Advice sought on choosing language

cragwolf · 08-02-2006, 01:08 AM

I am a hobbyist programmer, I enjoy coding little real-time simulation programs, especially with some visual output, preferably in 3D. Initially I dabbled in Basic and Fortran, but then firmly planted myself in Object Pascal for a long time (several years). Free Pascal is a nice compiler, but I'm getting frustrated by its relatively unreliable or token support for major libraries and API's like OpenGL, GTK2, and Qt, and far too often I've been stymied by bugs in the compiler. So I'm looking for a programming language that has been around for a while, has at least one fast and stable compiler for Linux, has reliable and up-to-date support for major libraries like the ones I mentioned, and a large online community based around it. Can you give me any recommendations?

vharishankar · 08-02-2006, 01:10 AM

Ahem... C and C++

Besides being all that you said (solid compiler, huge, huge community and extensive support for all the APIs you mentioned) it's also the natural progression for a Pascal programmer.

cragwolf · 08-02-2006, 03:55 AM

I should add that I also have some experience in C++, too, from a job I did for about one year, but I read books on it more than I programmed in it, and I was exclusively in the Windows world back then. So I am leaning towards C and/or C++. Nevertheless, I am still very interested in what you Linux gurus have to say about this subject.

vharishankar · 08-02-2006, 03:58 AM

If you're good at C/C++ you need look no further. Nearly every conceivable library written on the UNIX/Linux platform has a C or C++ programming interface. (I'm saying most have, but the levels of documentation vary vastly - some have excellent API documentations like QT GUI Toolkit, others have almost none).

Also recommended for learning are shell scripting, Perl and Python. Definitely worth a look.

Linux is a programmers' paradise.

sekelsenmat · 09-26-2006, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cragwolf

Free Pascal is a nice compiler, but I'm getting frustrated by its relatively unreliable or token support for major libraries and API's like OpenGL, GTK2, and Qt,

Free Pascal has excellent support for OpenGL, Gtk2 and Qt 4

Gtk2 headers come with Free Pascal preinstalled, and they are the same as using Gtk2 on c for example.

You can find Qt 4 bindings here:

http://users.pandora.be/Jan.Van.hijf...pc/fpcqt4.html

OpenGL also works very well with Free Pascal.

What specific problems did you find?

Quote:

and far too often I've been stymied by bugs in the compiler.

In this case, please submit bug reports. Free Pascal teams is very quick at fixing bugs. Acctually I´ve working on very big projects with Free Pascal and I haven´t ever come across a bug on the stable releases.

The only times I found bugs was on very experimental ports, like the Windows CE port.