When I talk about rapid web development I don't just mean slapping some components on a form and prototyping a fairly useless hello world application..
Rapid development includes
- using types such as ansistrings and capstrings instead of pchars
- using types such as arrays instead of pointers to pointers
- using a reusable web framework over and over again instead of inventing your own bare metal one each time
- using built in XSS security features instead of reinventing your own XSS protection on every single incoming variable (but still with ability to bypass built in security easily)
- using a compiler that doesn't require just makefile style development, although makefiles are 100 percent supported when you need them
- using a language without abusively utilizing operator overloaders and preprocessor macros, however that power is still available in special situations
All the above things cause development to be quicker. Using pchars for every string is not productive in web programming. In some cases a server that really needs to be tuned may want to use pchars for some special reason (even if capstring and ansistring probably suite the job) - pascal has this capability but C doesn't. C has no standard web frameworks as everyone has to invent their own each time since no one has made an effort to standardize any cgi routines - other than fastCGI and a few incomplete utilities such as cgic.
Anyone can use C code (compiled object files or dlls) inside a pascal application too, so all existing C code can be utilized in pascal programs.
Is C good for web devel?
C has no ansistrings. No one will want to use pchars all the time. Even if performance gets to be important, one can still use pchars or capstrings or manually hacked ansistrings in Pascal, but not in C.
C has no classes and objects. I personally can get away without using an classes and objects, but people want to use classes and objects whether or not they can get it done without them. They are a fashion and they are in, even if the elite folks can do procedural or functional code without them.
C has no standardized web framework, other than incomplete ones that do specialized things such as cgiC.
C has no built in XSS/web security. Faster development can be done if automatic security takes care of most XSS issues (but you can still bypass the security in the modern pascal web framework).
Speed of C = Speed of Modern Pascal?
Let's say you are a big website who really does need the speed of C, such as google. Do you choose C or modern pascal? C isn't as friendly as Pascal as you can get away with speed in Pascal without using pchars and ugly memory management. Of course, companies like Google chose C++ for their backend at the time, but now that modern pascal is getting around town a bit more, you will see a few more companies choose modern Pascal as their backends since it is cleaner (in many people's opinion).
No longer do people enjoy Obfuscated Abstractions
Modern pascal doesn't encourage all the preprocessor macros and operator overloading that C++ has encouraged (although, modern pascal still has that power available, it just isn't encouraged or needed in many cases). Modern Pascal more like Python and Ruby in syntax. And who likes Python? Google developers.. Don't know why they haven't found out about modern Pascal yet. Who likes Ruby? A lot of pascal developers use Ruby, from my research (many people that test out the Powerful Web Utilities are ruby and python developers too).
See also Why C++ Builder Never Took Over Delphi.
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