On 3/3/06, Michael Van Canneyt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 3 Mar 2006, Matt Henley wrote: > > "Visual" and will likely do the job. It will however, limit us to > > Pascal which is not really a modern language. For those of you who > > are in favor of using Lazarus, can you assure the rest of us that > > Pascal has been modernized? " > > Most people out there probably think of Pascal as still being in > the state it was in when Niklaus Wirth first designed it. > > Object Pascal to date is fully OOP, and misses nothing that C#, C++ > or Java has: Interfaces, Exceptions, Classes: you name it, Object > Pascal has it.
my $0.02 ... i've been programming with Java pretty much since it hit the streets, for my paycheck. i've dabbled in many other languages, professionally to fill certain gaps, and as a hobbyist. i "discovered" FPC about 9 months or so ago, based on a post on slashdot. i was interested, because as a hobby, i write "plugins" for a flight simulator. up to that point, i had been using 'C' for my hobbyist work and 'C', for me, was a royal pain in the butt coming from a Java background. for me, where java had spoiled me to other languages, wasn't in the usual suspects, such as memory management, i can manage my own memory if i have to, but it was the absolute ease with which i could implement OO constructs, where C++ just confuses the daylights out of me when trying to do basic class creation and inheritance. in addition, and this was fundamental, _every_ type of basic supporting library, that i take for granted when using Java, such as an XML parser, or high quality data structures, or string parsing routines, was a hair pulling nightmare of having to go out on the net and download and try and build from source in 'C' to get the same basic set of services. and to be fair, this was using NON M$ tools, which aren't an option for me, because i refuse to pay M$ for a compiler and useable libraries and i *require* portable code. i also don't know STL and C++ at all, which arguably would have been some help for me i guess ... from what i'm told, but C++ feels like an unbelievable complicated nightmare to me. every time i look at C++ code, i always ask myself ... "do programming languages _really_ have to be this complicated anymore ?". in any event, the plugin system for my flight simulator supports pascal, and always had, but i, like many others, knew nothing of Pascal, and i assumed that it was an archaic, non-modern language. in desperation, when i saw a writeup on the 2.0 release of FPC on Slashdot, i decided i needed to take a look, because i was dreading using 'C' for my HOBBYIST development, and figured that maybe the programming i do for *fun* shouldn't suck. i am now having the time of my life with FPC and the rtl,fcl and lcl suite of libraries. besides doing my plugin work with it, i'm starting to do some cross platform GUI development ... AND i've been dabbling with some game programming ... which i've always wanted to play with ... but couldn't get past the learning curve of the 'C'/C++ API's. it is *everything* that Java is, but better. *) awesome, easy to use OO constructs, including properties *) exceptions *) awesome compile/build system (no freakin' Makefiles !) *) an awesome collection of easy to use libraries *) adding libraries/source to your project is as easy/easier than Java *) the ability to integrate with 'C' libraries is dead simple *) the performance of the compiler is awesome *) the executables, executable runtime overhead and application performance are on par with other compiled languages *) multi platform source level compatability with "cross compile" support as a programming geek, i can't say enough good things. where i had been beating my head against a wall, on and off for years with 'C'/C++ stuff, i was doing wonderfully productive things with FPC in a matter of weeks. probably because of my Java background, i found the FPC environment and mindset intuitive and easy to use. i feel like the hobbyist programmer in me has been reborn AND ... i've actually started to look out into the job market a little, with an eye towards maybe trying to make a jump from being a Java J2EE web application developer to making a jump to doing Pascal development for a day job, if the right opportunity came along. > > Michael. Tony -- X-SA user ? 0.4 is out ! http://x-plane.dsrts.com http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/x-plane-foo/ _________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject archives at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailarchives
