[fpc-other]reputation of Pascal

[Rainer Hantsch]

On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, Andreas K. Foerster wrote:
> The programming language Pascal unfortunately has a really bad
> reputation amongst programmers and in the hacker scene. They call
> Pascal a "bondage-and-discipline language". There's even 
> yet a fixed proverb out: "real programmers don't use Pascal".

This may be true, if you definitely WANT to do "dirty" things, like mis-using
pointers as integers and similar things, but exactly this is normally not
required. 
When my son started to learn at school C and C++, I was forced to get in touch
with C/C++ a little bit. And I can tell you, I will never use C/C++ at all.

What I need, is exactly what you mentioned above: 
-------------------------------------------------
A programming language which forces me to use correct syntax and
disallows dirty things. It must be flexible enough to fit to my major needs,
give me access to the OS's API's when required, and do most trivial things
internally. -- And all that can be found within one language: PASCAL.
It is no wonder, that Pascal is a "technical language", and that I choose it 
a long time ago, because I _am_ a technician...!
(An example: Have you ever tried to work with "strings" or "arrays of
string" in C language? Strings are a very basic thing to me, but C makes an
odysee out of that!) 


> Okay, the paper, they refer to is from 1981 and lots of the limitations
> of standard Pascal don't relate to FPC. But then they can say, it's not
> a common standard, so your Pascal is not Pascal, it's proprietary, it's 
> not portable.

Not true... As long as you use standard pascal syntax and limit yourself to
only use Standard (ANSI?) pascal, it IS portable! It is the same as if you
would use plain C (as far as I understood this "Deluxe-Assembly-Language"). If
you do not use system-dependent functions, it is portable. But when you use
them, you'll get a lot of work when changing to a different OS....


mfg

  Ing. Rainer Hantsch

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