History
The compiler was quite popular in the BBS scene, probably because of its OS/2 port and being one of the few affordable multi-target compilers. Also Turbo Pascal had been popular in the BBS scene too, but its successor, Delphi was suddenly for Windows only. Virtual Pascal provided a migration path for existing codebases.
There has been pressure from some users for Virtual Pascal to be made into open-source software. This has not been done, provided the following reasoning:
- The compiler source is mostly written in Intel assembly which is hard to change and maintain.
- Part of the run-time library is proprietary to Borland
- Documentation and help are maintained with expensive proprietary tools
- There is nobody who fully understands the code. Alan said that some of the deeper areas were no-touch for him (original code by Vitaly)
Read more about this topic: Virtual Pascal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)