@Trekiej

Quote:

I heard that Fortran has some parallel-ism built-in.

Some types of Fortran (especially for Supercomputers) have some kind of support for parallel computing.

Other languages like 'C/C++' will just give you the power to start parallel processes.

If you want to compare languages like Fortran, Cobol and Pascal, I would like to mention that most of them are outdated.

Pascal is the most modern of them all but it was designed as language for education, so its use was somewhat restricted. Turbo-Pascal had some improvements making it more useful.

Turbo-Pascal was developed into Delphi, a Pascal oriented language with OOP Elements and a powerful framework.

The success of actual computer languages depends on its frameworks and the support for 'important' OSes, this makes languages supported by Microsoft to be the most successful programming languages. This will stop newcomers from gaining more importance, keeping Microsoft the leading OS Provider.

Pascal (as a learning Language) was developed by Nicolaus Wirth (the Pascal Inventor) into Modula, Modula2 and later into Oberon. Oberon comes with some kind of OS and there where some computers that booted directly into the Oberon system, nothing that is supported by any common system today.

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BTW.: There is an interesting Pascal (Delphi compatible?) system called Freepascal it is existing for different Platform including AOS4, MOS and AROS.
http://fpcamigawiki.alb42.de/index.php?title=Main_Page

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 22-Mar-2019 at 01:09 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 22-Mar-2019 at 01:07 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 22-Mar-2019 at 01:06 PM.

I thought ADA was object-based Pascal...

@OneTimer1

I personally use freepascal via Lazarus IDE for all my windows based apps. It compiles for windowsCE, linux, mac and many more from the same IDE.
Lazarus is also an excellent visual builder, so designing a good GUI is very easy.

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@Thread


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@Trekiej

Why waste time on ancient languages!
You may want it for Amiga purpose, but TypeScript is number 1 language now, by Microsoft.

Dont shoot

Last edited by wajdy on 22-Mar-2019 at 11:41 PM.

@Trekiej

I know this is slightly off-topic but I think the time for programming the Amiga in C is done. C just causes so many problems.

Something like Google's Go looks attractive to me. There is even support for it in gcc so in theory it shouldn't be a lot of work to get Go working at a very basic level. The fun is exposing all the Amiga API to go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)

Quote:

wajdy wrote: @Trekiej Why waste time on ancient languages! You may want it for Amiga purpose, but TypeScript is number 1 language now, by Microsoft. Dont shoot

I shoot PureScript at you!

@gregthecanuck

Quote:

Something like Google's Go looks attractive to me.

It looked good to me too, until I actually starting using it. The (famous) people who created it made some surprising design decisions. For example, identifiers that begin with an upper-case letter are exported, and that do not are not. So if you decide well into a project that something needs to be exported, you have to rename the identifier in every file that references it. There are other things as well. Golang is in the collection of languages that I will only use if I'm getting paid.

Last edited by bison on 23-Mar-2019 at 04:25 AM.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@Trekiej

It depends on what you want to do

is your question general or amiga specific?

general who uses Fortran and Cobol today?

Pascal is still usable (and I like it) with modern implementations (object pascal and free pascal included in lazarus)

In outside world people use lots of different languages like C#, Java, C, C++, Java Script and so on

if you want to do something on amiga you can use basic (AMOS and Blitzbasic) or Amiga-E or C/C++ or Freepascal who are well or very well supporting amiga or hollywood

Last edited by OlafS25 on 23-Mar-2019 at 11:58 AM.

@Chain-Q Quote:

Chain-Q wrote: - safe and very advanced string handling [...] - the language is very compatible with itself all the way back, no breaking of syntax between revisions like Python. there are various dialects, like ISO, Extended, Borland, Delphi, Mac Pascal, etc. with slight differences, but Free Pascal supports compiling any code written in any dialect into the same project

Nevertheless, you have to specify which dialect you want to support, so the syntax IS different between them.

In fact, Pascal not even had a standard string type ( https://www.standardpascal.com/The_Programming_Language_Pascal_1973.pdf ), and this was added only by subsequent extensions, which were also incompatible each other.

So, the situation was and is even worse compared to the single (and planned) breaking of syntax happened with Python. In Python you have versions = 3 (again, backward compatible down to 3.0). So, only two Python "major versions", and from 2.7 to 3.0 there were only few and limited incompatibilities.


@bison Quote:

bison wrote: @Trekiej Well, since we have moved well beyond the original Fortran/Cobol/Pascal premise, I'll throw in my 2 cents: C and Python are the Dynamic Duo (Batman and Robin). Those two languages together span everything from low-level systems programming to one-off scripts.

This.

I've to say that I really don't like C & similar languages (I loved a lot Pascal & derivatives), but unfortunately it has so much support, and in some fields there's essentially no realistic alternative.

For the rest, Python is my primary programming language: clean and simple syntax, with a very high productivity.

As samuraicrow posted above, i think rust is the way to go into low level without the pointer nightmare. Also is a newer language.

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@cdimauro

Quote:

I've to say that I really don't like C & similar languages (I loved a lot Pascal & derivatives), but unfortunately it has so much support, and in some fields there's essentially no realistic alternative.

I made peace with C a long time ago, but I'd still rather use D, which can be linked to C.

https://dlang.org/comparison.html

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@_ThEcRoW

It's become a bit of a meme the last few years to say that everything would be better rewritten in Rust. I started the tutorial a few years ago and didn't get far -- the language was incomplete at the time and difficult to use for anything useful. I should take another run at it, if for no other reason than to see if all the hype is justified.

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"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@cdimauro

Quote:

In fact, Pascal not even had a standard string type

Pascal has an 'Array of Char' as string type.

Unfortunately the Pascal 'Strings' are not equal to zero terminated C-Strings that are used by most operating systems today.

Well, by way of rounding things out, and tying in with the several considerations hth313 pointed out, if you want to exploit some of the benefits of functional programming, avail yourself of type and memory safety, and you want language support for concurrency, I suggest you have a look at Rust.

I really like it, but for now I'm putting up with the quirks of C++. Don't get me wrong, I really like C++, but some of the recent language 'advances', coupled with the exception-specification fiasco, have me looking elsewhere, too.

@Yssing

Quote:

Yssing wrote: @OneTimer1 I personally use freepascal via Lazarus IDE for all my windows based apps. It compiles for windowsCE, linux, mac and many more from the same IDE. Lazarus is also an excellent visual builder, so designing a good GUI is very easy.

I did some programming with Delphi under Windows Embedded for a medical device.

The GUI Builder was excellent. AFAIK Lazarus is a reprogrammed open source version of Delphi.

The Meaning of Delphi as a programming language, is limited by the strange marketing decicions of the company that owns it.

It went from Borland to a company which name sound like 'Embargo', so many people believe it doesn't exist any more.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 23-Mar-2019 at 03:21 PM.

@OneTimer1

Embarcadero - although the Borland acquisitions remain under the CodeGear division. Yep, Delphi still exists ... for a premium.

@OneTimer1

I still use Delphi 7 because I licensed lots of additional components for it. The only disadvantage is that it is 32bit but the software still runs everywhere

Lazarus also supports 64bit and different platforms so I looked at it already but for now Delphi 7 is sufficient to me.

Delphi is still being actively developed.
Lazarus is based on Free Pascal and not Borlands Delphi. It can however import Delphi code.

http://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=about
Quote:

So just what is Lazarus? Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Free Pascal. It includes LCL which is more or less compatible with Delphi's VCL. Free Pascal is a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which is OOP. Lazarus is the part of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi like programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be a write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write once compile anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on all of the above platforms it means you don't need to do any recoding to produce identical products for different platforms.

I have, so far not found anything, that I could not do in Lazarus. I use it extensively for making software that interfaces with various arduino setups, it works like a charm.
I used it, professionaly, for WindowsCE RFID scanners, used for inventory and sales.

Is it as powerfull as other languages, maybe not, but it is very approachable and easy to use, extremely portable and there is a large community supporting it.

FWIW, I find it's handling of pointers and arrays very elegant, but that is just my opinion..

I am not saying you should dump, what ever kind of language, for Pascal, but you can code almost anything using Pascal, even webpages (as CGI-BIN)

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@bison Quote:

bison wrote: @cdimauro Quote: I've to say that I really don't like C & similar languages (I loved a lot Pascal & derivatives), but unfortunately it has so much support, and in some fields there's essentially no realistic alternative. I made peace with C a long time ago, but I'd still rather use D, which can be linked to C. https://dlang.org/comparison.html

I know D, but I don't like C-like languages at all.

Another thing: creating projects mixing different languages has it's own problems. If I wanted to use a mixed-languages approach, then I would have preferred a combination of FreePascal (for my primary code) & C/C++ (when I need to interface to some libraries and/or includes). Certainly and definitely not another C-like language.


@bison Quote:

bison wrote: @_ThEcRoW It's become a bit of a meme the last few years to say that everything would be better rewritten in Rust. I started the tutorial a few years ago and didn't get far -- the language was incomplete at the time and difficult to use for anything useful. I should take another run at it, if for no other reason than to see if all the hype is justified.

Personally I found Rust syntax awkward. They lost the opportunity to create a language which was robust AND readable, creating another monster...


@OneTimer1 Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: In fact, Pascal not even had a standard string type Pascal has an 'Array of Char' as string type.

Yes, in the past it was used a packed array of char to emulate strings.

Anyway, the problem is that "string" types were later introduced by different extensions in different modes, contributing to the general confusion.
Quote:

Unfortunately the Pascal 'Strings' are not equal to zero terminated C-Strings that are used by most operating systems today.

For me it was unfortunate that o.ses used (and essentially imposed) one of the worst string design ever: C strings.