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TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 18, 2006 20:14 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137)Parent article: TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
TurboCASH has to weigh the benefits of any new language against the potential for alienating its existing development team.Once they realize that programming in Pascal is like breathing out of one side of your nose, there shouldn't be much resistance.
Having a good accounting package for Linux would be a big plus, regardless of what language they decide to use.
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TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 18, 2006 20:55 UTC (Wed) by lamikr (subscriber, #2289) [Link]
Well, I do not know how well freepascal or lazarus support the object pascaland component libraries (ui, database, server) originally developed for delphi.
If it does that well, then pascal is really good choise. I am nowadays mostly developing either with C or Java, but I earlier used write lot of code with delphi and I think that was really good development env and the code itself looked somehow cleaner than the C-code.
Mika
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 19, 2006 4:29 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]
Very well... We are so compatible that in Delphi mode we have made ourcompiler even simulate a lot of Delphi bugs. The compiler can compile the
Delphi Quake 2 source without changes, for example. Or if you are talking
UI, Delphi's CLX library is compiled without changes and there is a VCL
clone, the Lazarus component library. In other words, porting Delphi code
has never been so easy. You do need to get rid of Win32 code
dependencies, and the Win32 API is one of the most serious vendor
lock-ins there is in the world.
Biggest problem for them is the Borland Database Engine. That one is
discontinued by Borland and only shipped with Delphi for legacy reasons.
They need to switch to SQ/Lite or to a real database, i.e. PostgreSQL.
Since that needs to be done anyway to ensure the future of the program.
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 18, 2006 22:30 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Low-level programming in Pascal is really hurtful, no doubt about it. Death by ord(). And those retarded syntax charts that everybody seemed to love drove me nuts.However, Pascal makes writing a big application out of interconnected modules a joy. Compilation units beat the snot out of C header files in almost every way (readability, maintainability, expressivity...) Unless you're parsing or bit-banging, Pascal really wasn't a bad choice at all. It's better than C in a number of ways.
Of course, choosing it for a new project today would be folly.
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 18, 2006 23:39 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
And those retarded syntax charts that everybody seemed to love drove me nuts.Hey, I remember those! :-)
I guess that's why I abandoned Pascal for C early on. I could never remember more than about a third of Pascal's syntax, whereas C was easy to remember, mostly because there's a lot less of it.
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 19, 2006 4:30 UTC (Thu) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]
You have never touched a REAL Pascal compiler, haven't you. Ord isobsolete since Turbo Pascal 4.0, which was release "some" years ago.
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 19, 2006 13:39 UTC (Thu) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]
>Once they realize that programming in Pascal is like>breathing out of one side of your nose
Why? I've written apps in Pascal, and used lots of apps written in Pascal. It is (or was) a good language for developing applications; especially the OO varieties. Low level enough to not get in the way but high level enough to save the developer from grunt work like garbage collection.
Personally I do almost all my new development in C#, which was developed by a Pascal guy - and boy does it show. A nice language where you can get on with getting things done but without throwing away all the power (like you do in most varieties of basic).
TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)
Posted Jan 19, 2006 18:33 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
Why?I found the language to be very rigid, to the point of frustration. But I haven't used Pascal since very early versions of Turbo Pascal, so I'm sure that it has improved since then.
I still have fond memories of Borland's "Turbo Vision" text-mode IDE. MS/DOS (prior to version 5) had a very primitive command shell, so working in an IDE was nice.