What is Delphi and Pascal?

[Elihu5991]

I've heard of these quite a bit, but am quite unsure of what they are?

[Ionelul]

Pascal is a procedural programming language. It is an alternative to C. Delphi is object pascal, something like visual C++: object oriented language based on pascal. What you do in pascal you can do with Delphi, but not vice versa.

[Elihu5991]

Thankyou very much. But what is a procedural programming language? What can you do with C? I'm learning C++, not sure of the full potential though :/ . Can you please explain to me what object orianted programming is, I don't fully understand it and will help me understand what object pascal. What are used for? And why not vice versa?

[Deepika_KR]

Hi,

The differences are many. You may find the below link helpful to find out for yourself what object oriented programming is all about and what makes it different from Procedural Programming Language.

Object Pascal is used in Delphi which is an object oriented derivative of Pascal.

http://www.softwaredesign.com/objects.html

[Elihu5991]

Thankyou so much for this tutorial. I'm learning so much and is helping me understand C++, which is the language I'm learning. By the way - This page derives from an acoustic site, not software; but thankyou. Unfortunately, I can't read all of it now, but when I finish, I'll let you know. Again, Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou. How did you find this?

[Deepika_KR]

You are welcome..Had studied as reference few days back....

[Elihu5991]

Awesome

[gwmorris]

If you want to try your hand at Pascal, there is a downloadable Free Pascal Compiler, or FPC. It has full Object-Oriented capabilities, and can even compile some Delphi code. The language is now actually written in itself (strange) and they give you the source code so that you could conceivably make a custom compiler with it! If you're interested, look here: http://www.freepascal.org/

[Elihu5991]

Thankyiu so much gwmorris. What do you mean written in itself?

[MorisK]

Actually, Delphi came from Pascal. So, since delphi is an evolution os pascal, it has many functions that pascal doesn't have. But simple functions that used to have in old pascal still can be used in delphi. For your knowledge, a procedural language is a language that u write it just like a text, up to down, so, for u to have functions that u can access from any point of a program, it should be writen in a diferente file. In a non procedural language, such, delphi, u can write a function at any part of your program, and it can be called anyways. for example: u can write just a file for the whole program and put a function at the end of that file, and stil call that function from the beginig of the same file. In procedural programs, if the function is at the end, u can't call that function, since the program didn't reach it yeat. I hope this answear your question.

[MorisK]

If you want really to try some coding in pascal, get Turbo Pascal, it's free and is the best compiler for Pascal language. As for delphi, it's a little bit more dificult to get a free copy. May be u get an older version, like delphi 4 or 5. Right now the version is delphi2010.