Funny, I've never had that problem. Maybe that's a beginner problem.

With enough experience Sanskrit is readable. But readable to who? People you deem experienced enough? Which is judged how? By their ability to read your code?

Dude, have you even seen what's available in Delphi? The list was quite impressive even before Java existed.

The people who bought Delphi were Windows users. They didn't need a Linux version.

Yes, there really is a good reason. To get the universe back into balance. Back in the day, people bought into their developments tools on the basis of cost and quality. Then companies like MS and Oracle followed the long established lead of the likes of IBM and charged managers through the nose for the 'most advanced technologies'. But the weren't really, and all of us techies knew it.

Turbo Pascal was a full participant in the PC revolution. It brought advanced capabilities - much more advanced than IBM or MS were offering at a hobbyist price. But it continued, until cheaper and better wasn't good enough. It had to be free.

There are some really great free products out there. But none of them are of a quality that can compete with the high end companies who are developing their programs for their paying customers rather than for themselves.

Companies like Borland found themselves in the middle of this. The ill-fated Kylix is the proof. Partially free didn't work. Now our choices are limited to Free or $10,000.

It sucks.

And it did.

Oh, I don't know....maybe it represented the logic, methodology and best practices of programming

And evolved into seriously great products like Turbo Pascal and Delphi.

It remains a great choice precisely because it isn't designed to a particular purpose, but is quite adaptable..

Why, for God's sake, would you want that?

No, Kylix was a complete failure. It was an attempt to lure the next generation Turbo Pascal users, But that next generation was made up of Linux fans that didn't want to pay for *anything*.

Subsequent to that they started targeting cross-platform development on the latest devices.

Turbo Pascal was quite successful into the IBM PC years. Iin fact I'm wondering if it even existed before the IBM PC)..

But I've use the UCSD-P system, Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and never had the problems you describe. Sure, some were more evolved than others, but I can't ever recall anything more than preferring a specific implementation.

Pascal has some syntactical annoyances, although I hardly see how separate header files improve things in that respect.

Well, years anyway. There was actually a Microsoft program manager that was quoted as saying something like that Microsoft should thank God for Borland every day. As someone who used both VB and Delphi, I could see all of the things MS was lifting from Delphi. Until they finally lifted its architect.

What an astounding amount of insight you've shown. Why, reading your logic, I wonder how I ever could've been fooled.

But then came the USCF P-System and Turbo Pascal, And nobody's asking about Modula.

Yes, because those are so popular now.

I think I've just written off Ruby.