On Friday 13 May 2005, Lee Revel wrote: > > [1] http://www.geocities.com/lstnght2000/ > > [2] http://www.geocities.com/lstnght2000/megafont_mutation_src.zip > > Is it really written in... Pascal? What was the author smoking? It is written in Delphi, a Pascal dialect developed by Borland as an object oriented replacement for his ancient and successful product "Turbo Pascal". There is a Linux version, Borland Kylix [1]. There is also a GPL-licensed compiler aimed to be compatible with this dialect: Free Pascal [2]. And why not to choose any language to develop your programs it the language is suitable for the task? You can use some arguments like the ones in Kernigham's old diatribe [3] against Pascal, followed by the other sacred cow [4]. But Delphi/Kylix and Free Pascal are Pascal descendants without any of the flaws claimed by Kernigham. You can find similar rants against any language, including C [5][6]. Here are some rebuttal facts against Kernigham's arguments. Delphi language has dynamic arrays, where the size is not part of the type anymore (2.1). It has static and initialized variables (2.2). Forward declarations and function prototypes (2.3). It allows *fast* separate compilation (2.4) preserving strong type checking across units. Set types are powerful and large enough, allowing 'set of char' with 256 elements, and type declarations are allowed in a function prototype (2.5). There is a cast mechanism (2.6) similar to Java. It has advanced control flow for loops using break and continue keywords (3). A powerful runtime library allows you the use of all the operating system functions, including I/O (4), you can even use the Glibc library in Kylix and FPC. And finally, you can write ALSA programs using this language [7], which is why I'm writting this article and why it is on-topic in this list. [1] Borland Kylix http://www.borland.com/kylix/ [2] Free Pascal http://www.freepascal.org/ [3] Brian W. Kernighan: Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~cs655/readings/bwk-on-pascal.html [4] Eric S. Raymond. The Jargon File. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/Pascal.html [5] James A C Joyce. Why C Is Not My Favorite Programming Language. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/7/144019/8872 [6] Weilin Zhong. Why C is not My Favorite Language http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Ewz5r/cs655/whycnot.htm [7] ALSA Library Bindings for Pascal http://perso.wanadoo.es/plcl/alsapas/alsapas-en.html Regards, Pedro
