Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PascalABC.NET

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎ . "It's interesting" isn't a policy-based keep reason. On the other hand "It's not well known" is not a policy-based keep reason. The only policy-based argument is that it meets GNG, although it is not shown how this is met. Therefore I'm not finding consensus, and I don't think a third re-list for a fourth go-round is advisable. Should this topic be re-nominated, it should be clearly demonstrated that the topic does not meet GNG to overcome the lone policy argument. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 02:11, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PascalABC.NET

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1. I do not believe the topic is notable enough to warrant a Wkipedia article. This programming language has some significance in some communities, but it isn’t well-known in general. The first few Google pages for the language’s name tend to be low-quality, auto-generated, or language-author-written things. Only 10 StackOverflow questions exist for the language. The language’s GitHub contributors list as well as issue/star counts also suggest this is a small project.

2. The article focuses a lot on showing code examples, instead of a more high-level look at the language and its history, as seen in e.g. the C#, Java or Python articles (which contain one or two examples). The code blocks, which make up the majority of the article, do not have any references, so they may constitute original research. I don’t think this style could be dramatically improved.

3. For a long time, most of the article’s content was written by two of the authors of the PascalABC.NET programming language, which is a conflict of interest. The article was rewritten by someone whose account was created after I placed a proposed deletion tag on the page (see Special:CentralAuth/Smart_squirrel_2020), and who only contributed to the PascalABC.NET articles on en.wiki and ru.wiki (see https://guc.toolforge.org/?by=date&user=Smart+squirrel+2020) - this behaviour is suspicious to me. Kwpolska ^{(spam me/contributions)} 21:13, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Computing and Software. Kwpolska ^{(spam me/contributions)} 21:13, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
1) I think the article is interesting because it isn’t well-known in general. I learnt about the project thanks to the wikipedia article. It is a project where many people has been working and is therefore a project with technological value.

2) I agree that more information can be added, but I don't see that the existence of code examples is a reason to delete the page. I don't think the code blocks must be referenced while they are correct.

3) Firstly, someone who knows the language must write the article, I don't see how someone who doesn't know a programming language is going to write an article about it. Secondly, the article is not claiming the language is better than other languages. Lastly, the tool is free, it is an open project, you can download all the code, so there is not any commercial interest behind this article. I don't see any conflict of interest.

I don't see any good reason to delete this page. Sergodel (talk) 17:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"This programming language has some significance in some communities, but it isn’t well-known in general." --Kwpolska

This is interesting, because it brings into question whether there is bias, relative to what is significant to who. Which can be related to language or demographics. This is an article that met previous standards, that is now being challenged. There also appears to be lots of information from Russian sources, as oppose to its English equivalent. Something else that I noticed, is that various programming language communities are old enough or for various odd reasons, may not be concentrated in the same places as newer languages. GitHub or StackOverflow may not be representative metrics for such or certain languages, though of course this is a matter of debate.

In the case of Object Pascal/Pascal, the language is "fractured" into multiple dialects, but those dialects are close enough to each other where arguably sites, books, videos, and various other sources can be used. Instead of StackOverflow, users of the programming language may use the plentiful alternative sources available from close dialects (as PascalABC has similarities to Delphi and Free Pascal), not to mention those sources of a particular language.

Wukuendo (talk) 04:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From what I’ve been able to find out, this language is primarily, and perhaps exclusively, used in schools in Russia. I was unable to find any other uses of the language. For a language that first appeared in 2007 (at least that’s what the Wikipedia article says), it seems to be quite unpopular and not well known. Go is of similar age (2009), but there are 68k questions with the “go” tag on StackOverflow (and there might be Go questions missing tags). Zig, which first appeared in 2016, has 152 questions (but it regularly reaches the front page of the orange site, and its GitHub has a significant number of people who care about it). PascalABC.NET also has an announcement Telegram channel (archive link) with 1080 subscribers — again, a small number of people care about this language (and Telegram is quite big in Russia). Kwpolska ^{(spam me/contributions)} 22:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A search of PascalABC on YouTube, starts to show the tremendous reach of the language, as there are numerous videos with very high view counts. Also there are many instances of the language being referred to as Pascal (Паскаль), but the videos show/demonstrate usage of the PascalABC dialect.

In general, Pascal/Object Pascal and its dialects/variants, can be hard to quantify in the same way as newer languages. This is because Pascal/Object Pascal has such a long history, thus a tremendous amount of learning materials and books already written on it. To elaborate further on the point that I touched on previously, those seeking to learn about or use PascalABC, can also draw upon their knowledge of or resources from other Pascal/Object Pascal dialects. A person who has used Delphi or Free Pascal previously, read books on Pascal/Object Pascal, or used Object Pascal/Delphi websites such as Delphi Basics, would arguably have little trouble understanding and using the PascalABC dialect. Pascal/Object Pascal dialects can "feed off" each other, in terms of learning resources. Their need for StackOverflow could be negligible and their users go elsewhere.

Various newer languages such as Zig, Nim, etc... don't or didn't have their GitHub discussions open or forums for their users to discuss problems or get help. Consequently it appears or an argument could be made that their users turned to sites like StackOverflow, Reddit, etc... to seek help and congregate. Users of languages like Pascal/Object Pascal, that existed before the popularity of those sites, may seek help or resolve questions elsewhere (at forums of particular websites) or through alternative ways like books, videos, etc... By contrast, there appears to be no published books on Zig (as of this post), where for Pascal/Object Pascal the list of books is very long.

Another related point, is that newer languages like Zig, appeared to have moved to GitHub (and used other popular American social media sites) very early in their history. Allowing them more time and momentum to generate followings on those specific platforms. Languages like PascalABC which came about before GitHub's rise in popularity and under different spheres of cultural influences, moved to GitHub much later in their history and where their users already had other alternatives. Free Pascal, for example, uses GitHub only for mirroring purposes and primarily uses GitLab. Programming languages have different histories and cultures, which should be taken into account.

"...this language is primarily, and perhaps exclusively, used in schools in Russia." --Kwpolska

I'm not sure in what context that this is meant, but as PascalABC uses .NET, applications created using the language would be nearly indistinguishable from other .NET languages such as C# or F#. PascalABC can be used commercially, and outside of academic circles.

Wukuendo (talk) 01:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

1) I think the article is interesting because it isn’t well-known in general. I learnt about the project thanks to the wikipedia article. It is a project where many people has been working and and is therefore a project with technological value.

2) More information can be added, but I don't see that examples of code is a reason to delete the page.

3) The article is not claiming the language is better than other languages. Obviously someone who know the project should write the article there is no option that someone write an article about something what he or she unknows. The language and the tool are not comercial, they are free. Sergodel (talk) 17:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Thoughts on whether the available sourcing is sufficient to meet the GNG would be appreciated.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 06:27, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, being a university-born language created for educational purposes in the mid-2000's, PascalABC.NET started being discussed mainly on different Russian forums, and the main and "official" (if we can say so) resource for discussions was the institute's forum, where various people came, not only from the institute itself. I personally met PascalABC.NET in 2008 when I started studying programming at school and then continued at university (it worth be mentioned that StackOverflow was almost a newborn then). Up to now, the main platrorms for discussing PascalABC.NET are different forums historically uniting Russian programmers and people who study programming. For example, here is a special topic on CyberForum appeared no later than 2010 (note that the topic about Pascal ABC, the predecessor of PascalABC.NET, is alive from 2008 and up to now; also note that surfing this website without AdBlock is quite painful), and here is the special topic on the institute's website. Unfortunately, the latter one starts from 2015. In the days of my studies it lived on another web-resource of the institute, which was reorganized. Also as @Wukuendo outlined, PascalABC.NET is noticiable enough on YouTube, where a number of multipart educational tutorials exist (by comparison, Oxygene, whose notability is not currently questioned, has only a few mentions on YouTube). There is also a Coursera-like platform for online education called Stepic, and multiple free cources are presented there. Note that on both YouTube and Stepik some tutorials refer to PascalABC.NET as "Pascal" so searching "PascalABC.NET" anywhere you can't be sure that you get all the available info, as for many people "Pascal" may be equal to "PascalABC.NET".

As for GitHub, PascalABC.NET came there in 2015, when the language communities were formed already on other platforms. So yes, it is less notable on GitHub comparing to some younger languages, but more notable (if we compare the issues) than, for example, J language, whose notability is not questioned on Wiki, again (besides, I noted that precise references to documention for the code snippets extensively used in the J article are not demanded). Smart squirrel 2020 (talk) 10:31, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Sources in the article pass GNG. // Timothy :: talk 06:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 14:57, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.