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FPC 16-bit (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 06.06.2013, 00:03

> > finally updated for May. I think it's quite funny what they say, and you
> of
> > all people may find it "interesting".)
>
> I think search analysis is a lousy way of determining language usage, so I
> don't take tiobe very seriously. I see Delphi usage at every client I visit
> (usually in some engineering department), and no wonder that that doesn't
> make the web.
My point is that every blowhard tries to declare certain tech as obsolete. It never ends.

> > Reveals my roots? That was my whole point! The IBM PC grew up with
> > PC-DOS/MS-DOS, and (more or less) we still have such compatibility
> today,
>
> Yes. But you didn't post a msdos specific statement, you posted about
> nothing worth doing requires more than 500k. That is a general statement.
No. I actually said that you should be able to write something quite reasonably useful, even a full-blown compiler, in 500 kb. If not, your tools are very poor or you don't know what you're doing.

(And yes, I was implying this for the IBM PC architecture and real mode DOS. This is a DOS forum and thread talking about 16-bit support from compilers!)

Totally arbitrary, but it shouldn't be that big of a stretch! (Even FASMW, which is far from being only a minimalistic assembler + IDE for Win32, is only 142 kb.)

> > > FreeBSD has a strong following among
> > > ISPs. It is not a client OS, so comparing downloads is a bit strange.
> > > (since that is an end-user centric metric).
> >
> > I meant third-party projects that explicitly target FreeBSD, not just
> > random *nix compatibility in sources that halfway work. Those binaries
> have
> > very very low download counts.
>
> That's exactly what I mean. That is an end-user (desktop) centric way of
> measuring a server OS.
You know full well that FreeBSD isn't limited to servers, not even by design. But in a world full of boring hype of "all new" (incompatible), it's a losing battle. FreeBSD is not very popular.

(Though why MS doesn't mimic Apple and port over some FreeBSD tools or even their Linux emulation is beyond me. Oh wait, I forgot, compatibility is bad for marketing when you want everyone to only follow you instead.)

> A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. You are either compatible or
> not. A few rest bits of posix compatibility are useless.
People cannot restrain themselves from using some non-portable features, even if not technically needed. While you may applaud them, I can't understand it. I'll never understand why targeting 1% of machines is better than targeting 99%. (Not an absolute measure, but in most software the differences aren't necessary anyways. Usually devs just didn't know or care about doing it a different way.)

> > > Well, or simply think that the burden/baton should pass to actual
> users?
> > > Maybe there is a nice task for you there :-)
> >
> > No, because even when it works they don't care.
>
> Neither do users apparently, or they would step up.
They did, but ... old code was removed, patches were rejected, etc. These are not technical limitations but human ones. They only want to promote themselves and their ideals, not help others port the actual technical code. (Yes, I'm mostly thinking GNU snobs here, but there are others too, see below.)

(Why do you think IE10 was originally Win8 only? They want to promote Win8, not make the web a better place for everyone else. Even if it is a decent web browser, it's of limited use to the majority of people ... unless they buy Win8, which is the whole point.)

But instead of people saying "Not portable enough, let's improve it", they instead say, "It supports all I care about. Everything else is obsolete and not supported. I don't have it nor use it nor care, therefore no one else should either."

> > Besides, the whole "RAM is cheap" cliche is a red herring. Nobody can
> truly
> > install 256 GB or 1 TB anyways, the motherboard is way too limited.
>
> No, but you can install 4GB for sub Eur 50, which is still way more than
> 500kb. Or when did you last bought new memory in sub 128MB quantities? 2000
> ?
So you don't think 2.5 MB for PPC386.EXE can be heavily improved?? You think that's totally reasonable?? (A quick check shows 0.99.05 to be less than 500 kb. Which would be great ... except I know that's not optimal code size by a long shot. Though obviously supporting many dialects and features affects things, but with "tons of RAM" these days, nobody has the motivation to even believe such a reduction is possible.)

Since computers are so fast, why don't you just "make -B" (GNU Make 3.81, "Unconditionally make all targets") every single time.

And since hard drives are so cheap, why don't you "tar xf" every single .tar.gz (.tar.bz2, .xz, etc) archive?

And since RAM is so cheap, just remove any calls to "dispose" in your Pascal code. Surely it will never need to be freed, there's more than enough! (No garbage collector needed!)

> Two of those would be interesting. Unfortunately there are killer
> downsides:
>
> - bad cross platform/architecture support.
> - no openmp
> - own part of toolchain (linker/assembler/debugger) projects are not
> that active it seems.
All of that has been improved lately. I don't know the details, but it's far from as pathetic as you imply. (Though I agree it's not perfect, but nothing is.)

> > > If Embarcadero continue on this course, I'll probably have a few years
> > left
> > > on my XE3, and then migrate either to MSVC or FPC.
> >
> > Migrating to MSVC sounds like a bad idea. Even if you loved C++ (since
> > their C support is minimal, i.e. C++ wins over obsolete C), there are
> many
> > other tools.
>
> C++ wins over C period :-)
I assume you catch my drift here. People love to deride others as useless and obsolete. I'm not picking on anyone in particular here, but seriously, some people (Bjarne!) want C++ to totally subsume C! I mean literally as in ye olde Pascal "level 0 and level 1" kind of feel, where C is level 0 and C++ is level 1.

(I mean, it almost makes sense, C/C++ are already widely implemented, but I don't honestly expect nor want every C vendor to totally implement C++. C is hard enough in latest standards.)

And of course, Java or C# or D each presumably feels the same way about C++, ironically enough. It never ends. (And I'm sure Ada would try to scoop up all Pascal-derivatives if it could.)

> > But maybe you're one of those that can't live without fancy
> > IDEs. That seems to be most people's favorite thing about MSVC. (Well,
> the
> > console is indeed considered obsolete in many peoples' eyes, part of the
> > reason Windows was promoted so heavily.)
>
> It's very telling that you are anti-IDE, but not really explain why the
> other tools would be an option at all. Or ask why I chose MSVC.
I don't really use an IDE, no. I'm not really against it, but again, hate to be so simplistic and minimal, but seriously, 1.5 GB (download size, last I heard) is a lot of space. I don't know, I just can't handle complexity well (who can???). Too much is just too much.

(I wasn't being sarcastic, seriously, the IDE is indeed why most people seem to love MSVC.)

> > During previous revisions to this post, I deleted some points. But let
> me
> > exhume one: we are both living in deprecated worlds.
> >
> > Windows: Win32 GUI (preferred), DOS console (legacy, deprecated)
>
> The windows console also exists, and is prefered. (cmd.exe vs
> command.com).
It's not preferred at all. I don't think MS would encourage it. Even Delphi docs online seems quite explicitly to say that GUI is preferred instead.

I'm not saying console would (or should) go away or that there isn't a use for it (out of necessity), but that's not the way the modern world works. Console is seen as obsolete, less intuitive, etc.

> Since last year there are even console only windows (server) versions
> again.
They apparently fought kicking and screaming against this for years. It's debatable whether they will support it properly for long. This was really just to compete with *nix, not because they like the console. Remember, even SFU is officially deprecated nowadays. Everything like DOS and *nix to them is old style and hence not desired. (I know they have PowerShell, but that's more of a competing tech vs. scripting languages than anything, out of necessity. I have no idea if it works on WinRT. Probably, since it's .NET supported.)

Keep in mind that even C++ was second-class to them until recently where they promised to support it fully. Apparently they prefer their own C# .NET instead.

> > Linux: GNOME or KDE under X11 (preferred), POSIX console (deprecated)
>
> Hard to say. Linux, like Windows is a server OS, and console belongs
> there.
I'm just saying, some people would totally kill the console if they could.

> > So even if there is some compatibility, it's always shunned and ignored
> by
> > some people.
>
> You confuse not the popular choice with outright deprecated.
I'm not necessarily talking official companies here (though they hire these same blowhards), I'm talking about popular opinion, even from developers. They don't care about some things, and they would indeed strip support for them entirely, if possible. They see no need for xyz, therefore xyz should die.

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