[fpc-other]reputation of Pascal

[Andreas K. Foerster]

On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 02:04:16PM +0200, Marco van de Voort wrote:

> > They call
> > Pascal a "bondage-and-discipline language". There's even 
> > yet a fixed proverb out: "real programmers don't use Pascal".
> 
> If you start discussing with them, all this nonsense is founded
> on very old standard Pascals.

They say Pascal ist closed. But who sais so?
What about a new standard?
Who defines standards?

Btw. what do you think about the "Extended Pascal" standard?
(which FPC doesn't follow)

> > For the arguments read the article about Pascal from "The New Hackers
> > Dictionary" (aka "jargon file") and the related articles:
> > 
> > http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/Pascal.html
> 
> Written by ESR, 

At least he's the publisher.

> a known C advocatist afaik.

He did a lot of things in C.
But IIRC he wrote once, that C should only be used if absolutely
necessary.
I think he mostly prefers LISP.

> > 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, 
> 
> There are several compilers that implement it, some of which are free. K&R C
> never was an official standard, but that also never stopped anybody.

Good argument.

> Even GNU does. And since they are not standard, they are proprietary :-) 

LOL ;-)))
We should ask RMS what he thinks about that. ;-)

> > What about publishing our own paper?
> 
> Won't help. There are several answers on the "Why Pascal is..." article, and
> they rarely get quoted.

Can you give me some links.
Then _I_ could quote them. ;-)

> Making a nice, balanced advocatism site would make it easier to refer to and counter
> some common misconceptions though.

Good idea.

> > What else could we do for the reputation of Pascal?
> 
> Make great programs. 99% of the trolls don't have a clue, and convincing
> them won't help Pascal a bit. Availability of tools, examples and source might.

-- 
Tschuess
	Andreas