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by sinuhe69
975 days ago
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I programmed in Delphi since version 1 (before that of course Turbo Pascal) and I loved the system, a lot. The entire system is snappy, easy to use and beautifully designed. It was ways ahead of its time. Recently, I came back to a pet project: genetic algorithms. I wrote a library for it with polymorphism, generics and some other (actually not so complicated) stuffs in FPC/Lazarus and then I must notice that my productivity suffered quite significantly compared to other languages like Python and F#. The thing is, on the first glance, everything is fine but going into the details, many small issues turnout to be big blockers. For example, FPC introduced constref modifier for parameters. But if you declared as const instead, the compiler will still gives green light. But when running, the result is different in an inexplicable manner. Then there is a very subtle difference between a local procedure/function and a global one using as a comparer. Program compiled just fine without any hint or warning but the result is inexplicably wrong and causes a great deal of debugging effort. That was the case with generic objects list and sorting.
Then there is obviously the problem with documentation and the excessive use of overloading and type alias in many libraries. For examples, TFixedPoint and TPoint in the Graphics32 library are totally different, but unfortunately assignment compatible. Thus without good documentation, one can mistakenly pass the parameters for one function for the other and the compiler can not detect it, ultimately defies the purpose of a strong static typing system. Not to mention the (not so small) quality issues with the tooling like the internal debugger crash or (sometimes) missing of declaration informations inside the editor. All in all, I feel the Delphi/FP language is getting old and freight with many technical debts. Trying to introduce new concepts while keeping backward compatibility can make a programming language/system so bloat and hulking that maintain quality can hardly be achieved. It still serves the purpose but it requires IMO an urgent revamp. |
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"Freight" is a noun, not a verb. I can't guess the word you meant.
"Freighted"? (Weighed down.) "Fraught"? (Troubled by.)
The sad thing is that Pascal continued to evolve, but TP codified and fossilised it and that seems to be becoming a problem now.
Pascal evolved into Modula, which fairly soon became Modula-2 which is still around and enjoyed a moment in the sun.
(Modula-3 was someone else.)
Modula-2 evolved into Oberon, which is also still around.
Oberon evolved into Oberon 2, then was rebooted with Oberon 07, but which also led on to Active Oberon and Zennon.
Oberon+ is an attempt to re-unify them.
https://oberon-lang.github.io/