At 4/16/2001 11:50 PM (Monday), Tom Guilderson wrote:
I won't proceed to thrash pascal since I have never really done any development in pascal, but the linux/unix development world is dominated by C. [more snipped] If you are going to do any serious development in a Unix environment, you will need to know C.
This has certainly been true for a long time. However, Kylix is a significant departure from that history and a significant event worth noting. Why? First, the version of Pascal that Borland has evolved is "not your father's Pascal". In it's Delphi form it is fully equivalent to C++ in power and efficiency. Second, Delphi (and it's Turbo Pascal ancestor) have never been ported from the DOS/Windows environment before (except for a brief aborted visit to the Mac OS). Therefore, no one using the Unix platforms has been able to evaluate it properly. With Kylix this will be possible. Third, there are hundreds of thousands of developers using Delphi who now can use their familiar development environment to do Linux applications. I believe this will have a major impact on the Linux world and give C a run for its money. Will it supplant C? Of course not! Will it provide a credible alternative? You bet! Interesting times, indeed!