Free Pascal Compiler 3.0.0 Is Out; Adds Support For 16-Bit MS-DOS, 64-Bit iOS (freepascal.org)

Halo1 writes: Twenty-three years ago, development started on the first version of the Turbo Pascal and later also Delphi-compatible Free Pascal Compiler, for OS/2 no less. Two decades and change later, the new Free Pascal Compiler 3.0.0 release still supports OS/2, along with a host of older and newer platforms ranging from MS-DOS on an 8086 to the latest Linux and iOS running on AArch64. On the language front, the new features include support for type helpers, codepage-aware strings and a utility to automatically generate JNI bridges for Pascal code. In the mean time, development on the next versions continues, with support for generic functions, an optional LLVM code generator backend and full support for ISO and Extended Pascal progressing well.

Comments

I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember having to save my allowance to buy Borland Turbo Pascal for around $60. It came in a yellow box. A couple of other things I remember:

1) I am getting old
2) Those days sucked

Thanks to GNU and gcc we will never have to put up with that crap again.

Re:I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out on the horror days when borland finally completely lost the plot and the cheapest you could get anything from them was the beginner version of delphi for well north of a $1K. And they wondered why dot net left them in the dust. Which is a shame. Delphi was actually a pretty great system, in its day.

Free Pascal is awesome.

[shihonage]

I wrote a DOS game in 1996 in Turbo Pascal which used $B800:0000 textmode space to display the action. Thanks to Free Pascal I successfully ported it to Windows... of course minus the literal memory addressing and such.
Free Pascal is amazing at how it "just works" with legacy Turbo Pascal syntax where Delphi would present more trouble. Lazarus, the Free Pascal IDE, is also very resemblant of Turbo Pascal IDE, with some modern touches.
Pascal is an underrated language. It may have been designed for education, but it has many advanced features, the executables are nearly as fast as C++ ones, it compiles fast, and the runtime diagnostics are detailed and specific. It "just works".

Re:Free Pascal is awesome.

[MightyMartian]

I loved the Pascal family of languages. I did a lot of work in TurboPascal and Basic-09. The latter was basically Pascal with a bit more BASIC-like syntax. I still prefer Pascal style variable declarations.

Great work!

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

I've used Turbo Pascal and Delphi for years, later followed by FPC and Lazarus. It was an enjoyable time. While I was no stranger to C++ even in those times, I simply preferred Object Pascal (so sue me). We even used it on Windows Mobile up to 6.x.

Unfortunately, when the time came (years ago now) to focus on Android, FPC's RTL had fairly serious issues, that I personally did not have to expertise to fix, and it wasn't a priority for anybody else who did.

While I have no plans to return to FPC, I'm still a fan, and I love to see it progress.

Re:Short FPC history and goals overview

[vux984]

23 years ago? That makes it 1992? I was using Turbo Pascal in 1989!

Re-read the summary.

It says 23 years ago development on the Turbo Pascal compatible project "Free Pascal" was started.

It does NOT say 23 years ago development on Turbo Pascal itself was started.

Put it in the library

[tepples]

NO language needs a garbage collector, though an option to use one selectively would be nice.

Let's split the difference and say a language needs a garbage collector in its standard library that a programmer can choose to enable. C++ calls its reference-counting garbage collector std::shared_ptr.

C vs Pascal == Perl vs Python

[DrYak]

I remember despising C for its absurd syntax ("==", "!=" etc.).
I still do.

And I was the opposite, I despised the vebosity of pascal (begin/end/etc.) and it's tendency to try to hide some low level details on the grounds of making it easier to learn.
To each his own preferences.

That's a definitive proof that the Perl vs Python debate didn't actually need theese language and the whole concept dates back much further in computing history.