4 ms·

It depends a lot on what exactly you need or want to use. Sometimes you find something great, or nothing, or something in-between. One nice thing with Ada is ho

It depends a lot on what exactly you need or want to use. Sometimes you find something great, or nothing, or something in-between. One nice thing with Ada is how easily it binds to C, and that just got some improvements. Not as easy and nice as somebody else doing it for you, but still. It's something I actually consider, which is more than I can say for any other language. FWIW, in my brief dalliance with Pascal, I got the impression it's a good bit more, uh, fossilized than Ada. I didn't try too hard to find a pulse there at the time, but I don't think I tried much harder with Ada. Yet here I am, shamelessly shilling.

KronisLV 4y ago
> One nice thing with Ada is how easily it binds to C, and that just got some improvements. This is an excellent point and will probably keep lots of similar languages out there viable for a bit longer. For example, I wouldn't start a serious project in Prolog either, but if there's a really good use case for it and there's a way to integrate it with other languages/runtimes, be it C/C++ or anything else, then I might consider it. > FWIW, in my brief dalliance with Pascal, I got the impression it's a good bit more, uh, fossilized than Ada. It depends. It's still a good option for various native GUI software and the occasional bit of number crunching/utilities, especially when used with Lazarus: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ That said, it's definitely showing its age and the whole Delphi/Pascal divide isn't helping much either. Generally .NET and Go do most of the things I would have considered it for 5-10 years ago, though, maybe only the GUI part isn't entirely solved just yet. I'm not sure why, but most of the newer runtimes/languages don't really have strong built in GUI options, perhaps because developing those and supporting multiple platforms takes a lot of time. I can't stop wishing for something that's as stable as Java Swing or even OpenJFX for something like .NET: Avalonia UI seems like a third party project and using something like Qt/GTK binds isn't always easy to pull off. Just give me a simple and easy to use language that has built in packages for doing most of the common stuff (working with different data formats, network interaction etc.) and has a built in cross platform GUI library, with an IDE that lets you use a designer with drag & drop functionality for laying stuff out, before you connect all of the components in code. Somehow the wisdom of RAD (rapid application development) seems to have waned in the last decade.
- foerbert 4y ago
  > It's still a good option for various native GUI software and the occasional bit of number crunching/utilities, especially when used with Lazarus Yeah, that was definitely quite the bright spot. At the time GUIs weren't really what I was interested in, so ultimately I moved on. But for a long while since I'd fire up Lazarus again whenever I started thinking about native GUIs. Never did much with it though, as I was never inclined to do everything in Pascal and it didn't seem worth the trouble to make it work with whatever I was wanting to use for the rest of it.
- imaltont 4y ago
  > Just give me a simple and easy to use language that has built in packages for doing most of the common stuff (working with different data formats, network interaction etc.) and has a built in cross platform GUI library, with an IDE that lets you use a designer with drag & drop functionality for laying stuff out, before you connect all of the components in code. Somehow the wisdom of RAD (rapid application development) seems to have waned in the last decade. Racket does all of these afaik outside of the built in WYSIWYG editor for GUIs. There probably are 3rd party designers around though.

KronisLV 4y ago

> One nice thing with Ada is how easily it binds to C, and that just got some improvements. This is an excellent point and will probably keep lots of similar languages out there viable for a bit longer. For example, I wouldn't start a serious project in Prolog either, but if there's a really good use case for it and there's a way to integrate it with other languages/runtimes, be it C/C++ or anything else, then I might consider it. > FWIW, in my brief dalliance with Pascal, I got the impression it's a good bit more, uh, fossilized than Ada. It depends. It's still a good option for various native GUI software and the occasional bit of number crunching/utilities, especially when used with Lazarus: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ https://www.lazarus-ide.org/ That said, it's definitely showing its age and the whole Delphi/Pascal divide isn't helping much either. Generally .NET and Go do most of the things I would have considered it for 5-10 years ago, though, maybe only the GUI part isn't entirely solved just yet. I'm not sure why, but most of the newer runtimes/languages don't really have strong built in GUI options, perhaps because developing those and supporting multiple platforms takes a lot of time. I can't stop wishing for something that's as stable as Java Swing or even OpenJFX for something like .NET: Avalonia UI seems like a third party project and using something like Qt/GTK binds isn't always easy to pull off. Just give me a simple and easy to use language that has built in packages for doing most of the common stuff (working with different data formats, network interaction etc.) and has a built in cross platform GUI library, with an IDE that lets you use a designer with drag & drop functionality for laying stuff out, before you connect all of the components in code. Somehow the wisdom of RAD (rapid application development) seems to have waned in the last decade.

foerbert 4y ago
> It's still a good option for various native GUI software and the occasional bit of number crunching/utilities, especially when used with Lazarus Yeah, that was definitely quite the bright spot. At the time GUIs weren't really what I was interested in, so ultimately I moved on. But for a long while since I'd fire up Lazarus again whenever I started thinking about native GUIs. Never did much with it though, as I was never inclined to do everything in Pascal and it didn't seem worth the trouble to make it work with whatever I was wanting to use for the rest of it.
imaltont 4y ago
> Just give me a simple and easy to use language that has built in packages for doing most of the common stuff (working with different data formats, network interaction etc.) and has a built in cross platform GUI library, with an IDE that lets you use a designer with drag & drop functionality for laying stuff out, before you connect all of the components in code. Somehow the wisdom of RAD (rapid application development) seems to have waned in the last decade. Racket does all of these afaik outside of the built in WYSIWYG editor for GUIs. There probably are 3rd party designers around though.