates: very usefull, good means for abstraction, but unless youre writing the library/engine (rather then using it) you're prob. not going to use them directly.