Thu, 23 Jun 2011

Little things Delphi gets right

Having spent my entire working time in the last decade coding in C, C++, Objective C and Delphi (in the broadest sense - Objective Pascal), I can only say that this essay is spot on. It is vastly easier for any coder, at any skill level, to write readable and secure code in Pascal than in any dialect of C.

He makes several good point on syntax, too. How many C programmers have been bitten at one time or another by making an assignment in an if statement without the compiler saying a word? It's also true about hassle free linking - I have code where the main program is in Pascal and several routines were written in C. It was simple to accomplish this. On the other hand, trying to get a C program to link in a Pascal lib or object file can be like pulling teeth.

So for those of you who still labor under the delusion that Pascal is a dead language, washed away by the superior tides of C, read this and weep. Then fire up Delphi or Lazarus and write some clean, secure code for a change...

For those who haven’t seen it yet, due to popular demand, the StackOverflow people created a new site called programmers.stackexchange.com, a site for the more subjective questions that StackOverflow isn’t really designed for. Someone recently set up a poll: What’s your favorite programming language. You can probably guess what my answer was.

(link) [Turbu Tech]

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