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FPC 16-bit (Announce)

posted by marcov, 15.05.2013, 21:27

> > Why do you think that nearly none of the great compilers are also 16-bit
> > hosted?
>
> Which ones are "great"? Please list them.
Current great ones are LLVM, MSVC, GCC and Intel ICC. (me sucking his thumb here).


> Historically, there were many many commercial DOS compilers.

I didn't say commercial. I said great. In the present tense.

> Quite a few are even still sold!

I'm told you can still buy rolls for Grahams Bell's phonograph.

> But these days it sells more to target certain systems
> (Mac, Win, Linux on IA-32 or AMD64) than anything else.
.... despite that the phonograph doesn't really trigger anything in today's audio market. Maybe that's because even 8-track is a good portion of a century newer.


> 16-bit PowerBASIC for DOS claims to fit compiler and libs in 300 kb.
> Extended Pascal's first implementation (AFAIK) was for 16-bit DOS.
Probably on audiophile fora, people constantly criticize people using CDs that phonographs are still vastly superior :-)

> You get nothing for free.

True. But even for the non-free, some things cost more than others.

... and provide less value for money.

> "Market" is totally relative to popularity (ego, politics) and money, not
> technical reasoning.
Yes. Phonographs are superior. I get it :-)

(skipping a lot of musings that didn't have any sane points)

> > > If you can't write something useful in 500 kb, you can't write
> anything.
> >
> > Baseless claim.
>
> The largest 8086 instruction is six bytes. The largest 286 instruction is
> 10 bytes. That is plenty of room for code. You never ever see an assembly
> program that even comes close to exceeding 640 kb (MZ limit), but with HLLs
> you almost never see anything below 100 kb. (
Yes. But I didn't say that you can't write anything useful in 500kb. I merely contested your statement that you can't write anything useful unless you can do it in 500kb

> > IOW if you specify bootstrapping in some limited dialect (like C or
> > standard pascal), to get proper bootstrapping, all core infrastructure
> must
> > be in that limited dialect.
>
> Unavoidable unless you find a way to do some kind of meta-programming to
> target more than one intermediate. It's possible, but very few developers
> try.
Or simply limit portability to a few sane targets that make the bulk of the world, and consider "total" portability a fun academic thought experiment.

> Re: bootstrapping, I can only assume they expect people to use older GCC to
> build older G++ to build current GCC, if needed (assuming their platform
> was ever supported and working in the first place). E.g. 2.7.2.3 can build
> 2.95.3 and other K&Rs can allegedly build 3.4.6.
Or just brand one golden version on one platform every 5 years. Save it, and use it to jumpstart when necessary.

IOW, the whole bootstrap chain principle is very fun (and together with compiler viruses make great small talk over IT department drinks). But in reality it is a created problem.

> > You misunderstood my point. It wasn't a dare to come up with even more
> > outdated pascal stuff. It was a dare to explain why 32-bit (or 64-bit)
> is
> > so bad.
>
> It must be bad because nobody supports DJGPP (32-bit) anymore.

Compared to what well supported 16-bit open source compiler?

> Even working code is thrown away. I just don't understand that. It's not rational, it's
> apparently all about promoting whatever else they prefer instead.
My guess is that they are simply cutting on the overhead of being an accountable public project.

So the needs of the devels prevail, a right that they simply seize, probably because they, and they alone bear the costs of updating it for every new major version of GCC.

> > It serves no useful purpose in any way. It is a subset of an obsolete
> > toolchain that got 3 newer versions. Even a pm TP7 compiler is a total
> > different world featurewise.
>
> So many people brag about C++ or Ada. Yet how many who bragged still use
> the same dialect they used back in bragging times? (Ada83 anyone? AT&T 2.0
> anyone? Python 1.52 anyone? Perl 4 anyone? Scheme R4RS anyone? Ruby 1.8.4
> anyone?) None. They

Never bragged about any of them.

> all "upgrade" so as not to incur the wrath of the
> deprecation police (aka, embarrassment at using outdated, inferior tech).
No. Because they can't bear the costs (be it monetary or timewise) of continuing. I bet most of them only moved on grudgingly.

> They never even had access to the original tools, so they don't even know
> how it was supposed to work. So they create their own warped variant and
> call it superior. It's easy to laugh at our "inferior" elders.

It is not. At most we laugh at the people that use their fruits mindlessly now. Not the elders themselves. Most would probably even frown on the current use of their products now.

> > > Oh, that's right, it's often political bias, not technical, that
> limits
> > > software.
> >
> > It is technical too.
>
> No, it's not, almost never. If anything, people prefer halfway working
> implementations to nothing at all. But it's obvious some people don't want
> to support certain things.
Technical also includes fitness for use. If you want to do something just for the sport of it, it becomes academic, and not technical.

> > Like with everything, such requirements change with the requirements of
> the
> > times. No I don't think there is a hard limit somewhere.
>
> If you need 1000x more processing power and RAM (and libs and tools) than
> anyone else before you, you're either a). uber genius, or b). dumb as a
> brick.
That is like refusing to use a microwave because rubbing sticks together gets it done too.

> > Yeah. But while it is not universal, at least it can be used adequately
> for
> > certain tasks.
>
> Anything can be used for "certain" tasks. GCC 1.x was considered decent
> too. Same as 2.x. Same as 3.x

Yes. ALL FOR THE REQUIREMENTS OF THEIR TIMES !

> Is 4.x that much better? Only if you think "modern" is irreplaceable.
No, of course not. But don't complain about support if you are not prepared to bear the cost. And most aren't. There are exceptions though, like Dragonfly BSD starting with a forked FreeBSD 4.

I don't agree, but I respect them.

> BTW, in case you haven't noticed, a lot of changes have happened due to
> indirect influence from Clang (written in C++), which is preferred by Mac
> OS X, FreeBSD, Minix, and even Embarcadero.
Bollocks. Even on LLVM's main targets, gcc still beats LLVM.

I'm a LLVM sympathizer, and have regularly followed FreeBSD with LLVM meetings in the last years (mostly on FOSDEM)

But that is from a license based (and GCC monopoly scare) perspective, and doesn't mean I shut my eyes for realities.

LLVM's honeymoon is coming to an end. They have been promising great advancements due to superior architecture for nearly half a decade now, and STILL can't routinely match gcc in depth (performance on their main target architecture), let alone in width (number of targets)

The tide is changing, and they better start showing results soon, or even good PR and commercial friends won't save them, and the only thing in favour of them will be the license.

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