[Mono-devel-list] Pascal compiler - say what?

[Edward Wilson]

Why?

Who uses Pascal anymore?

Hasn't everyone (that's serious) moved on to C++, Java and/or C#?

Are there jobs in Pascal anymore?

It makes little sense to hack up something such as a Pascal compiler (no small task, btw) if no
one except the three people working on it will use it--or care if it exists.  If someone has
academic interests I would say go for it; but for those of you who need to pay bills I would
say--this is a bad idea--your wives will be leaving you for C# programmers who get paid, or who
after graduation have jobs waiting for them.

This sounds exactly like something I would have posted back in college; then came graduation and
then paying my own bills.  Suddenly, all of those eclectic (non-paying) languages that I dreamed
about in college ceased to matter--Pascal being one of them.  Yes, yes, I can hear the Delphi
crowd--in the commercial space--Delphi is dead, in ten years no one is going to remember Delphi.

Pascal is definitely a great language; I suggest; however, that if you want to make an impact that
you find something to do with your time (and hard work) that will live after you are tired of
working on it.  There are ``plenty'' of green untouched areas to help with on the Mono project; I
suggest you try your hand at something that won't be quickly thrown away but will rather stand the
test of time.  C# (love it--or--hate it) is MS' baby, and they will force it down our throats, C#
will, by force, have a future.

Instead of Pascal, you might try hacking F#, a .NET Ocaml knock off, it should have a more
promising future than Pascal/.net and you might get eventually get paid.

--Links to follow up with--
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/ilx/fsharp.aspx
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1148332,00.asp

-
e


--- Dennis Hayes <denisraytek at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>  
> 
> 1)      If someone wants to write an open source Pascal compiler, they should do it. If it gets
> to an advanced enough state, and has the support needed, I see no reason why it could not be
> added to the Mono SVN; of course that is not my decision to make, but in the past similar
> projects such as Janet have been welcomed with open arms. Otherwise, it could also be put on
> sourceforge.
> Be forewarned that it will take a lot of work, just getting a basic Pascal compiler should be
> easy, but supporting more complex things (attributes, security (CAS), interfaces,
> disposability/gc, modules, etc) may be very difficult. For Borland compatibility, other DLLS and
> namespaces will also need to be written.
> Also many of the hard core Borland Pascal programmers I know have already made the move to C#.
> 
> 2)      I have written a little bit about Chrome in my “Monkey Business” column, and I found out
> about them from this newsgroup. They have also made a lot of “improvements,” I especially like
> the “design by contract” additions. They are not the official Mono Pascal, nor could I ever see
> them becoming such. I appreciate the fact that they are spending time money and effort to be
> Mono compatible.
> 
> 3)      I think giving away the command line compiler is cool and does eliminate *some* of the
> need for an open source Pascal compiler. Remember Microsoft gives away a command line C#
> compiler with the free .NET Framework. That did not stop Mono from writing their own C#
> compiler. If you really want to write a Pascal compiler, you should not let Chrome stop you.
> 
>  
> 
> 		
> ---------------------------------
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