[fpc-pascal] Division by Zero - not raised exception

[Vinzent Hoefler]

On Wednesday 19 April 2006 16:32, L505 wrote:

> I didn't say pure pascal programmers with no other skills.

Of course you didn't say *that*. But it still sounds like you are very 
focused on language skills. Language skills are much less important 
than people usually think.

> most
> pascal programmers know databases, Assembly, and C. They also usually
> know at least one scripting language such as PHP.

It is *not* about knowing a language (or two, or more).

Knowing about stones won't give you the ability to build a house. 
Unfortunately most people in the software business seem to think it 
does. It doesn't. It's that simple.

Software development is not about *where* to put this or that statement, 
it is much more about the *why*: In the end it's math, logic and 
abstraction (among some others). A particular language is just one way 
to express those.

Of course, having some knowledge helps to get a project started, but 
this is too short-term thinking. I even learned by observation that 
having knowledge (especially about C-like languages) actually seems to 
hurt. And hell, I practically learned Java in a couple of days. 
Anything else from that point on consists in looking up the 
documentation on which class I may need.

Well, I don't consider being able to successfully scan a telephon book 
for a particalur name a special skill. I just expect people to be 
bright enough to do *that*. Are my expectations set way too high here?

> I plan to hire/pay Pascal programmers at some point for future
> commercial projects.  Who will I hire? Probably the folks that have
> worked with me on open source projects before.

Yes, that might be a good start. But you miss the main point: that these 
people showed motivation and you may even be able to judge their 
general "software-engineering" abilities (how they designed their 
projects, modularized it, how they managed it, etc.pp). Any specific 
language skills are just /not/ important, believe. Of course, the 
willingness to do it in a different language might be.


Regards,

Vinzent.

-- 
Yet a warning is nothing more than the compiler, which knows far more 
about the language than most of us, saying "hey, you're scaring me, 
man."
    -- Jack Ganssle, Embedded Muse 129