Why Use Pascal?

Re:Why Use Pascal? by zabzonk on Saturday July 08, 2023 @02:56PM (#36647579)

I used Delph professionaly for several years in the 90s, and liked it, but really got tired with Borland (and subsequent owners) mis-managing the product and the language, as did Anders Hejlsberg, who left Borland for Microsoft, where he created C# - IMHO a much better language & architecture to invest your time in.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by FpUser on Saturday July 08, 2023 @09:28PM (#36650561)

Reliably deploying C# desktop app is total nightmare in comparison to single exe generated by Delphi's / Lazarus.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by xupybd on Saturday July 08, 2023 @10:53PM (#36651054)

I've found .Net deployments to be rock solid and easy. What problems do you hit?

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by wsc981 on Sunday July 09, 2023 @12:40AM (#36651562)

A couple of months ago I started working at a company that (mainly) develops C# libraries.

The pipeline to deploy is complicated. Using a tool like ILMerge to combine DLLs into a single DLL (to prevent DLL hell issues). Using Babel to obfuscate the code base. Using nuspecs to create a Nuget package from the DLLs and various metadata. Signing the DLLs with some certificate. Then, if native stuff is included, also ensure the Nuget package can be deployed on all supported architectures. Probably some more stuff.

Setting up a pipeline in Azure devops for a product I am working on, for the company, is already taking me a week and will probably take another couple of days to complete. But at least it’s a one-time task.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by zx14 on Sunday July 09, 2023 @02:16AM (#36652062)

Well, a lot of those requirements are highly bespoke to your task and to your team.

My C# pipelines and C# apps are far easier to package and deploy than my Python apps for example. And, as you said, the pipeline is normally a one time cost.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by IshKebab on Sunday July 09, 2023 @02:44AM (#36652210)

Comparing to Python is not exactly fair. I don't think there are any languages that have a worse deployment experience.

How does it compare to Go or Rust?

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by Thiez on Sunday July 09, 2023 @07:15AM (#36653530)

They want obfuscation. Rust libraries necessarily include the AST for public generic functions. So it may not be suitable.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by IshKebab on Sunday July 09, 2023 @05:38PM (#36659193)

I think that's a totally different topic, but regardless it's the same with C++ and I don't see that being a big issue to C++ library vendors.

Rust doesn't have a stable ABI so it's not like you could realistically distribute a closed source "native" Rust library anyway.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by FpUser on Sunday July 09, 2023 @11:47AM (#36655462)

We were talking Delphi vs C#. Where does Python fit in?

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by xupybd on Sunday July 09, 2023 @06:55PM (#36659895)

Ah, I've not had to combine DLLs, obfuscate code, sign code or create Nuget packages.

All of that does sound painful.

What makes it easier in other languages? Is it a matter of better tooling?

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by wsc981 on Monday July 10, 2023 @04:42AM (#36663594)

I am not sure if it’s easier in other languages (no experience except mobile dev). But I do know packaging macOS and iOS apps is also a painful process and becomes more painful over time (e.g. Apple’s recently introduced notarization process).

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by mycall on Saturday July 08, 2023 @11:24PM (#36651205)

C# can generate single executables now.

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Re:Why Use Pascal? by pjmlp on Sunday July 09, 2023 @04:42AM (#36652777)

Kind of.

Depends if we are speaking about Xamarin/Mono AOT, .NET Native, Native AOT or IL2CPP.

Each of those ones has plus and minus, none of them allow to pick a random .NET application and just compile it straight into native code.

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