Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is Pascal Underrated?
An anonymous reader writes In the recent Slashdot discussion on the D programming language, I was surprised to see criticisms of Pascal that were based on old information and outdated implementations. While I'm sure that, for example, Brian Kernighan's criticisms of Pascal were valid in 1981, things have moved on since then. Current Object Pascal largely addresses Kernighan's critique and also includes language features such as anonymous methods, reflection and attributes, class helpers, generics and more (see also Marco Cantu's recent Object Pascal presentation). Cross-platform development is fairly straightforward with Pascal. Delphi targets Windows, OS X, iOS and Android. Free Pascal targets many operating systems and architectures and Lazarus provides a Delphi-like IDE for Free Pascal. So what do you think? Is Pascal underrated?
That. I couldn't care less if you replaced x = 1 for x := 1 or other simple syntax changes like that. The main thing is, nobody uses Pascal anymore, there's pretty much no useful libraries/frameworks/tooling and whatever else for it, little online resources for it, no jobs that need it and so on. This discussion is outdated by at least a decade. Pascal lost and it won't be back, end of story.
What can you do in Pascal that you can't do in C++, or Python, or Java?
I would say that Delphi's advantages over Python and Java are native compilation and its advantage over C++ is the speed of compilation. For fast development of GUI applications (and cross platform these days) Delphi remains one of the best options available.
In my experience (about 20 years professionally working with Delphi, since the first version), the biggest advantage of Object Pascal over C++ is its strong typing discipline. It makes a program more maintainable on the long run, and errors are easier both to avoid and find. Pointer and String handling are also better in Pascal IMHO, and finally compilation time is also much shorter, which is not something to be disregarded when debugging a big project. Against Java or Python, desktop applications are usually more responsive with Object Pascal as it outputs machine code without JIT or GC involved (and usually Delphi will output a single .exe, without the need for any DLLs). Sure enough, you have to remember to destroy your objects, although newest versions of Delphi can use ARC on mobile platforms.
My 2c. Sure I've already used all 3 (Python, C++ and Java) when I needed, but I've never felt as productive in any of these as I am in Object Pascal. So maybe the language has it's values.
I'm an old 50+ developer who has had to reinvent myself several times throughout my career. And while a lot of really good new developments for, um, developers have come our way, a lot of valuable things from the past have been lost. For instance, I continually cringe when needing to write SQL code within some other language. There was a time when database access was actually a fundamental part of the language. 4th generation languages, for instance, are largely forgotten - but they really were useful. Same goes for ISAM data access. It is insanely efficient compared to what we typically do today.
Yes, SQL is great for some tasks, but most of that functionality is merely overhead for the sorts of common tasks and application has to perform on a daily basis. If I have the primary key to a table, it's wasteful to generate a query when I can just say 'get me this'.
This is where NoSQL proponents might pipe in with new solutions. But those aren't usually good solutions for general purposes. I've seen too many over-normalized databases over the years, and talked to their proponents. They propagate an ideology of theory over practical considerations.
The thing is though, Pascal excels (or can excel) at all of these things. I'm really referring to Delphi here. The component library available is huge and varied, By your choice it is 100% open source, or completely proprietary, or a mix. In fact, the only major problem I've ever had with Delphi is rebuilding your development environment on a new machine, because you've installed so many tools over the years.
With Delphi, I could drop a terminal emulator on a form and have it working in five minutes. Or I could resort to in-line assembly language if needed. I could, off the top of my head, develop web apps in at least three totally different ways.
I saw a comment further up the pages that asked why we need Pascal when we have C++, Java and Python. Well, seeing as how Pascal predated all of these, and will do everything those do, why do we need the newer languages?
I really encourage younger developers to give it chance. You can install and use Lazarus for free. I feel that Delphi is better polished and reliable, But if you're really an open source advocate, then contribute to Lazarus and/or Free Pascal.
Having had some experience with most of these other technologies, I think you might be surprised at how much you're missing.