Re: What do people like on C what Pascal don't have

On 10/11/22 03:01, F. W. wrote:
> Even if I think about Call by Value/Call by Reference or switch vs.
> case, I like Pascal much more.
> 
> What do people fascinate on C?
> 
> I worked years as a C-Programmer. But privately I always preferred
> Pascal. I like to take care of the project rather than the tool.
> 
> FW

#1 is compilation speed. C is horrible for this, especially for big 
projects.

Then there is the syntax clarity. It is easy to write unintelligible 
chicken scratch with C. Not so easy with Pascal.

Pascal allows clear, old-school, 'name it and claim it' procedural 
structure in which one never needs to manage memory. I can write complex 
programs using FreePascal without ever managing variable memory and the 
compiler just takes care of it automatically and frees everything 
automatically. This is my favorite way of doing it, and one less huge 
mess of errors that are avoided. It also makes the compiled binaries 
really fast when doing it this way since the compiler puts in the code 
to handle it automatically and efficiently.

Modularity of structure. Pascal is by default a modular language. It is 
easy to break the codebase up into separate modules arranged logically. 
Messing with C headers can make this approach painful and error-prone.

Compiler errors are often easy to understand without playing sleuth.

One thing I don't like about Modern Pascal is that it seems to have 
abandoned low-level stuff like booting and operating systems. Now it is 
all seemingly geared to hook into the OS. That's not a bad thing, but 
having only that to me is a bad thing.

I would like to be able to write my own OS strictly with Pascal. The 
bare metal stuff could fall under a single compiler mode, or a group of 
modes:

{$MACHINE} {$BOOT} {$EFI} {$BIOS} {$RING0} {$KERNEL} {$FILESYSTEM} 
{$ROM} {$MEDIA} {$USB} {$DRIVER} {$VGA} {$GRAPHICS} ... etc.

Then over time contributors could add modules for different platform 
targets to each machine mode library, and a new parent machine mode that 
hooks programs into whatever kernel is compiled by it, so the rest of 
the code and additional programs could remain platform-independent.

If I could do it without any C or direct assembler I would get started 
right away. I would write a simple toy os to get started, then begin 
expanding it, and push a few utility units to the maintainers that would 
make it easier for others.

To have a well-tooled mode system strictly for bare metal constructs 
would be a dream.

-- 

G.K.