Re: Object Pascal vs Ada -- which is better for a hobbyist?

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:08:16 +0200, Gour <gour@atmarama.net> a écrit:

> On Tue, 27 Aug 2013 16:50:20 +0000 (UTC)
> Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>
>
>> The problem is that the good support is more important to some
>> learners than a technically better language.
>
> I'm in somewhat similar situation and looking onto which language to
> focus my learning in order to later write multi-platform GUI app.
>
> However, Ada is, this time, not measured against Pascal but against D.
>
> By looking at the table comparing the two languages
> (http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?LanguagesVersusD), it seems to
> me they are pretty close without any having some outstanding features
> which would be insurmountable.
>
> Level of GUI bindings support is similar in both camps, although there
> was some psot recently about the attempt to provide some native GUI lib
> in D.

If I may say, don't focus too much on GUI as you know it nowadays and  
since a few decades, as this time may be more and more gone in the future.  
I'm currently working (not full time, but I expect it in the future) on an  
application with which the UI will be entirely in a browser, the  
application being interfaced with the outside world as an HTTP and  
WebSocket server. I've discovered two days ago, a CVS/SCM named Fossil,  
whose UI is made the same way, and which works also as a CGI you can  
install nearly as a drop‑in in any web‑server, and provides the exact same  
UI from a web server as it do when you run it from your desktop (an UI  
which opens in a web‑browser). Mac, Ubuntu, Windows, all three are going  
toward the web‑page style of UI (especially Windows and its Metro UI,  
Ubuntu is going toward web integration into the desktop) in some or other  
ways, more or less visibly (not a lot visible with Ubunt, but it's there  
here as well).

Designing an UI as creating a document structure, giving a style and  
adding user gesture handlers, is easier than creating an UI all by  
programming using a GUI API. Even in the age of multimedia and images  
every where, an UI, is still mainly text and text layout; icons and misc  
graphics does not help that much (or even make it worse) and can't replace  
carefully crafted text layout (font family, size, weight, colour, style,  
decoration, indent, justification, and so on, gives more expressive  
capabilities to an UI than any icon set or 3D‑look‑like buttons).

I may be biased, as I more see an UI as a presentation more than a program  
(to me, the program is what's behind the UI, and the UI presents it to the  
user), but that was to tell a bit (I may be wrong, but I believe I'm not  
wrong).

That's why I'm not afraid of Ada lacking a standard GUI library. Anyway,  
no GUI libraries could gain wide acceptance. The option of an Ada GUI  
comes back here from time to time, and the replies prove there is no hope  
for a GUI library which could please at least 10% of people (more likely  
there would be 10 different API, one for each of these 10%).

> Based on what I can see, development of D is (more) in FOSS-spirit and
> it looks that D is more interesting language for open-source projects
> with very active mailing lists and choice between 3 compilers (DMD, LDC,
> GDC) while Ada seems not to be very popular choice in FOSS world.
>
> Not long ago there was a post in D forums with with subject "Why I chose
> D over Ada and Eiffel",
> (http://forum.dlang.org/thread/vqsnloitqvouoahdngzb@forum.dlang.org), so
> I'm interested what would be reply here on the topic?
>

Seems he had issue with array resizing? So seems he never learned about  
Ada standard containers library or did not see he had all freedom to  
create the opaque data type he needed. An opaque data type for resizable  
array, is not a big issue with Ada, and that's even a common learning  
example.

That said, thanks for mentioning D, as I did not suspect it was still  
there. Will read about it a future day, out of curiosity, as it seems to  
support design by contract and type constraints as Ada do. I just surely  
won't switch to it, as I don't believe any legacy kind of language can go  
a lot more above with safety than Ada already do, if not with the help of  
formal methods, and formal methods are another area (SPARK, Isabelle/HOL  
and so on) and are rather target language neutral.

For the last words: you mentioned FOSS, saying the FOSS world does not  
like Ada. Well, I don't feel the FOSS world enjoy D a lot more, as I've  
never seen the FOSS mention D until today. Just would like to say  
confusing technique and politic is not good. Either you make a choice with  
technical argument or with political intention, but not both, as the  
latter will near to always want to shadow the former (I know it from  
experience, too much). Also keep in mind there is a GPL GNAT, and that if  
many commercial applications choose Ada, this does not prevent to choose  
it for home or freeware or FOSS applications.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University