8 ms·

Free Pascal 2.6.2 is released

77 points by mariuz 14y ago

snarfy 14y ago
How is the COM support (if any) in Free Pascal? That is one area Delphi really shined.
- bloblaw 14y ago
  It's very good. In fact, the open-source WMI Delphi Code Creator can generate the native WMI calls (and programs) for you in FreePascal, Delphi, C#, and Microsoft C++: https://code.google.com/p/wmi-delphi-code-creator/ https://code.google.com/p/wmi-delphi-code-creator/
bloblaw 14y ago
I write code in a number of languages, and I have to say Object-Pascal (which is the language the IDE known as Delphi uses) is a joy. Check out Lazarus too, the Delphi like IDE for Free Pascal: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ <snarky comment> Too bad most programs weren't written in Delphi instead of C/C++, or we could've avoided all those pesky string based buffer overflow exploits since Object-Pascal doesn't allocate strings on the stack! </snarky comment> But more seriously, that means no "smashing the stack for fun and profit" in Object-Pascal, and that's a good thing. I picked up learning Delphi about 8 years ago when it was supposed to be "dead" then, and since then it has been my secret weapon. I still use C once in a while, but I am so much more productive in Delphi and the Free Pascal.
rdtsc 14y ago
One language I regret the demise of.
noonespecial 14y ago
Turbo pascal 6 circa 1992 was my first introduction to object orientation. I'd only coded basic and assembly before that. I walked around with my mind blown for a week. Long live pascal.
pointer2unknown 14y ago
Delphi 7 was the last good release of the product. The IDE was written in Delphi. The compiler for the language was BCC, the borland C/C++ compiler. Then Borland started to chase .NET and MS led them on into thinking they could catch up to C#. Any good modern Pascal product should fork from where D7 left off. IMHO.
- bloblaw 14y ago
  Wrong. Delphi has offloaded .NET support to a partner (RemObjects' Delphi Prism/Oxygene). Since Delphi 2007, they have doubled down on native development. Even releasing native console and GUI compilation support for OSX, and iOS in late beta. Since Delphi 7 (released in 2002), Delphi (and FPC) have added: * Generics * Anonymous methods * Enhanced RTTI * Attributes * Records with methods * for in loop * final methods * Inlining * Operator overloading * sealed methods * strict private * strict protected * Nested classes * Class helpers * Class constructors and destructors * Static class methods
enlyke 14y ago
It's still alive..
- mariuz 14y ago
  Yes and growing slowly http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
  - fuzzix 14y ago
    TIOBE's methodology is pretty controversial[0], I wouldn't read anything into changes as small as this. [0] http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/05/17/tiobe-index-is-being-gamed/ http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/05/17/tiobe-index-is-being-gam...
    - mariuz 14y ago
      I agree that is controversial the method of tiobe measuring Another option is to consult the download page for free pascal compiler (this is one of the mirrors) https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/stats/timeline?dates=2002-02-21+to+2013-02-27 https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/stats/time... Also lazarus ide download stats https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timeline?dates=2002-02-21+to+2013-02-27 https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timelin...
pjmlp 14y ago
Great! Congratulations!
Udo 14y ago
Pascal (and then Delphi) was the first non-interpreted programming language I learned and I used it for a few years for pretty much everything - party because it provided a sane wrapper to the Win32 API, but mainly because it was a lot of fun to program with. Compared to pretty much any GUI/code-behind editor the Delphi concept is an absolute joy to use. Sadly it's been a long time since the components have been updated (it's still pretty much a Win32 clone from what I can tell and today the Lazarus component palette feels extremely outdated). I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. It's nice to see this environment lives on in Free Pascal/Lazarus. I sometimes think the Pascal idea could be rediscovered some day, maybe with a syntax addition or two.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  > I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. Indeed. Delphi was clearly influenced by NeXT/Interface Builder, but even back in 1995 it was miles ahead of today's Xcode. For those not familiar with it, Delphi's UI editor was always live. You could create a data source object, enter the database connection info, then create a table view and point it at the data source, and the table would be filled with real data -- all within the editor. Like Interface Builder, the editor was running the real visual components (the equivalent of Cocoa's NSView), but unlike Interface Builder, Delphi focused on providing a true WYSIWYG experience, making it very easy to build new visual components that would be rendered live in the editor. Apple has moved away from this, in fact, with the latest Xcode no longer supporting plugins, and so custom views can no longer be rendered inside Interface Builder. It's incredibly weird and sad that 18 (!) years later, current GUI tools are worse than Delphi was in 1995.
  - eli 14y ago
    Delphi was the first "real" platform I used (version 1.0 on Windows 3.11) and it wasn't until much later that I realized how good I'd had it. In addition to the rather obvious idea that the GUI should be designed graphically, it also had a fast compiler and a good integrated debugger. If I remember correctly the entire Delphi IDE was itself developed in Delphi.
smcl 14y ago
I wonder how compatible the Photoshop 1.0 code is with this and how much effort it would take to get it vaguely working. I recall there being a shedload of assembly which would obviously need ported/rewritten and presumably there'd be old MacOS API calls which would need to be handled so I'd suspect a fair amount of work there. However does anyone know if the rest of the code would be fine?
- mariuz 14y ago
  The FreePascal complier supports MacPas dialect , here is howto start compiling with it http://wiki.freepascal.org/Mode_MacPas http://wiki.freepascal.org/Mode_MacPas http://wiki.freepascal.org/Porting_from_Mac_Pascal http://wiki.freepascal.org/Porting_from_Mac_Pascal
binarymax 14y ago
Its great to see this. Pascal was the language they taught us in highschool. Everyone in the class was given a license to Borland Turbo Pascal v5. While I haven't really used it since, Pascal will always hold a special place in my heart. I wrote my first game in it, and spent many long nights trying to figure out how to accept mouse interrupts, how to use pointers to efficiently redraw graphics, and lots of other fundamental things I now take for granted.
- acheron 14y ago
  Pascal (and specifically Borland's Turbo Pascal) is what started my transition from spaghetti code BASIC to something at least vaguely structured. All (mostly) self-taught -- my high school didn't have any kind of programming classes -- but Pascal encouraged a structure much more than BASIC did, and helped me to realize the importance.
- JohnBooty 14y ago
  These are my thoughts, exactly! I still have my Turbo Pascal book sitting on my bookshelf, since it brings back happy memories. Turbo Pascal was such a cool technical achievement, and Pascal was definitely not a bad language at all. Great learning language, and great at other things too.
- skittles 14y ago
  Embarcado still has a set of "antique" software downloads. Turbo Pascal 5.5 is one of them. They also have old C and C++ versions. All of them are for personal use only and are free of charge. Here's their museum: http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/ http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/.
raphinou 14y ago
Any example of real and recent use of it? I wondered not that long ago if FreePascal could be a cross platform solution to develop GUI apps with Lazarus. Anyone having experience with that?
- bloblaw 14y ago
  PeaZip is written in FreePascal + Lazarus: http://peazip.sourceforge.net/ http://peazip.sourceforge.net/ Or, just check their screenshot gallery: http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Application_Gallery http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Application_Gallery
- mich41 14y ago
  My university uses C or Pascal to teach Maths students basic programming (hello world, sorting, trees, stacks, graphs, etc). Friends who landed at the Pascal version of this course appear to ask much less questions about parsing the syntax.
  - nolok 14y ago
    Here's a challenge: try to find a piece of pascal code that looks "impressive". Even the most complex object pascal code using pointers and closures and generics all together looks boring and easy to parse for anyone who has done some code. This might sound awesome (and it is), but this is also a huge turn off for new comers, lots of people think delphi/object pascal is like visual basic ...
    - markwong 14y ago
      isn't "easy to parse for anyone who has done some code" an advantage?
      - fusiongyro 14y ago
        One would think, but many times I've tried to love Ada and Eiffel and I always find myself falling asleep at the terminal. "Boring" can also mean "too much repetition" or "spread too thin."

77 points by mariuz 14y ago

snarfy 14y ago

How is the COM support (if any) in Free Pascal? That is one area Delphi really shined.

bloblaw 14y ago
It's very good. In fact, the open-source WMI Delphi Code Creator can generate the native WMI calls (and programs) for you in FreePascal, Delphi, C#, and Microsoft C++: https://code.google.com/p/wmi-delphi-code-creator/ https://code.google.com/p/wmi-delphi-code-creator/

bloblaw 14y ago

I write code in a number of languages, and I have to say Object-Pascal (which is the language the IDE known as Delphi uses) is a joy. Check out Lazarus too, the Delphi like IDE for Free Pascal: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ <snarky comment> Too bad most programs weren't written in Delphi instead of C/C++, or we could've avoided all those pesky string based buffer overflow exploits since Object-Pascal doesn't allocate strings on the stack! </snarky comment> But more seriously, that means no "smashing the stack for fun and profit" in Object-Pascal, and that's a good thing. I picked up learning Delphi about 8 years ago when it was supposed to be "dead" then, and since then it has been my secret weapon. I still use C once in a while, but I am so much more productive in Delphi and the Free Pascal.

rdtsc 14y ago

One language I regret the demise of.

noonespecial 14y ago

Turbo pascal 6 circa 1992 was my first introduction to object orientation. I'd only coded basic and assembly before that. I walked around with my mind blown for a week. Long live pascal.

pointer2unknown 14y ago

Delphi 7 was the last good release of the product. The IDE was written in Delphi. The compiler for the language was BCC, the borland C/C++ compiler. Then Borland started to chase .NET and MS led them on into thinking they could catch up to C#. Any good modern Pascal product should fork from where D7 left off. IMHO.

bloblaw 14y ago
Wrong. Delphi has offloaded .NET support to a partner (RemObjects' Delphi Prism/Oxygene). Since Delphi 2007, they have doubled down on native development. Even releasing native console and GUI compilation support for OSX, and iOS in late beta. Since Delphi 7 (released in 2002), Delphi (and FPC) have added: * Generics * Anonymous methods * Enhanced RTTI * Attributes * Records with methods * for in loop * final methods * Inlining * Operator overloading * sealed methods * strict private * strict protected * Nested classes * Class helpers * Class constructors and destructors * Static class methods

enlyke 14y ago

It's still alive..

mariuz 14y ago
Yes and growing slowly http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
- fuzzix 14y ago
  TIOBE's methodology is pretty controversial[0], I wouldn't read anything into changes as small as this. [0] http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/05/17/tiobe-index-is-being-gamed/ http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/05/17/tiobe-index-is-being-gam...
  - mariuz 14y ago
    I agree that is controversial the method of tiobe measuring Another option is to consult the download page for free pascal compiler (this is one of the mirrors) https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/stats/timeline?dates=2002-02-21+to+2013-02-27 https://sourceforge.net/projects/freepascal/files/stats/time... Also lazarus ide download stats https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timeline?dates=2002-02-21+to+2013-02-27 https://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/stats/timelin...

pjmlp 14y ago

Great! Congratulations!

Udo 14y ago

Pascal (and then Delphi) was the first non-interpreted programming language I learned and I used it for a few years for pretty much everything - party because it provided a sane wrapper to the Win32 API, but mainly because it was a lot of fun to program with. Compared to pretty much any GUI/code-behind editor the Delphi concept is an absolute joy to use. Sadly it's been a long time since the components have been updated (it's still pretty much a Win32 clone from what I can tell and today the Lazarus component palette feels extremely outdated). I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. It's nice to see this environment lives on in Free Pascal/Lazarus. I sometimes think the Pascal idea could be rediscovered some day, maybe with a syntax addition or two.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
> I just wish the Xcode folks would have taken a few more pages from Delphi's playbook. Indeed. Delphi was clearly influenced by NeXT/Interface Builder, but even back in 1995 it was miles ahead of today's Xcode. For those not familiar with it, Delphi's UI editor was always live. You could create a data source object, enter the database connection info, then create a table view and point it at the data source, and the table would be filled with real data -- all within the editor. Like Interface Builder, the editor was running the real visual components (the equivalent of Cocoa's NSView), but unlike Interface Builder, Delphi focused on providing a true WYSIWYG experience, making it very easy to build new visual components that would be rendered live in the editor. Apple has moved away from this, in fact, with the latest Xcode no longer supporting plugins, and so custom views can no longer be rendered inside Interface Builder. It's incredibly weird and sad that 18 (!) years later, current GUI tools are worse than Delphi was in 1995.
- eli 14y ago
  Delphi was the first "real" platform I used (version 1.0 on Windows 3.11) and it wasn't until much later that I realized how good I'd had it. In addition to the rather obvious idea that the GUI should be designed graphically, it also had a fast compiler and a good integrated debugger. If I remember correctly the entire Delphi IDE was itself developed in Delphi.

smcl 14y ago

I wonder how compatible the Photoshop 1.0 code is with this and how much effort it would take to get it vaguely working. I recall there being a shedload of assembly which would obviously need ported/rewritten and presumably there'd be old MacOS API calls which would need to be handled so I'd suspect a fair amount of work there. However does anyone know if the rest of the code would be fine?

mariuz 14y ago
The FreePascal complier supports MacPas dialect , here is howto start compiling with it http://wiki.freepascal.org/Mode_MacPas http://wiki.freepascal.org/Mode_MacPas http://wiki.freepascal.org/Porting_from_Mac_Pascal http://wiki.freepascal.org/Porting_from_Mac_Pascal

binarymax 14y ago

Its great to see this. Pascal was the language they taught us in highschool. Everyone in the class was given a license to Borland Turbo Pascal v5. While I haven't really used it since, Pascal will always hold a special place in my heart. I wrote my first game in it, and spent many long nights trying to figure out how to accept mouse interrupts, how to use pointers to efficiently redraw graphics, and lots of other fundamental things I now take for granted.

acheron 14y ago
Pascal (and specifically Borland's Turbo Pascal) is what started my transition from spaghetti code BASIC to something at least vaguely structured. All (mostly) self-taught -- my high school didn't have any kind of programming classes -- but Pascal encouraged a structure much more than BASIC did, and helped me to realize the importance.
JohnBooty 14y ago
These are my thoughts, exactly! I still have my Turbo Pascal book sitting on my bookshelf, since it brings back happy memories. Turbo Pascal was such a cool technical achievement, and Pascal was definitely not a bad language at all. Great learning language, and great at other things too.
skittles 14y ago
Embarcado still has a set of "antique" software downloads. Turbo Pascal 5.5 is one of them. They also have old C and C++ versions. All of them are for personal use only and are free of charge. Here's their museum: http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/ http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum/.

raphinou 14y ago

Any example of real and recent use of it? I wondered not that long ago if FreePascal could be a cross platform solution to develop GUI apps with Lazarus. Anyone having experience with that?

bloblaw 14y ago
PeaZip is written in FreePascal + Lazarus: http://peazip.sourceforge.net/ http://peazip.sourceforge.net/ Or, just check their screenshot gallery: http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Application_Gallery http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Application_Gallery
mich41 14y ago
My university uses C or Pascal to teach Maths students basic programming (hello world, sorting, trees, stacks, graphs, etc). Friends who landed at the Pascal version of this course appear to ask much less questions about parsing the syntax.
- nolok 14y ago
  Here's a challenge: try to find a piece of pascal code that looks "impressive". Even the most complex object pascal code using pointers and closures and generics all together looks boring and easy to parse for anyone who has done some code. This might sound awesome (and it is), but this is also a huge turn off for new comers, lots of people think delphi/object pascal is like visual basic ...
  - markwong 14y ago
    isn't "easy to parse for anyone who has done some code" an advantage?
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      One would think, but many times I've tried to love Ada and Eiffel and I always find myself falling asleep at the terminal. "Boring" can also mean "too much repetition" or "spread too thin."