Difference between revisions of "Press Kit"

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(Some background stuff for people who want to cover 2.0.2 and future releases)
 
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''This page is designed for background information for people who want to cover Free Pascal related news. It can be used freely
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''This page is designed for background information for people who want to cover Free Pascal related news. It can be used freely for any use; no copyrights will be claimed.''
any use; no copyrights will be claimed.''
 
  
 
== What is Free Pascal ==
 
== What is Free Pascal ==
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The Free Pascal project is dedicated to promote the use of the Pascal language. We are also dedicated to free software. The Free Pascal development team wants to provide the tools that make Pascal an as realistic option as other mainstream languages and believes the use of the Pascal language leads to better software.
 
The Free Pascal project is dedicated to promote the use of the Pascal language. We are also dedicated to free software. The Free Pascal development team wants to provide the tools that make Pascal an as realistic option as other mainstream languages and believes the use of the Pascal language leads to better software.
 +
 +
=== Pascal and the programming language universum of today ===
 +
 +
The programming language spectrum has changed over the years. There are many languages the have come and gone, while other have remained remarkably durable.
 +
 +
There are several reasons why Pascal is still around 35 years after its birth. First, Pascal has adapted very well to new developments. Over the years the language has been extended a lot, and in many cases extended well; Pascal does not feel a crippled language because of its age. These extensions was often done so well that Pascal has beaten "successors" to itself, for example Modula-2. The improvements that these languages provided could be implemented in Pascal as well, which had better tools and provided backward compatibility.
 +
 +
Compatibility is certainly an important reason why Pascal is still around to day. A language vendor that destroys backward compatibility effectively kills all previous investments in that language, making people wonder if they should invest either in the latest hype, or a more stable language.
 +
 +
==== Managed languages versus unmanaged languages ====
 +
 +
A lot of hype is spent lately on managed languages especially Java and .NET. This partially caused by breakthroughs in the efficiency of those languages, and partially because .NET is supposed to be the the big thing in Windows programming.
 +
 +
Managed languages have their use. By means of byte code, programs written with them can be easily run on multiple processor architectures. Automatic memory management should prevent people from ever having to think about memory references again.
 +
 +
We, the Free Pascal development team, are very sceptical regarding these hypes. We are certain that there will be a role for those languages, but they will not threathen the existance of traditional languages. It should be noted that Pascal has pioneered byte code, but it did not turn out to be a success.
 +
 +
The limitations of manages languages lie in both portability limitations and efficiency limitations. Byte code languages are supposed to be very portable, but they depend on a runtime environment to provide functionality. This runtime environment provides the least common denominator of functionality and often provides it by means of emulation. This puts constraints on available features, and thus limits progress, while emulation provides non-native behaviour.
 +
 +
Efficiency limitations can be found in huge, bloated runtime environemnts and memory management issues. While automatic memory management remove burden for the programmer, users are often not pleased to see eating simple programs hundreds of megabytes of memory and don't like sluggish software.
 +
 +
Native applications can provide very tiny tools with very low memory usage. Taking advantage of the platform is easier, because the functionality is already provided.
 +
 +
We are certain that there will allways be a huge demand for native languages. Keep in mind that, unlike originally promised, the big .NET Windows release, Windows Vista, hardly uses any .NET code.
 +
 +
Which leaves us with C as Pascal's biggest competitor.
 +
 +
The C language has been Pascal's biggest competitor since the beginning. Both languages were developed at the same time, offer a similar programming model, but differ greatly in philosofy.
 +
 +
In the 90's C became more dominant than it ever was. The reason was a lack of good Pascal tools; Turbo Pascal, a 16 bit compiler was discontinued and Delphi was not a universal replacement tool. Today, in the Windows world Pascal still has a healthy market share. In the 90's Pascal vanished from game development (no 32 bit Dos compiler), and later, on Linux, it couldn't compete with C due to lack of good tools. Free Pascal, then heavily in construction, wasn't able to compete seriously.
 +
 +
Pascal is nowadays more competitive against C than ever, it provides a reasonably very safe language at comparable performance, with an excellent open source compile suite, making room for more open source Pascal development.

Revision as of 23:29, 17 November 2005

This page is designed for background information for people who want to cover Free Pascal related news. It can be used freely for any use; no copyrights will be claimed.

What is Free Pascal

Free Pascal is an open source Pascal compiler. Work started in 1993 by Florian KlÀmpfl. Since 1993 Free Pascal has evolved into an advanced piece of technology. Nowadays it is widely considered one best Pascal compilers ever written.

Free Pascal is not just a compiler. The Free Pascal development team writes and maintains:

  • The compiler
  • A runtime library for many operating systems
  • Many software libraries
  • Interfaces to many software libraries written in C
  • An integrated development environment
  • A set of manuals

What is Lazarus

Lazarus is a sister project of Free Pascal. Its aim is to provide an integrated graphical development environment for designing applications. It specializes in creating modern GUI applications at great ease.

The Lazarus team designs and maintains:

  • The Lazarus development environment
  • The Lazarus component library of GUI widgets

The Lazarus development environment is currently more advanced than any other open source development environment.

Platforms and architectures

Free Pascal is available for the following platforms:

  • 32-bit Dos (GO32V2 dos extender) (Dos support will return in upcoming version 2.0.2)
  • Microsoft Windows Win32
  • FreeBSD
  • Linux/ARM
  • Linux/i386
  • Linux/powerpc
  • Linux/sparc
  • Linux/x86_64
  • MacOS Classic
  • MacOS X
  • MorphOS
  • Novell Netware
  • OS/2

Free Pascal has also supported the following platforms in the past:

  • AmigaOS/m68000
  • NetBSD/i386
  • NetBSD/m68000
  • Solaris
  • Beos
  • QNX

Free Pascal programs can usually be recompiled for different platforms without large code changes. Portability is heavily dependand on code architecture, however, the Free Pascal runtime library bridges the gap between Unix (Posix) derived platforms and Dos derived platforms quite well.

Lazarus is available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and MacOS X. The aim is to make programs useable on all three platforms without code changes.

The Pascal language

The Pascal language has a rich history. It was designed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth and introduced the concept of structural programming. This revolutionarized programming and the ideas behind it has inspired many other programming languages.

Pascal is a language that has evolved a lot through the years. One of the revolutions inspired by Pascal was byte code, first pioneered in the USCD P-system, today the basis of Java and .NET.

Turbo Pascal introduced another revolution, the Integrated Development Environment. Programs could now be written quicker than ever. Turbo Pascal introduced many enhancement to the Pascal language, including object oriented programming.

While innovations in its successor, Delphi, were not entirely new to the world, Delphi is regarded as one of the best development environments in existance. Delphi enhanced the language as well and prepared it for the next decades.

While Pascal has evolved a lot, it has unmistakenly remained itself and remained close to the original spirit.

The Free Pascal project is dedicated to promote the use of the Pascal language. We are also dedicated to free software. The Free Pascal development team wants to provide the tools that make Pascal an as realistic option as other mainstream languages and believes the use of the Pascal language leads to better software.

Pascal and the programming language universum of today

The programming language spectrum has changed over the years. There are many languages the have come and gone, while other have remained remarkably durable.

There are several reasons why Pascal is still around 35 years after its birth. First, Pascal has adapted very well to new developments. Over the years the language has been extended a lot, and in many cases extended well; Pascal does not feel a crippled language because of its age. These extensions was often done so well that Pascal has beaten "successors" to itself, for example Modula-2. The improvements that these languages provided could be implemented in Pascal as well, which had better tools and provided backward compatibility.

Compatibility is certainly an important reason why Pascal is still around to day. A language vendor that destroys backward compatibility effectively kills all previous investments in that language, making people wonder if they should invest either in the latest hype, or a more stable language.

Managed languages versus unmanaged languages

A lot of hype is spent lately on managed languages especially Java and .NET. This partially caused by breakthroughs in the efficiency of those languages, and partially because .NET is supposed to be the the big thing in Windows programming.

Managed languages have their use. By means of byte code, programs written with them can be easily run on multiple processor architectures. Automatic memory management should prevent people from ever having to think about memory references again.

We, the Free Pascal development team, are very sceptical regarding these hypes. We are certain that there will be a role for those languages, but they will not threathen the existance of traditional languages. It should be noted that Pascal has pioneered byte code, but it did not turn out to be a success.

The limitations of manages languages lie in both portability limitations and efficiency limitations. Byte code languages are supposed to be very portable, but they depend on a runtime environment to provide functionality. This runtime environment provides the least common denominator of functionality and often provides it by means of emulation. This puts constraints on available features, and thus limits progress, while emulation provides non-native behaviour.

Efficiency limitations can be found in huge, bloated runtime environemnts and memory management issues. While automatic memory management remove burden for the programmer, users are often not pleased to see eating simple programs hundreds of megabytes of memory and don't like sluggish software.

Native applications can provide very tiny tools with very low memory usage. Taking advantage of the platform is easier, because the functionality is already provided.

We are certain that there will allways be a huge demand for native languages. Keep in mind that, unlike originally promised, the big .NET Windows release, Windows Vista, hardly uses any .NET code.

Which leaves us with C as Pascal's biggest competitor.

The C language has been Pascal's biggest competitor since the beginning. Both languages were developed at the same time, offer a similar programming model, but differ greatly in philosofy.

In the 90's C became more dominant than it ever was. The reason was a lack of good Pascal tools; Turbo Pascal, a 16 bit compiler was discontinued and Delphi was not a universal replacement tool. Today, in the Windows world Pascal still has a healthy market share. In the 90's Pascal vanished from game development (no 32 bit Dos compiler), and later, on Linux, it couldn't compete with C due to lack of good tools. Free Pascal, then heavily in construction, wasn't able to compete seriously.

Pascal is nowadays more competitive against C than ever, it provides a reasonably very safe language at comparable performance, with an excellent open source compile suite, making room for more open source Pascal development.