[fpc-other]reputation of Pascal

[Rainer Hantsch]

On 4 Jun 2002, Johann Glaser wrote:
> Am Die, 2002-06-04 um 13.14 schrieb Rainer Hantsch:
> But types in C are more ugly too. You can't declare a PInteger as a
> pointer to an Integer. You have to use the star '*' every now and then.

This is TYPICALLY "C" language. It is a "better assembly language" in my eyes,
not able to do the simplest things without requiring a bunch of libraries,
where all this stuff is already coded. And if you have a look inside
these libraries, ... - better you DON'T...!

> My professor said (laughing) he only needed three (3) stars in series at
> most! Can you imagine? (int ***matrix) ??? Pfui! No self defined types?

...and be aware of forgetting only one "*" or "&" if you are working with such
vars! "C" is definitely stupid enough to compile without any related warning
and brutally overwrites that memory. -> Application Crash -> And here you will
need a longer while to find ot the reason!
Thus, in Pascal you will get probably an compiler error, saying something like
"Illegal pointer type" or so! -> It couldn't come out clearer, where the
problem is located! 
 


> The problem on Pascal's reputation is it's reputation. If you come
> somewhere and tell them, you are a good Pascal programmer, everybody
> will set up a smile! Most Pascal programmers don't even dare to say they
> use Pascal! 

I watch the same with people programming in "Visual C++" or "Visual
Basic". Sounds great, this "Visual", and then it is related to: "Oh,
he can program Windoze! - Whow..."
And then you see applications which do nearely nothing but need Megabytes for
that. I do not want to know the size of a simple program which does nothing
else than opening a simple window and writing "Hello world" into it! 

But if Pascal would really be so bad: Why is JAVA so much similar to it? So
Pascal can't really be such outdated, as all this "C" guys say...

> Pascal's reputation is so bad, because it's not publicly
> known what Pascal can do. Most people learnd programming with Pascal.
> Then, when they got a bit of the clue, they had to switch to C. And then
> they think, Pascal is only able to do simple things. And perhaps they
> have bad memories on Pascal (which comes from their inability to program
> in the beginning, not from Pascal, but they project it onto). 

I agree to 100%. - But let me tell you how I came to Pascal.

I am meanwhile 42 years old. With roughly 20-21 years, I did my first steps of
"real programming" on a self built Industrial PC with a 3 MHz Z80 CPU, 64kB(!)
RAM, and a 10MB SASI Harddisk (No mis-typing! SASI, which was before SCSI!). 
The OS was CP/M plus, the screen was an ADM-3A Terminal over a serial
line. You see, a real "PowerMachine", but it was extremely expensive at that
time. (More than 4360,00 Euro, if I remember right!)
I started with MBASIC80 (Microsoft Basic for 8080 CPU's), because I knew
BASIC from my younger brother's C=64 and wrote some programs for calculating
and dimensioning central heatings. Later, I also used the basic Compiler to
get TOP performance. -> Sorting a "file of record" with 1000 entries
needed then "only" some hours(!), rather than a whole night...
-> "Great!"   =8-O

Later, I asked a friend. He gave me a 8"-floppy with "TurboPascal 3.0
for CP/M". I tried it out and found that it was ...
a.) Easy to understand (especially in comparison to C!)
b.) Worked much easier with structured files
c.) Allowed me better access to the whole Screen/Printer/...
d.) EXTREMELY FAST.

Within a relatively short time I ported all of my BASIC programs to it. It 
was phantastic. Jobs which ran before for hours(!), needed now only a few
minutes! The speed increase whas more than 1:50!
>From this moment I developed always in TurboPascal. First on CP/M, later on
DOS, but I always could use my old sources. (-> This about portability.)

Then I started with Windoze - and I decided to leave this out. A good
decision, now I work on LINUX, and I still can re-compile my old TP7 programs
and use them natively on LINUX after some minor changes (filenames,...).

So: WHERE ARE THIS PORTABILITY PROBLEMS? I SEE NONE!

> And, nowadays it's cool to speak bad about Pascal. This kind of selfdefined
> cool guys, which let me define the word "cool" as something very bad.
> :-)

I would say it is not "cool", it only points out the knowledge of these
guys...


mfg

  Ing. Rainer Hantsch

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