Re: Pascal-Interpreter?

Am 22.04.2022 um 00:58 schrieb [email protected]:

>> I am wondering why Lazarus is not much more used today. "Write
>> once, compile everywhere" is a lot of fun. I test it on Windows,
>> Raspberry, Linux and my sister on her Mac. That works very well.

> Most people are zombies, or herd animals. They go along with whoever
>  squawks the loudest. They don't think very far ahead. If it sounds
> novel and cool, then they pounce on it. If it sounds old, they
> automatically assume it is inferior. But the new stuff is really
> inefficient garbage.

My late teacher once said, we have to learn from the incomparable
success of BASIC - whether we like it or not. It was after all at least
very very simple and thus a tool for the masses. I imagine sometimes
what would have happened if the Android API were as simple as a
BASIC-Script and how many people more would have written new idea apps.

> For instance, I created a hash function in FreePascal that is almost
> as fast as md5sum, yet has 512 bit security. It is possible to
> achieve that type of performance with C, but it would be very hard to
> eke out the procedures to match the Pascal speed. I would choose
> Pascal over C for most tasks.

The lack of switch() with a string f. e. were always a big issue in my
department, when writing a small simple program for a minimal task. I
used lazarus at home and later translated it to C for the company. ;-)

>> Funny, how easyly I remembered Pascal (and learned about 
>> GUI-Programming) after 5 years of C and 22 years of development in 
>> Visual-Basic.

> I started off with BASIC 32 years ago. I had a computer with 128K of
>  memory and I thought that was a lot. Eventually I played around with
>  DOS, batch, VB, WSH, HTML, ASP 3.0, PHP, JavaScript, XML, SVG. When
> .NET hit the scene I dumped windows for Linux and I never used a
> Windows system since.

I had to but in my private life I used Linux Mint. Nowadays I use
Windows in a virtual machine on Ubuntu.

> I am still somewhat green with Pascal. I like it more than C, except
>  with modern Pascal you have to use assembler to write boot loaders
> and drivers since they've abstracted all of the lowest-level stuff
> out. I would rejoice if modern Pascal had direct memory and machine
> access like Turbo Pascal did. Then I would just create my own
> operating system in pure Pascal just for the practice.

We share the same dream. I was impressed with Lilith and the other
systems Niklaus Wirth created with his languages. Simplicity is not more
a feature. :-(

>> Seems that Pascal (and Modula-2) were the most important
>> programming languages of my life. I never exprected that when I
>> learned about Pascal in 1981 on Apple ][ (UCSD-Pascal).

> I lament that FPC doesn't play with Modula-2 and Oberon. If I had
> more time I would like to write a translation layer. Modula-2 and
> Oberon have a lot of good design choices but lack in the graphics
> department. My dream is to have Ada, Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon all
> running in Lazarus. When the LLVM back-end matures I might have to
> re-visit the issue.

I use it as follows

Modula-2:

FOR A:=-10 TO 10 DO
   IF A>0 THEN
     IO.WrStr ('A is greater than 0');
   ELSE
     IO.WrStr ('A is less than 0');
   END;
END;

Pascal:

FOR A:=-10 TO 10 DO BEGIN
   IF A>0 THEN BEGIN
     Writeln ('A is greater than 0');
   END ELSE BEGIN
     Writeln ('A is less than 0');
   END;
END;

At least Pascal looks a little bit structured like M2.

FW