[fpc-pascal] The reason why linus torvalds hate-pascal

[Marco van de Voort]

> Op dinsdag 15-04-2008 om 10:18 uur [tijdzone +0300], schreef ik:
> > I have read in the Linux Kernel malling list some emails, and I found
> > some points made by Linus Torvalds about Pasca;
> > 
> > http://idkn.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/the-reason-why-linus-torvalds-hate-pascal/
> > 
> 
> Your statement in the blog-posting is not entirely true. What Linus does
> in this thread is arguing why goto's could be meaningfull sometimes.
> Apparently he thinks that the idea that goto's are evil in all cases
> comes from Nikolaus Wirth. To prove that he (Wirth) was wrong, he points
> at some weaknesses of the language that Wirth had developed. And that
> was indeed this old pascal version. This language didn't had any goto's
> but that didn't make it more readable. It would even be more readable if
> it had support for goto. (That's Linus statement)

(it had support, just only numerical labels. Modula2 didn't have goto's.
That came later (D2?), and same with break and continue)

> Linus also put (traditional) before pascal, just to make this clear. So
> I don't see this as a 'rant on pascal', but just arguing with some
> examples of older languages that goto's could be good in some cases.

I do see it as a rant if you raves on how it is used to torture students
etc. A point could have been made more sec.

However it shows again the image problem of pascal, cause by people making
assumptions on old compilers during their student years, and keep comparing
it to later ones forever.

If even reasonably intelligent people can't escape from it, maybe we are
doomed.