4 ms·

Sorry for the off topic discussion, but I would like to give some attention to FreePascal. In my opinion, it is a great piece of software, and is so underrated.

Sorry for the off topic discussion, but I would like to give some attention to FreePascal. In my opinion, it is a great piece of software, and is so underrated. If you find C/C++ too error-prone or hard to learn, Object Pascal is a very good alternative. FreePascal is a multi-platform, Delphi compatibe Object Pascal compiler, can generates pretty optimized native code for multiple architectures (including ARM) and has plenty of libraries. If you already hadn't, please give Lazarus[1] a try, it's a nice RAD IDE (very similar to Borland Delphi 7) shipped with the FreePascal compiler. [1] - http://lazarus.freepascal.org http://lazarus.freepascal.org

dom96 13y ago
If I may also use this opportunity to advertise a Pascal-like language, as it is also severely underrated. The language's name is Nimrod [1], it compiles to C so it is also very portable, uses whitespace to delimit blocks, is statically typed with generics and has great support for metaprogramming. I am developing an IDE for it called Aporia [2], it is written in Nimrod, it definitely doesn't have as many features as Lazarus but it works well as a simple editor. Other nimrod projects can be found in the nimrod-code organisation on github[3]. [1] - http://nimrod-code.org http://nimrod-code.org [2] - https://github.com/nimrod-code/aporia https://github.com/nimrod-code/aporia [3] - https://github.com/nimrod-code/ https://github.com/nimrod-code/
- X4 13y ago
  Does it require a runtime? I mean can I develop an OS with it, without shipping the runtime? What language do you know, where that is possible?
  - dom96 13y ago
    You can develop an OS with it: https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel
    - X4 13y ago
      hmm, but that seems to depend on the C runtime. Nevertheless, it's on my bookmarks and I'll play around with it.
- axaxs 13y ago
  Sorry to be so frank, but why are all of your posts advertisements for Nimrod in non-nimrod threads? I hope it's just infatuation or excitement(or both), rather than some other more nefarious underlying reason. The language looks like it has possible merit, but the message comes off as spammy.
  - dom96 13y ago
    I must apologise. I didn't want my advertisements to come off as spammy. I am genuinely excited about the language and I dislike that it gets so little attention. A lot of people that use it say things like "Why is this language so underrated?", "You should be advertising it more!" etc. Which is what I am trying to do. Perhaps I shouldn't be doing it this way, but other people advertise language's like Rust and Go this way too.
    - axaxs 13y ago
      No worries. I do have some suggestions though, from my own perspective as an always learning developer. I took interest in go because of the website, the tour, and the hundred million blog posts that explain why go is good. This may be code beauty, a neat trick, or even benchmarks. But never would I try a language based only on a comment "you should check out go.". Why? Because people for the most part who do that are rather ignorant fanboys...the kind who try to bang nails with a screwdriver if you catch my drift. My time, to me, is valuable...I do a lot of skimming and am easily disinterested. Keep in mind many developers are like this. What I need to become interested is a concise, well laid out page telling me why Nimrod is better than what I have. I don't want to pour through docs or src, I want you to show me. Show me some snippets, some comparisons, some benchmarks, etc. And maybe not even at the same time. Plant the seed in our ears and keep us interested. I didn't try out go, or rust, or even python after the first mention, but after a progression of reads that told me it was right for me. Submit them here, to reddit, to your blog, etc. Also, don't narrow your focus to one language. It's not a competition...see what you like about other languages, what you don't, what works well, etc. With this, you learn to pick the right tool for the job. Further, you can borrow the good parts for nimrod :).
sliverstorm 13y ago
Does this have anything whatsoever to do with the posted topic? There must be some connection, and I'm twisting my brain trying to figure out what it is.
- codezero 13y ago
  Sort of, from the Github: "coinops is a repo for experimenting with optimization of freepascal code via x86-64 assembly language, using an iterated sha256 program (the hashing algorithm used in bitcoin) as a subject. This junkops branch contains an experiment that shows how adding useless junk operations (moving the contents of an arbitrary register into ram) can increase the speed of the executed code."
- nkurz 13y ago
  The source file in question is in Pascal, and the author suggested downloading Free Pascal to test it. https://github.com/tangentstorm/coinops/blob/junkops/sha256_mjw.pas https://github.com/tangentstorm/coinops/blob/junkops/sha256_...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Oh, whoops. I saw the two ".py" extensions and figured it was a python project.
claystu 13y ago
I love pascal, but once you move beyond the turbo pascal features of Free Pascal and start trying to use the Lazarus IDE and the Delphi look-alike features the going gets really rough. The documentation is terrible. There's a lot there, but it's all fragmented and half baked. They need to freeze development and go look at the documentation for python, perl, racket or a whole host of other languages.

dom96 13y ago

If I may also use this opportunity to advertise a Pascal-like language, as it is also severely underrated. The language's name is Nimrod [1], it compiles to C so it is also very portable, uses whitespace to delimit blocks, is statically typed with generics and has great support for metaprogramming. I am developing an IDE for it called Aporia [2], it is written in Nimrod, it definitely doesn't have as many features as Lazarus but it works well as a simple editor. Other nimrod projects can be found in the nimrod-code organisation on github[3]. [1] - http://nimrod-code.org http://nimrod-code.org [2] - https://github.com/nimrod-code/aporia https://github.com/nimrod-code/aporia [3] - https://github.com/nimrod-code/ https://github.com/nimrod-code/

X4 13y ago
Does it require a runtime? I mean can I develop an OS with it, without shipping the runtime? What language do you know, where that is possible?
- dom96 13y ago
  You can develop an OS with it: https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel https://github.com/dom96/nimkernel
  - X4 13y ago
    hmm, but that seems to depend on the C runtime. Nevertheless, it's on my bookmarks and I'll play around with it.
axaxs 13y ago
Sorry to be so frank, but why are all of your posts advertisements for Nimrod in non-nimrod threads? I hope it's just infatuation or excitement(or both), rather than some other more nefarious underlying reason. The language looks like it has possible merit, but the message comes off as spammy.
- dom96 13y ago
  I must apologise. I didn't want my advertisements to come off as spammy. I am genuinely excited about the language and I dislike that it gets so little attention. A lot of people that use it say things like "Why is this language so underrated?", "You should be advertising it more!" etc. Which is what I am trying to do. Perhaps I shouldn't be doing it this way, but other people advertise language's like Rust and Go this way too.
  - axaxs 13y ago
    No worries. I do have some suggestions though, from my own perspective as an always learning developer. I took interest in go because of the website, the tour, and the hundred million blog posts that explain why go is good. This may be code beauty, a neat trick, or even benchmarks. But never would I try a language based only on a comment "you should check out go.". Why? Because people for the most part who do that are rather ignorant fanboys...the kind who try to bang nails with a screwdriver if you catch my drift. My time, to me, is valuable...I do a lot of skimming and am easily disinterested. Keep in mind many developers are like this. What I need to become interested is a concise, well laid out page telling me why Nimrod is better than what I have. I don't want to pour through docs or src, I want you to show me. Show me some snippets, some comparisons, some benchmarks, etc. And maybe not even at the same time. Plant the seed in our ears and keep us interested. I didn't try out go, or rust, or even python after the first mention, but after a progression of reads that told me it was right for me. Submit them here, to reddit, to your blog, etc. Also, don't narrow your focus to one language. It's not a competition...see what you like about other languages, what you don't, what works well, etc. With this, you learn to pick the right tool for the job. Further, you can borrow the good parts for nimrod :).

sliverstorm 13y ago

Does this have anything whatsoever to do with the posted topic? There must be some connection, and I'm twisting my brain trying to figure out what it is.

codezero 13y ago
Sort of, from the Github: "coinops is a repo for experimenting with optimization of freepascal code via x86-64 assembly language, using an iterated sha256 program (the hashing algorithm used in bitcoin) as a subject. This junkops branch contains an experiment that shows how adding useless junk operations (moving the contents of an arbitrary register into ram) can increase the speed of the executed code."
nkurz 13y ago
The source file in question is in Pascal, and the author suggested downloading Free Pascal to test it. https://github.com/tangentstorm/coinops/blob/junkops/sha256_mjw.pas https://github.com/tangentstorm/coinops/blob/junkops/sha256_...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Oh, whoops. I saw the two ".py" extensions and figured it was a python project.

claystu 13y ago

I love pascal, but once you move beyond the turbo pascal features of Free Pascal and start trying to use the Lazarus IDE and the Delphi look-alike features the going gets really rough. The documentation is terrible. There's a lot there, but it's all fragmented and half baked. They need to freeze development and go look at the documentation for python, perl, racket or a whole host of other languages.