
Free Pascal 2.6.2 is released - mariuz
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,20046.html
======
Udo
Pascal (and then Delphi) was the first non-interpreted programming language I
learned and I used it for a few years for pretty much everything - party
because it provided a sane wrapper to the Win32 API, but mainly because it was
a lot of fun to program with.

Compared to pretty much any GUI/code-behind editor the Delphi concept is an
absolute joy to use. Sadly it's been a long time since the components have
been updated (it's still pretty much a Win32 clone from what I can tell and
today the Lazarus component palette feels extremely outdated). I just wish the
Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook.

It's nice to see this environment lives on in Free Pascal/Lazarus.

I sometimes think the Pascal idea could be rediscovered some day, maybe with a
syntax addition or two.

~~~
lobster_johnson
> I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's
> playbook.

Indeed. Delphi was clearly influenced by NeXT/Interface Builder, but even back
in 1995 it was miles ahead of today's Xcode.

For those not familiar with it, Delphi's UI editor was always live. You could
create a data source object, enter the database connection info, then create a
table view and point it at the data source, and the table would be filled with
real data -- all within the editor. Like Interface Builder, the editor was
running the real visual components (the equivalent of Cocoa's NSView), but
unlike Interface Builder, Delphi focused on providing a true WYSIWYG
experience, making it very easy to build new visual components that would be
rendered live in the editor. Apple has moved away from this, in fact, with the
latest Xcode no longer supporting plugins, and so custom views can no longer
be rendered inside Interface Builder.

It's incredibly weird and sad that 18 (!) years later, current GUI tools are
worse than Delphi was in 1995.

~~~
eli
Delphi was the first "real" platform I used (version 1.0 on Windows 3.11) and
it wasn't until much later that I realized how good I'd had it. In addition to
the rather obvious idea that the GUI should be designed graphically, it also
had a fast compiler and a good integrated debugger. If I remember correctly
the entire Delphi IDE was itself developed in Delphi.

~~~
haddr
At some point of time there was an open source delphi IDE, and it was
developed in Delphi, but I think the official one wasn't (at least at the
beginning).

~~~
eli
I'm pretty sure at least most versions of the official IDE were written in
Delphi (the IDE--not the compiler, of course). I remember trying to hack
plugins into it and it was clearly Delphi code.

Random person on SO seems to agree
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766753/what-ide-is-
the-d...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7766753/what-ide-is-the-delphi-
ide-developed-in)

~~~
daven11
indeed. The strangest thing is you can debug the delphi ide in the delphi ide.
I do this from time to time to debug components that have start up problems

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binarymax
Its great to see this. Pascal was the language they taught us in highschool.
Everyone in the class was given a license to Borland Turbo Pascal v5. While I
haven't really used it since, Pascal will always hold a special place in my
heart. I wrote my first game in it, and spent many long nights trying to
figure out how to accept mouse interrupts, how to use pointers to efficiently
redraw graphics, and lots of other fundamental things I now take for granted.

~~~
acheron
Pascal (and specifically Borland's Turbo Pascal) is what started my transition
from spaghetti code BASIC to something at least vaguely structured. All
(mostly) self-taught -- my high school didn't have any kind of programming
classes -- but Pascal encouraged a structure much more than BASIC did, and
helped me to realize the importance.

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bloblaw
I write code in a number of languages, and I have to say Object-Pascal (which
is the language the IDE known as Delphi uses) is a joy.

Check out Lazarus too, the Delphi like IDE for Free Pascal:
<http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/>

<snarky comment> Too bad most programs weren't written in Delphi instead of
C/C++, or we could've avoided all those pesky string based buffer overflow
exploits since Object-Pascal doesn't allocate strings on the stack! </snarky
comment>

But more seriously, that means no "smashing the stack for fun and profit" in
Object-Pascal, and that's a good thing.

I picked up learning Delphi about 8 years ago when it was supposed to be
"dead" then, and since then it has been my secret weapon. I still use C once
in a while, but I am so much more productive in Delphi and the Free Pascal.

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smcl
I wonder how compatible the Photoshop 1.0 code is with this and how much
effort it would take to get it vaguely working. I recall there being a
shedload of assembly which would obviously need ported/rewritten and
presumably there'd be old MacOS API calls which would need to be handled so
I'd suspect a fair amount of work there. However does anyone know if the rest
of the code would be fine?

~~~
mariuz
The FreePascal complier supports MacPas dialect , here is howto start
compiling with it

<http://wiki.freepascal.org/Mode_MacPas>

<http://wiki.freepascal.org/Porting_from_Mac_Pascal>

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rdtsc
One language I regret the demise of.

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noonespecial
Turbo pascal 6 circa 1992 was my first introduction to object orientation. I'd
only coded basic and assembly before that. I walked around with my mind blown
for a week.

Long live pascal.

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pointer2unknown
Delphi 7 was the _last_ good release of the product. The IDE was written in
Delphi. The compiler for the language was BCC, the borland C/C++ compiler.
Then Borland started to chase .NET and MS led them on into thinking they could
catch up to C#.

Any good modern Pascal product should fork from where D7 left off.

IMHO.

~~~
bloblaw
Wrong.

Delphi has offloaded .NET support to a partner (RemObjects' Delphi
Prism/Oxygene). Since Delphi 2007, they have doubled down on native
development. Even releasing native console and GUI compilation support for
OSX, and iOS in late beta.

Since Delphi 7 (released in 2002), Delphi (and FPC) have added:

* Generics * Anonymous methods * Enhanced RTTI * Attributes * Records with methods * for in loop * final methods * Inlining * Operator overloading * sealed methods * strict private * strict protected * Nested classes * Class helpers * Class constructors and destructors * Static class methods

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raphinou
Any example of real and recent use of it?

I wondered not that long ago if FreePascal could be a cross platform solution
to develop GUI apps with Lazarus. Anyone having experience with that?

~~~
mich41
My university uses C or Pascal to teach Maths students basic programming
(hello world, sorting, trees, stacks, graphs, etc).

Friends who landed at the Pascal version of this course appear to ask much
less questions about parsing the syntax.

~~~
nolok
Here's a challenge: try to find a piece of pascal code that looks
"impressive".

Even the most complex object pascal code using pointers and closures and
generics all together looks boring and easy to parse for anyone who has done
some code.

This might sound awesome (and it is), but this is also a huge turn off for new
comers, lots of people think delphi/object pascal is like visual basic ...

~~~
markwong
isn't "easy to parse for anyone who has done some code" an advantage?

~~~
fusiongyro
One would think, but many times I've tried to love Ada and Eiffel and I always
find myself falling asleep at the terminal. "Boring" can also mean "too much
repetition" or "spread too thin."

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snarfy
How is the COM support (if any) in Free Pascal? That is one area Delphi really
shined.

~~~
bloblaw
It's very good. In fact, the open-source WMI Delphi Code Creator can generate
the native WMI calls (and programs) for you in FreePascal, Delphi, C#, and
Microsoft C++:

<https://code.google.com/p/wmi-delphi-code-creator/>

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enlyke
It's still alive..

~~~
mariuz
Yes and growing slowly
[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

~~~
fuzzix
TIOBE's methodology is pretty controversial[0], I wouldn't read anything into
changes as small as this.

[0] [http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/05/17/tiobe-index-is-being-
gam...](http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/05/17/tiobe-index-is-being-gamed/)

~~~
mariuz
I agree that is controversial the method of tiobe measuring

Another option is to consult the download page for free pascal compiler (this
is one of the mirrors)

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/stats/time...](https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/stats/timeline?dates=2002-02-21+to+2013-02-27)

Also lazarus ide download stats
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timelin...](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timeline?dates=2002-02-21+to+2013-02-27)

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pjmlp
Great! Congratulations!

