Real Programmers Use Pascal

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Real Programmers Use Pascal

by Ray Lischner, author of Delphi in a Nutshell

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In case you haven't heard the news yet, Borland is porting their landmark Delphi product to Linux. To many professional programmers, this is wonderful news. Earlier, you may have read Kylix is Coming!, in which I introduced the Kylix project and described it in general terms. Now that Borland has revealed more information about Kylix, I can give you more details.

Delphi is a rapid application development (RAD) environment, powered by a modern, object-oriented programming language and an extensible, component-based architecture. Currently, all this power is available only on Windows, where it is successfully being Used in games, development tools, desktop applications, and Used to drive web sites and connect multi-tier database systems. This article takes a closer look at Delphi for Linux and its companion product, C++ Builder for Linux.

Codename Kylix

Kylix is Borland's code name for a large project that involves porting Delphi and C++ Builder to Linux, working with tool and component builders to make sure third-party support is in place when the products ship, and getting the word out that rapid application development is coming to Linux.

Kylix isn't for everyone, though.

For one thing, the main programming language is Delphi Pascal. Just the name Pascal sends many programmers scurrying for the exits. But don't be too hasty. This is not your father's Pascal. A far cry from traditional Pascal, Delphi has a number of modern conveniences, such as:

• Object-orientation (single inheritance of classes, multiple inheritance of interfaces, single root class)
• Integer overflow checking
• Array bounds checking
• Exception handling
• ANSI and Unicode strings
• Runtime type information
• Built-in assembler
• Unit-based modular programming
• Static or dynamic linking of units
• Strongly typed, except when you need latent type checking, which comes in the form of the Variant type
• Multithreading support (TThread class, synchronization, thread-local storage)
• Function overloading
• Arithmetic operator overloading
• Fast, optimizing, native compiler

In other words, Delphi has everything a programmer needs for modern software development (with one exception--generic types--but no language is perfect).

Rapid Application Development

The Kylix package contains more than just a souped up Pascal compiler, though. The integrated development environment (IDE) supports rapid application development, which means:

• Syntax-directed editor
• Integrated debugger
• Visual design of forms (windows and dialog boxes)
• Visual design of menus
• Extensible, component-based framework
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