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Turbo Pascal was the first language I was taught in school, although I had already taught myself BASIC on a BBC B Microcomputer as a child. I loved Pascal and

by junto 11y ago

Turbo Pascal was the first language I was taught in school, although I had already taught myself BASIC on a BBC B Microcomputer as a child. I loved Pascal and wrote a race management program for my local sailing club when I was 16. Fond memories. The whole experience was a voyage of discovery, as I had to write my own "windows" style UI using ASCII codes. I used Delphi later on in university along with Modular2, and C++. I never felt the same passion for these languages as I had had for Turbo Pascal. I later moved on to VB and VBscript, and didn't like them at all but they paid the bills. The next time I felt that same type of passion was for C#. Somehow it just clicked. I think it is about what you can achieve productively with the language, as well as the language itself.

luso_brazilian 11y ago
You will then be pleased to know that C# development team is led by Anders Hejlsberg, the same Anders mentioned in the article that created what went to become Borland Turbo Pascal. IIRC, he also led the development of Borland Delphi and its language, Object Pascal. He is really a prolific language designer, one of the unsung heroes of that area.
- barrkel 11y ago
  Object Pascal was originally an Apple invention (with help from Wirth), and made some strides towards ISO standardisation. However it used a value-based OO model that made vtables optional until you added the first virtual method, permitted object slicing, had no common ancestor for all classes, had an odd syntax for calling constructors (using extra parameters to New), etc. Delphi introduced a new object model while retaining the old object model for backward compatibility. The language was renamed to Delphi some time later to reflect this; while Object Pascal in practice meant the language that the Borland compilers compiled, its technical and historical meaning is both broader (more compilers) and more limited (a smaller language with different features).
  - junto 11y ago
    Interestingly I just Googled Borland to see what they do these days: http://www.borland.com/Products http://www.borland.com/Products Seems like they made quite a major pivot?
    - 72deluxe 11y ago
      I used Borland C++ Builder and their version of it in the XP - Windows 7 days, when they released Codegear 7. As far as I knew many of the developers left after they renamed themselves Inprise ("integrating the enterprise" whatever that means), decided to produce odd products that targeted an entirely different audience and after they ditched all the development work on C++ Studio (I think that was what it was called). I remember them introducing Kylix and the disappointment of it being based on Qt and Wine so slow on my old Linux box. The VCL stagnated too (horrible flicker on XP as I recall, to begin with so hacks to disable theming via the application manifest were needed) and the compiler let you do illegal things in C++ in Codegear's C++ Builder 7 (must dig out an example). The installer for C++ Builder 7 took FOREVER to run and also required you keep all of your setup files in your temp directory for later updates to work (???? insane eh!) I remember them releasing a paid PHP editor etc. at the time when you could just grab Netbeans and use that for £0.00 - difficult to compete with that!
      - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
        After that PHP editor I vowed to never by another product from them, it was truly awful.
    - lucifersam 11y ago
      Yes, quite some time back they split the languages and compilers part out and the rump of Borland became an application lifecycle management company, or something like that. The bit you're probably looking for is at http://www.embarcadero.com/ http://www.embarcadero.com/ now. Some of the old people like David Intersimone are still there. I worked with Delphi for a long time, through versions 3, 5 and 7 (the odd numbers were always better). When .NET came, the whole situation went crazy and never recovered. I can't remember the twists and turns now, but I think they released a .NET only RAD Studio which was awful, then they added the Win32 bits back but Delphi.NET was still awful. Then they dropped .NET and incorporated Remobjects Chrome/Oxygene as Delphi Prism, which was an Object Pascal inspired .NET language. Now they've split again, and Radstudio is all about Firemonkey, a cross-platform UI library. Remobjects are doing their own thing.

by junto 11y ago

luso_brazilian 11y ago

You will then be pleased to know that C# development team is led by Anders Hejlsberg, the same Anders mentioned in the article that created what went to become Borland Turbo Pascal. IIRC, he also led the development of Borland Delphi and its language, Object Pascal. He is really a prolific language designer, one of the unsung heroes of that area.

barrkel 11y ago
Object Pascal was originally an Apple invention (with help from Wirth), and made some strides towards ISO standardisation. However it used a value-based OO model that made vtables optional until you added the first virtual method, permitted object slicing, had no common ancestor for all classes, had an odd syntax for calling constructors (using extra parameters to New), etc. Delphi introduced a new object model while retaining the old object model for backward compatibility. The language was renamed to Delphi some time later to reflect this; while Object Pascal in practice meant the language that the Borland compilers compiled, its technical and historical meaning is both broader (more compilers) and more limited (a smaller language with different features).
- junto 11y ago
  Interestingly I just Googled Borland to see what they do these days: http://www.borland.com/Products http://www.borland.com/Products Seems like they made quite a major pivot?
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    I used Borland C++ Builder and their version of it in the XP - Windows 7 days, when they released Codegear 7. As far as I knew many of the developers left after they renamed themselves Inprise ("integrating the enterprise" whatever that means), decided to produce odd products that targeted an entirely different audience and after they ditched all the development work on C++ Studio (I think that was what it was called). I remember them introducing Kylix and the disappointment of it being based on Qt and Wine so slow on my old Linux box. The VCL stagnated too (horrible flicker on XP as I recall, to begin with so hacks to disable theming via the application manifest were needed) and the compiler let you do illegal things in C++ in Codegear's C++ Builder 7 (must dig out an example). The installer for C++ Builder 7 took FOREVER to run and also required you keep all of your setup files in your temp directory for later updates to work (???? insane eh!) I remember them releasing a paid PHP editor etc. at the time when you could just grab Netbeans and use that for £0.00 - difficult to compete with that!
    - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
      After that PHP editor I vowed to never by another product from them, it was truly awful.
  - lucifersam 11y ago
    Yes, quite some time back they split the languages and compilers part out and the rump of Borland became an application lifecycle management company, or something like that. The bit you're probably looking for is at http://www.embarcadero.com/ http://www.embarcadero.com/ now. Some of the old people like David Intersimone are still there. I worked with Delphi for a long time, through versions 3, 5 and 7 (the odd numbers were always better). When .NET came, the whole situation went crazy and never recovered. I can't remember the twists and turns now, but I think they released a .NET only RAD Studio which was awful, then they added the Win32 bits back but Delphi.NET was still awful. Then they dropped .NET and incorporated Remobjects Chrome/Oxygene as Delphi Prism, which was an Object Pascal inspired .NET language. Now they've split again, and Radstudio is all about Firemonkey, a cross-platform UI library. Remobjects are doing their own thing.