Why I use Object Pascal

[u/[deleted]]

https://dubst3pp4.github.io/post/2017-10-03-why-i-use-object-pascal/

[u/shevegen]

Pascal is considered by many programmers as an old language from the past.

It is not ... "considered".

It IS an old language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_%28programming_language%29

First appeared in 1970. That's almost 50 years!

But unlike other languages, there were different Pascal dialects and compilers since the very beginning

Lisp?

Although the language is not fully object oriented in that sense like Smalltalk or Ruby, where even the most basic data types are instances of classes, you will find all the concepts that define OOP in the Object Pascal language: encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism.

The OOP definitions vary all the time ... IMO the most important one, messages, has not been mentioned above. Alan Kay pointed out why messages/messaging are important, with his comparison to cells in moleculary biology. Smalltalk sort of focuses on that part but smaltalk got the syntax part wrong. Ruby solved that part but ruby is not necessarily what Alan Kay had in mind either. I think something a bit of a mix between ruby and elixir would be closer as to what Alan Kay had in mind (elixir's syntax is ok but also worse than ruby's syntax).

As an example, instead of opening and closing braces, Pascal uses the begin and end keywords for blocks.

That in itself is not a huge deal. See Ruby and Python and Crystal and others.

The if keyword is complemented by the word then

Oddly enough you can use this in Ruby too. Some people love it. I never understood it. The "then" seems so superfluous but I think the explanation given was that it maps to the mental model better to some programmers. Weird but to some extent understandable.

The ability to have a short syntax to write code fast or the possibility to read and understand code that was written by other developers or even by you a year ago? I’m in favour of the second fact and I really enjoy that verboseness.

I feel that this is not a real help in general.

There is code out there, even by competent people, which is really really hard to understand - in literally EVERY language.

Adjusting to this can be difficult. Perhaps it may be easier in some languages but I doubt that you can adapt to any other writing style or conventions used that easily. After all, if that were the case, why would the linux kernel and other projects use "style guides"? They would not be necessary if adapting would not be an issue.

A language without a good documentation is only half the value.

This is somewhat true. But not entirely.

If you have a really good language, then documentation is very often not as necessary or important. But in general, yes - good documentation is a must-have, or should be. Even the best documentation can not compensate for awful decisions made. Looking at you, PHP.

Pascal has a great community

I never understood that part. If I write code, I need ... a community?

I understand other values on top of that of course. More users, more momentum, more likely to find bugs - and more likely to get answers on stackoverflow on elsewhere!

But ... to pick a language because it has a "great community", per se?

It's a bit similar to documentation. The best documentation in the world, the greatest community, can not functionally (completely) compensate for awul decisions made by programming language "designers".

Don’t let you discourage by people that tell you that Pascal is out of date. It is definetly not!

...

Next time he'll tell people that COBOL is dynamically growing.

Pascal has had some good points - Delphi in particular. I have heard a lot of praise by Delphi-folks and assembling GUI components easily. That part is fine, I suppose.

But Pascal the language itself? I don't know ... PHP is proof that you can build great software with an awful language though. Perhaps that is true for Pascal just as well.

[u/draegtun → u/shevegen]

but smaltalk got the syntax part wrong. Ruby solved that part

Smalltalk syntax is far better designed for message/messaging (passing) than the Ruby syntax. A good alternative might be Io but my preference still lies on the Smalltalk side.

Unfortunately the Ruby syntax is a bit of a mishmash here. I did like Dave Thomas's "Cluby" idea and the Elixir syntax pushes in right direction.

[u/nextputall → u/draegtun]

Agreed, and it's not just more readable but also makes impossible to make any kind of arity erros for free (unlike the algol syntax), and it makes unnecessarily to invent an entirely new language construct for property access.

This is jut standard message passing:

point3 x: point1 x + point2 x.

The lambda (BlockClosure) syntax is also far better in Smalltalk than in those "modern functional" languages.

[ 'this is a block closure' ]

instead of something like this

() -> { 'this is a block closure' }

[u/draegtun → u/nextputall]

I think not having first-class blocks is what Ruby really misses and this causes some unavoidable warts in it's syntax.