> I personally found VB to be confusing!  In fact it was weird words
> like 'dim' which prompted me to stop trying to learn it and make the jump 
> to
> Delphi back when I first started!

I think most programmers especially C programmers found VB to be confusing, 
but new non-programmers seem to take to it like a fish to water.  I don't 
like VB at all, but I have to admit the changes they made in VB.net make me 
think that similar changes could be made to Pascal to improve it.

> But beyond that Pascal's structured file
> system and it's coding requirements certainly make it a lot easier to 
> begin
> creating worthwhile applications much faster.  Rules that were necessary 
> and
> forced one to consider and make use of coding structures and practices 
> stick
> with you and make everything so much easier, it's difficult to understand 
> or
> follow your reasoning here!

I still believe it can be improved.  Before .net, I thought it was the best 
I had seen.  After using .net for several months, I prefer its structure 
over Delphi.

> Recently I've picked up a copy of VS 2003 and the Chrome add-on
> which makes it possible to use Pascal in a NET environment without the
> alterations or constraints that Delphi's NET imposes, and I did this 
> because
> I had begun feeling a bit dissatisfied with Borland's newer IDE's.  It's
> hard enough trying to learn a new programming paradigm let alone a new
> language like C# at the same time, and again Pascal has come to the rescue
> simply because it's structure provides one with an indelible template that
> is much easier to follow...like keeping your crayola colors inside the
> lines! <G>  C++ nor C# seem to have ANY structure, and you have to squint 
> at
> the code to make ant sense of it!  Not only that, but because it has no
> structure to speak of, every other piece of source code I come across 
> seems
> different!

I couldn't agree more.  I still liken it to modem noise and maintain any 
language that has obfuscation contests is probably not the pinacle of 
programming languages.

> Now that Borland finally got Delphi 2005 up to speed, at least for
> the Win32 platform, I am using it exclusively for Windows programming 
> again,
> and VS w/Chrome I am continuing to learn NET with.
> I think you really need to take a little more time with Delphi
> and/or Pascal and get to know the language a bit better before making ANY
> final choices!

I guess I came off like I don't know Delphi.  In fact, I have been writing 
Delphi since 1995 and was at their first conference here in Atlanta when 
they were demoing Delphi 1 before it came out.  I have built several 
multi-million dollar applications in Delphi and managed a development team 
at a company that was a Borland partner.  There are people who know Delphi 
better I am sure, but I know more than the average bear.  I am a big 
supporter and I write some fairly well distributed freeware that is open 
source and uses Delphi as a base (AC Tool being the top of the list).

I love Delphi/Pascal, but I am not blinded by it.  I think there is room for 
improvement.  After training a few dozen programmers of varying skill levels 
on Delphi, I realize that some slight changes would make it an even better 
language for beginners than Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. 
I certainly wish C# would have been P# with some of the changes I mentioned.


__________________________________________________
Delphi-Talk mailing list -> [email protected]
http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk

Reply via email to