On 7/19/2015 2:03 AM, Jonas Maebe wrote:
Den wrote:
Just like ECMAScript,
C++, PHP, most languages now have a 'standards' document behind it.
That's their *roadmap*. Their *leadership*. Design it and the
*community* will show *support*.
ISO Pascal and ISO Extended Pascal were like that in the early 90s:
1) there was an official ISO standard and standards committee for it
2) there were a number commercial compilers supporting it such as HP
Pascal and IBM's compiler for its System/370
3) later on (in 1996) a GCC-based implementation arrived for it (the
equivalent of the LLVM of the moment)
And still almost no one uses ISO/Extended Pascal anymore. Why?
Possibly because the de facto Pascal standards had already become
Think Pascal on the Mac and Turbo Pascal on the PC by then, and none
of those programmers wanted to rewrite all of their code (although
Think Pascal was a bit closer to ISO Pascal). Or maybe because in
general, many people just preferred those language dialects for one
reason or another. In any case, introducing one new standard to rule
them all seldom (if ever) works (and you can bet someone will be
unable to resist to add a link to the related xkcd comic).
Standards do not magically make a language more popular. They only
work if they follow from a desire of an entire community to design one
and to adhere to it. "Design it and the community will show support"
is exactly the opposite of what happens in practice.
ISO Pascal was a born a dead horse. Borland, itself taking pieces of
USCD Pascal (Units, Strings) became the "de-facto"standard and that is
what the initial goal was when Florian started the compiler way back
when. Later, Free Pascal followed what was set by Delphi, making the
most sense.
Now today, I do not necessarily agree with the direction Embarcadero
heading these days with Delphi and most importantly (for me), I do not
agree with all those attempts to add "features" of other languages to
Free Pascal. I appreciate the efforts of the folks involved in Free
Pascal for a long time, as this provides me with the opportunity to keep
working in the programming language/environment that for me makes the
most sense and that I am used to for 38 years. And I honestly loath to
see that people argue that there should be new language constructs and
such, just because it is what more popular programming languages
provide. I am not in to participate in a popularity contest, I am trying
to get work done...
Ralf
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