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GNU Pascal Compiler Released For Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the mmmm-pascal dept.

MacDaffy writes "Kudos to Adriaan Van Os: He has produced a 'second prerelease' of the GNU Pascal compiler for Mac OS X. Work actively proceeds on porting the Carbon Pascal Interfaces for use with it (longtime Macintosh Pascal guru Peter N Lewis has already gotten a great start on this). Thanks to Adriaan, Peter, and Bill Catambay of Pascal Central for helping take Pascal on Macintosh into the future."

3 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Pascal by Daimaou · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Pascal was the first language I ever used. I have to admit that for me, Pascal's syntax was very conducive to learning the basics of programming. Having said that, after less than a year of Pascal programming I finally braved a peak at C, and I never looked at pascal again.

    I think pascal is a great language for teaching people how to program, and I also think it is perfect for Borland's Delphi product (a nice, easy to learn RAD environment to compete with Microsoft's Very Basic). However, I personally would never use Pascal on a project. If I wanted to use something like Delphi, I would use C++Builder. Of course, since this is a Mac discussion, most of this is irrelevant.

    Anyway, I am not familiar with Objective C, but if I were going to program for a Mac, and OC and Pascal were the only two choices, in spite of already knowing Pascal, I think I would rather learn Objective C.

    1. Re:Pascal by WatertonMan · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Speaking of Delphi, I've wondered why Borland doesn't offer Kylix for the Mac. Kylix is basically Delphi for Linux and offers a reasonable degree of crossplatform compatibility.

      Of course rumor is that Borland may drop JBuilder on OSX because of poor sales. So that may not bode well for Borland developing for Apple period. They do seem to be (wisely) trying to stay focused on large markets.

  2. Re:Why??? by MacDaffy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Pascal on the Mac was dreadful as an API for developing Classic apps


    You must have had a lot more trouble than I did. I could put together a pretty robust Classic application with ResEdit and CodeWarrior in a couple of hours. I wrote a wireless signal strength meter a couple of years ago that still runs fine under Classic. I've also done things like generate SMB packets for server testing, build a quick-and-dirty ping app, make small educational programs, parse raw Ethernet packets, and generate calendar-based import files for FileMaker Pro. The time and headaches I saved over doing them in C were well worth it just for the string-handling alone.

    (BTW, I share your pain vis-a-vis the maintenance of the mudball that became Macintosh system programming, but that was more an outgrowth of the evolution of the platform and the programming tools than anything else. Revolutions are messy).

    Pascal is clean, straightforward and reliable. If someone reads my code, they won't wonder what I casted "void" to and where I did the casting. There's nothing I can do in C that I can't do in Pascal and it'll be easier to debug and maintain. And C++? I consider it a full-employment device designed for the John Forbes Nash wing of the programming arts.

    GNU Pascal on Mac OS X is a good thing! ;-)