Cameron , I have tried to stay out of this myself but when you _weighed_ in in with your comments, I had to rebut them.
So you consider VB to be more readable than Pascal because of the Begin . . . End statements? Funny, I find it to be extremely helpful, when combined with appropriate indentation (which, I also find to frequently an unknown concept among VB programmers). By the way, you have also demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of the use of the begin . . . end block because of your reference to the "optional END statement" . . . "end" is NOT optional if you have a "begin". As for the "good CASE/EVALUATE statement", again, you are obviously unfamiliar with Delphi in this regard. Delphi has several variations on the CASE statement, all of which have the option of a final "else" option. Now, I know what you are thinking, "Delphi can't do a SELECT using a string!" . . . well, not natively but it is easily extendable and I have created a simple little routine that provides that functionality (one of the wonders of extensibility). And, you're whining about having to "forward define everything"? So, you don't write organized and thought out code, you just want to write "stream of consciousness" code. Golly, it must be so demanding to actually ORGANIZE your thoughts before you start writing. Yeah, defining things in the top of the function/procedure/application seems like a drag but it also makes things more readable because you know where to look to find the declaration of variables/constants and, therefore, it is easier to figure out what their scope is. Forward declarations of functions and procedures makes it easier to know what all is in the bloody unit/module. too. What is your problem with single-quotes? ANSI Standard SQL uses them, as do most other "real" languages. As for the colon equal/equal thing . . . do you really have so little time that the extra key stroke is going to be a strain. You're right, that IS nit-picky. As for the circular reference problem, it has been over 9 years since I ran into that problem in my code. Maybe it is because I have learned to write structured/object oriented code. I could also be that I have learned to use the power of a real object oriented language rather than a glorified interpreted language. What was that crack about J#? You know, I have been at 3 companies that decided to replace Delphi with either VB or Java or C# or J# . . . and every one of them have backed off from that because Delphi not only had more power but the results were developed faster and RAN faster. Now, if you want to talk about a REALLY powerful language, take a look at PL/I . . . it is the first language to ever use pointers, by the way. ;-) My only sorrow about Delphi is that some damned fool bought the "dot-net" fever and screwed up the tool. At 7/28/2005 09:16 AM -0400, you wrote: > > Visual Studio also supports J#, which is a Java variant. Java certainly > > compares well with Pascal in terms of structured code. > >I wasn't going to way into this, but C, C#, J# and Java can often look like >line noise. I hate to say it, but VB.net has it closest to any of them as a >readable language. To me Delphi/Pascal falls short because of the BEGIN >need, optional END statement, lack of a good CASE/EVALUATE statement, single >tick as the quote mark, colon equal/equal as the equator/comparator, having >to forward define everything in a class, and user having to fix circular >referencing. Fix those nitpicks and you have the best language IMO. > >VSS has caught Delphi in recent years especially with some of the plugins >available. The old VSS was horrible, but VSS 2005 is nice. > >__________________________________________________ >Delphi-Talk mailing list -> [email protected] >http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk Respectfully, Ralph D. Wilson II Web Site: <http:thewizardsguild.com> Systems Analyst Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> San Antonio, TX 78259 Alt Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> H: (210) 497-2643 M: (210) 387-7744 "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." A.C.Clark __________________________________________________ Delphi-Talk mailing list -> [email protected] http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk
