> On 20 feb 2007, at 19:46, Patrick Leslie Polzer wrote: > > > 1) "No Makefiles" > > ...and yet you ship a Makefile generator with FPC. Why? > > Because you cannot tell the compiler to compiler run time library, > then itself with the rtl that was just compiled, then recompile the > run time library with the newly compiled compiler, then itself with > the newly compiled compiler etc. fpcmake is a tool developed for > internal use, but everyone is free to use it. You don't strictly need > it except in complex cases like the above, though.
Also FPC uses it more as a script to get actions done in an order. (make being one single .exe, small and easy to install), So in other words make with FPC is a bit less about laying out how to build an .exe/library, and a bit more to specify which exe's/libraries should be built. > > 2) "Pascal compilers are Fast with a big F [...]" > > Why is that? > > Because you do not need a preprocessor pass, and compiled unit > interfaces can be reused much more often than e.g. C pre-compiled > headers because no external defines can influence them (and therefore > you also need much less checking to see whether or not a unit needs > to be recompiled). (Personally I think one probably could get an enormous way with precompiled headers, specially _IF_ the headers are not to murky. But it requires a great lot of extra work on the compiler side, and is much less comprehendable for end users than the more well defined Pascal system. The fact that gcc doesn't have a precompiled header system yet after 20 years of development says enough I think) > > 3) "Great integration with assembler" > > Is being able to use Assembler easily inline really that much > > better as opposed to having the code in separate object files? > Personal preference. Pro: integration between pascal code and assembler is much tighter. Even GCC resorts to a form of inline assembler, just less readable and userfriendly. Con: people might inadvertedly use assembler when not necessary. THis is clearly visible in Delphi and TP source. OTOH in practice I don't think that this is such a big problem anymore with Delphi srcs, since people already have become more reluctant to use assembler. A minor annoyance when porting delphi sources. But in TP times it was _bad_. > > 4) "Smartlinking" > > Ah, I think you can have that one in C with some obscure linker > > flags, too. > > Nowadays you can indeed, yes. I'm not entirely sure if the granularity is the same. > > 5) Why use Pascal instead of Ada? > > Personal preference. Ditto, and in my case : Ada seems overly complex for every day use to me. But if I ever develop something nuclear, I'll keep it in mind. _______________________________________________ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
