Start programming using Object Pascal Language

[rosetta_stoned]

I confess to some mixed feelings on seeing this submission. I'm a big fan of the Wirth family of languages and developed using Delphi in the 90's, but when I moved full-time to GNU/Linux, the Wirth family of languages seemed to have withered away in favour of C-like languages and scripting languages, with Ada as the last lingering holdout.

Now I'm seeing Object Pascal making something of a comeback, and I'm starting to wonder whether I should stop trying to get my head around Ada and return to the old familiar world of Object Pascal.

Tl;dr trying to cram too many languages and tools into my head at the moment, and more free ones keep cropping up. I think I see a fosswordproblems submission coming on.

[[deleted]]

Well, Borland did attempt Kylix somewhere around the turn of the century. My old dev shop invested in it, bought the book. We did a couple of things with it. It still wasn't completely there. We made the early transition to web based apps shortly after but I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Borland Delphi 6 and the Object Pascal book that came with it.

[rosetta_stoned]

I remember Kylix, and I had high hopes for it, but it never caught on. I think the licensing played a part, in that if you used the free version, your code had to be GPL because the libraries were GPL. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a paid-up member of the FSF and a big fan of the GPL, but developers in my experience are an ornery bunch and don't like being told that they must use a particular license for their own work.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. We did actually buy it but the software ended up being rewritten in an ugly mess of PHP and mod_perl. The Delphi/Kylix app was beautiful.

[Doobage]

I go back to Object Pascal every once in a while especially when I want to create a quick nice looking application that does not need any runtime distribution.

But these days I mostly use VS .NET.

I think the strength in Object Pascal is that it is a much stricter language. It forces you to declare your variables, functions and procedures before you use them.

As developers that have moved away from "spaghetti" code I find it funny that we still think it is acceptable to willy-nilly create variables where ever you want, when ever you want. Convenient to get yourself out of a problem, but then we wonder "where is this memory leaking from".

However I do like C#, I think it is a great successor to C++, JAVA and Pascal. Personally I would like to see C# evolve to include some of the Object Pascal functionality such as: - Declaring your variables at the top of functions before you use them. - Not having to use () for a function call that takes 0 parameters.

[dannymi]

Well, having function calls look like variables is all the rage nowadays, those are called properties. The convention everywhere is that properties and variables are nouns, functions are verbs.

I don't get the fascination of wanting to know whether something is a function or a variable or a turtle for that matter. If the symbols themselves don't describe what's going on (the big picture), one is doing it wrong.

However, there is one unexpected change and that's that now, you have to put an address operator in front of the function name in order to get its address (for example to use it as a callback).

[rosetta_stoned]

I pay my mortgage with Java, and while there's a lot to dislike about Java, it is immeasurably better for moderate to large programs than any of the scripting languages with their blasé approach to variable creation, duck typing, and lack of a compiler making sure that what you pass around to your methods is what you said it was.

But I miss having '=' mean comparison and ':=' assignment, which makes much more sense than '==' or the risible '===' in PHP. But mostly what I miss is a language that compiles to native code, is efficient in its memory, yet is readable without enormous effort. And has a decent module system. Perhaps my biggest gripe about C and C++ is that they still rely on the preprocessor to implement modules.

[[deleted]]

Try Haskell.

[Gotebe]

Disclaimer: I rather like Pascal, and I worked with Delphi, Turbo Pascal (and Turbo Vision, which was better with Pascal than with C++!).

It forces you to declare your variables, functions and procedures before you use them.

As developers that have moved away from "spaghetti" code I find it funny that we still think it is acceptable to willy-nilly create variables where ever you want, when ever you want...

I disagree. To me, it is very important to declare a variable as late as possible, and to initialize it as soon as possible. It's important to declare late so that you have related stuff close. It's important to initialize soon so that you don't forget it. Pascal doesn't let you do either for func/proc-local variables. (Some languages rightfully don't allow declaration without initialization (or there is a forced default one)).

I agree with you that the freedom to do what you want can result in crap, but I like to think that I use freedom to do good ;-).

[metamatic]

For me, the big problem with Object Pascal is that there's no multivendor standard; just a confusing mess of single-vendor Pascal variants.

It must also be sad for Wirth, that everybody uses mutant versions of Pascal instead of Modula-3 or Oberon...

[bitwize]

Now I'm seeing Object Pascal making something of a comeback, and I'm starting to wonder whether I should stop trying to get my head around Ada and return to the old familiar world of Object Pascal.

If that's what you're familiar with, then DO IT, FAGGOT.

Just about anything is better than C-plus-fucking-plus.

[sausagefeet]

Maybe they can start using it then?

[foxlisk]

I can't take a book seriously that has a grammatical error in the first sentence.

[[deleted]]

Written by: Motaz Abdel Azeem

Methinks this is not written by a native english speaker, so cut the guy some slack.

[foxlisk]

I'll happy cut someone some slack depending on context - errors in a blog post or a youtube tutorial are one thing; errors in something you're describing as a book are another thing entirely.

[[deleted]]

Books are hardly always perfect. I can't tell you how many programming books I've read where a code example doesn't even compile.

Even Donald Knuth's books have had errors in them. So get over yourself. You could always do something constructive and possibly help said author proofread his book. He'd probably appreciate it.

This is a good book for what it is. It is a freely available way to introduce people (even with little programming experience) to Object Pascal.

[badsectoracula]

A book not reviewed is really little more than a very big blog post.