When comparing Pascal vs Ceylon, the Slant community recommends Pascal for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Pascal is ranked 5th while Ceylon is ranked 42nd. The most important reason people chose Pascal is:
Because of the verbosity and easy syntax, Pascal language is relatively easier to be learned and understood, even for someone who has no programming knowledge. It's said that Pascal code —if written well— is like reading pseudo code.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Understanding of basics
Because of the verbosity and easy syntax, Pascal language is relatively easier to be learned and understood, even for someone who has no programming knowledge. It's said that Pascal code —if written well— is like reading pseudo code.
Pro Easy
Pascal / Object pascal was used in schools during the 2000's to teach kids the basics of object oriented programming.
Pro Clear syntax
Pascal's syntax is clear and concise, for example:
procedure test();
begin
DoSomething();
end;
Pro Enforces good programming practice
Numerous strong compile time checks with optional runtime checks ensure one doesn't do stupid things and even when one does (because the compiler can't prove it at compile time), the binary will check and report it at runtime.
Correct modular programming implementation with proper namespacing, no file inclusion hack.
Pro Cross platform
Pascal development tools are available almost on every available platform, especially using Free Pascal. Pascal language is available on desktop like Mac, BSD, Linux, Windows, Solaris, etc.; on mobile like iOS, Android, etc.; also on managed environments like Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and .Net/Mono framework . There are even some Pascal to JavaScript transpilers such as Smart Pascal, so you can write client side web app using Pascal as well, if you really want to.
Pro Tons of academic reading
Being known as the programming language for education, especially in the 90's, there many academic reading and tutorials available on the internet.
Pro Fast compilation
The compiler is fast, really fast. Compared to C/C++, the delphi compiler is designed to compile a decent sized desktop application in seconds rather than minutes.
Pro Flexible
Using the Free Pascal Compiler (the main Pascal distribution) you can code in a language that can be procedural and imperative now, but it can became object-oriented simply adding a directive at the start of the source
Pro Easy GUI creation
Visual Basic may have predated Delphi but Delphi was the ground breaking visual designer which set the standards expected today by most GUI developers. Its rich component set was well designed, structured and extensible, it even has the ability to display live data from the attached database in its data controls.
Pro Assembler Code and DLL/SO creation
You can put Assembler code in Intel or AT&T formats, to achieve great results of speed and accuracy. It is possible to create Dynamic Link Libraries or their equivalent in Unix-like systems so it's relatively easy to use and powerful.
Pro Rich existing libraries
Both shipped with implementations and spread all over the web. Both natively written or bindings to libraries written in other languages. Typically to build non-trivial applications there's no need to surf the web as many things are implemented already. Streaming, output templating, socket & networking, web, database, image manipulation, high performance graphics, (de)compression, (de|en)cryption, regex, unit testing, json manipulation, google API, indexing, multithreading, external process management, the list just goes on and on!
Pro Still active
From the early roots of Pascal, Delphi has been developed and is still actively supported. It is used in many desktop applications today, and even supports multi platform coding.
Pro Suitably close to modern languages, without the pitfalls
It was developed as a teaching language and it shows. No syntax pitfalls and gently encourages good style.
Pro Extensive third party libraries
There are large collections of third party components, many free which enable developers to add wide ranging and complex functionality to their code with ease
Pro Component based (reusability, decoupled, rich design architecture)
Pro Reliable language and code base
Most code from the Turbo Pascal days in the 80s still compiles, yet the language has since been adapted and extended with modern concepts, introducing OOP and interfaces, exception handling, native Unicode support, anonymous methods, generics, ARC and more.
Pro Available on a ridiculous number of platforms
FreePascal is available on/for Intel x86 (including 8086), AMD64/x86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC64, SPARC, ARM, AArch64, MIPS and the JVM. Supported operating systems include Linux, FreeBSD, Haiku, Mac OS X/iOS/iPhoneSimulator/Darwin, DOS (16 and 32 bit), Win32, Win64, WinCE, OS/2, MorphOS, Nintendo GBA, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Android, AIX and AROS.
Pro Language depth
Object Pascal is being used to write custom kernels (Ultibo) and operating-systems for various ARM boards. So the way you work with the code scales from low-level to pure OOP high-level. Object Pascal has the same level of depth that you find in C/C++ but with added productivity.
Pro Incredible GUI design tools
Lazarus and Delphi are both incredible GUI design tools, making rapid development a reality.
Making changes to a GUI doesn't mean switching tools or waiting for things to load, it's right there as part of your core tools.
Pro Dynamic evolution of language
Object Pascal language still evolving and being updated by Delphi (Embarcadero) and Free Pascal team (Lazarus).
Pro Well balanced for desktop development
For desktop development, Delphi is productive, the code is easy to understand, compilation speed is blazing, and it produces well performing applications that are easy to deploy. The perfect balance between C# and C++.
Pro Fast execution
The compiler generates fast and optimized code. No stop-the-universe garbage collection.
Pro Automatic memory management
The new Delphi compilers are powered by Automatic Reference Counting to ease development.
Pro Excellent database development
Pro Try it out in the browser
It has a Web IDE: http://try.ceylon-lang.org/ with impressive demos: http://try.ceylon-lang.org/?gist=bd41b47f325b6d32514a so you can try it without installing anything, and see the JS generation / interop in action.
Pro Strong static typing, null safe and flexible, almost dynamic type system
The compiler prevents you from using a potentially null variable, unless you check it is not null. Ie. it forces you to check a potentially null value before using it.
The type system is strict, but flexible, allowing union and intersection of types, covariant and contravariant types, reified types, etc.
Type inference and union types allows a dynamic programming style, close of JS spirit.
Pro Designed from the start to generate JavaScript
It brings type safety to JS, allowing to define interfaces to existing JS APIs, yet using the dynamic
keyword for flexible calls in the JS ecosystem.
Pro Excellent IDE support
Ceylon has reified generics, so it doesn't loose the type of collections at runtime. This makes autocompletion, debugging, etc. first-class. The Eclipse plugin makes it a full-fledged Ceylon IDE, and an IntelliJ IDEA plugin is in the works.
Pro Great tutorial
Gavin King, main author of the language, has a great, clear technical writing style, making understandable difficult concepts like variance or sound type system.
Pro Excellent documentation
The language specification is very complete and up to date; also, the language module is very well documented.
Pro Javascript interoperability
Ceylon has special language-level support for interoperation with dynamically typed languages like JavaScript, and its module system even interoperates with npm.
Pro Easy to learn even if you don't have prior programming experience
Ceylon is indeed fairly easy and readable. Of course those ones who know OOP and a bit of functional programming concepts will feel almost at home right from the start.
Pro Generate HTML
HTML generation is supported right in the SDK.
Pro Same code in backend and frontend
If you don't use platform-specific features, you can reuse the same code in your backend server (be it in Java or JavaScript) and in your client-side browser code, for example for storing data, validating input etc.
Cons
Con Niche language
Most use of this language will be found in jobs supporting legacy code. It will be hard to find things to do with this language outside of that niche.
Con No up-to-date version of language standards
In 1983, and update in 1990, the language was standardized with two standards: ISO/IEC 7185:1990 Pascal and ISO/IEC 10206:1990 Extended Pascal. However, Object Pascal extensions to the language have no official standards but in 1993, a draft proposal for object oriented Pascal standard was re; for review purposes only. There are no standards for modern features and enhancements, thus various Pascal dialects like Delphi or HP Pascal has their own enhancements and features.
Con Effectively obsolete
While this may have been an ok choice 25 years ago, it no longer is. Consider Python, Go or Clojure.
Con Unnecessary heavy syntax
Begin.. end. Pascal would have been great with curly braces.. but then again, that's what C is for. It's an academic language which was used in the past, but not much anymore today.
Con All variables, types, constants and functions must be declared at the beginning of the code
Con Lack of physical or electronic books
We should hope Red Hat or anyone interested would take the time and write one. That would strengthen the maturity of the language, but Ceylon is rapidly developing which can make the author's efforts futile because his or hers work will become obsolete soon.
The second hindrance is, of course, popularity of the language which can't give much to the pockets of the author (however, Dart's unpopularity at start didn't prevent it to have a lot of printed material, but that's Google's child, we know).
Con Currently has large runtime
Ceylon 1.2 needs a language runtime of 1.55 MiB, and the Collection library adds another 370 KiB. That's a lot for the Web...
Now, this has to be put in perspective: if you use Ceylon to make a web application, these files will be loaded once, then cached by the browser (that's not casual browsing).
Moreover, most servers compress such resource, and the numbers become respectively 234 KiB and 54 KiB, which is more reasonable...