Re: What I Think Delphi Needs to Do to Survive

The choice of language is significant

Compared to library and platform knowledge, no it isn't.

if the programmer is knowledgable enough to use the full
capabilities of a particular
language, rather than just the subset similar to other languages he
has had experience with.

The language reflecs the platform. For instance, if I am using Delphi
code and I have this in a loop:

myLongString := myLongString + anotherChar;

And I do this in a loop (such as scanning a file), performance is going
to be dog slow. Not because of the language, but because in Win32 the
compiler is going to be doing a ton of memory allocations for that
ever-expanding string. The knowledge there comes from knowing how the
compiler is going to interpret the language. However, that assumption
may or may not be true for IL...because unless you know .NET CLR you
don't know how it manages strings. So how important is the syntax?
The flaw is going to be there whether you write it:

myLongString = myLongString + anotherChar
or myLongString := myLongString + anotherChar
or myLongString = myLongString & anotherChar

When you are just generating basically the same IL against a JITter,
the language differences have far less meaning. Yes, there is a
'familiarity' with the idioms of a language to take into account, but
this is trivial compared to the ever-growing sizes of libraries.
There's more learning to be done just picking up the workings of a
single grid component nowadays than there is in switching language
syntaxes.

The use of .NET makes the proper choice of a suitable language more
possible as it is more language-agnostic than other platforms (Win32,
say). In the past, the platform or framework was a much more
significant limiting factor in your choice.

That might be true if you're talking about coding LISP or Python, but
VB, C# and Pascal are so similar in structure and idiom where it comes
to procedural coding that it makes no real difference.

While Delphi is not available for .NET 2.0 then, by definition, it
cannot be a language of choice for that framework, whereas Chrome can.

And you gain basically nothing by using Chrome. May as well save
yourself the trouble and just use C#.

Randy
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: There has to be a better way to develop web applications.
    ... one manager still feels VB is not a programmers language, ... learn every tom dick and harry language, standard, and platform so you can ... > the context being discussed all of the arguements are on technology and not ... > on how to use the technology to increase productivity and to provide value to ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet)
  • Re: ANSI C compliance
    ... One of the world's most used C compilers, gcc, has a command line ... But it has nothing to do with the C language, ... > platform might not work on another platform. ... Chars have 8 bits and plain char is signed. ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: Thinking Clearly
    ... than on platform API/Framework then "which platform" is a non issue. ... design is about tradeoffs not ideals. ... proprietary language, they would pay attention to a mass that large. ... They know so little about the VB developer market (the real ones ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi to bytecode compiler
    ... >>compability, since Delphi was designed as a compiled language, not as a JIT ... > compiler can still do global optimization, ... solve all their programming problems; ... > the platform independence of that code. ...
    (comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc)
  • Re: ANSI C compliance
    ... >> simply topics related to the C language in the real world. ... with irrelevant details about ANSI C. ... >> platform might not work on another platform. ... Then I claim that using such a thing is fine business practice, ...
    (comp.lang.c)