> "My personal objective is not just to put out a simulator, but a fast > and efficient simulator. Furthermore, personally, I do not consider a > program portable if it is written in a language which very few can > understand. A modern language such as any of the .NET languages will > meet the efficiency objective but portability remains an issue. While > I do have the Visual Studio .NET and I am happy with it, I understand > that not everybody has it and it is not cheap. I looked at the > Lazarus project and (at least at a first glance) it is indeed very > "Visual" and will likely do the job. It will however, limit us to > Pascal which is not really a modern language. For those of you who > are in favor of using Lazarus, can you assure the rest of us that > Pascal has been modernized? "
IMHO the fatal flaw in this reasoning is that this opinion simply regurgitates some IT management blurb, and doesn't really tailor a choice of language to your needs. There are three different arguments that I would mention in your response: 1) While not nearly as bad as Python, there are potential performance issues in using managed languages. This is not just raw calculating speed, but also startup time, memory usage (not unimportant in scientific calculations with large datasets!). Worse, doing something about it often means doing speed dependant calculations in a non managed language in a DLL. So you potentially force contributors to learn a new language, and later have to partially back out again. 2) The only somewhat jusitifyable choice for "modern" programming languages in the IT sector is hiring. One can debate if .NET and Java are new generations, or just a glorified old hat, but the main point is that they _are_ prolific. However that is not a 100% simple situation: - First availability must be seend relative to demand (C# programmers are the only programmer on the US top 10 most wanted list, J2EE has been so in recent years). A lot more supply, but also a lot more hiring. - Also, these languages are mainly business (read DB apps) oriented, and much less scientifically. Pascal has been a scientific language for years. - Are you going to be hiring anyway? Otherwise I would inventorise first which suitable language is most common in your community and choose that (Pascal, Java, C# or not). It would be stupid to e.g. offend your most worthwhile potential contributors with a wrong language choice. IOW, don't be fooled by a simplistic mantrum, but do the research what language is most suitable, and what's available in your community. (your actual question is pretty much unanswerable till you define "modern") _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal