[fpc-pascal] Pascal is alive!!??

[Matt Emson]

> > [explaining classes is not really harder than program/unit]

> I disagree with this part. Sure, you will get questions of about
> programs/units, but the purpose of the keywords belonging to them is way
> easier to explain than public, static and class.

To a complete novice, there's not really much in it. Honestly. In fact,
students get to grips with basic OOPD fairly quickly. It often removes them
from the problem and lets them visualise a solution more clearly.

> I want to throw another argument in the arena: libraries. The Java OOP
> libraries are a powerfull framework, but this adds complexity. Java
> standard I/O is such a maze of complexity, I'm quite sure readln is easier
> to explain than streams and tokenizers.

Sure, but Java's API is akin to Win32 API. There's always the scope to write
a simplified version if one needs to. Whether theat defeats the object (no
pun intended) is another matter.

>> [Java doesn't have pointers but references]

> I call references an eufemism for pointers.

References are typically not pointers. References are more like a "by value"
but operating on a central datastore. How languages choose to implement this
is not relevant. The fact that usually it's as a typed pointer is just down
to the architect of the compiler.