C++ vs Pascal

[Man-wai Chang]

Are schools and universities in the States still teaching Pascal?

Isn't C++ as good as Pascal?

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[gwowen]

Are schools and universities in the States still teaching Pascal?

I'm sure some still are.

Isn't C++ as good as Pascal?

As a first language for didactic purposes? I think C, C++ and Java
are all equally lousy. Pascal is distinctly better, Python better
again. YMMV

 

[Man-wai Chang]

Are schools and universities in the States still teaching Pascal?

I'm sure some still are.
As a first language for didactic purposes? I think C, C++ and Java
are all equally lousy. Pascal is distinctly better, Python better
again. YMMV

But Pascal has no practical value at all. Besides, learning to tame a
devil is more important than believing in a "good" tool.

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[Mike McCarty]

As a first language for didactic purposes? I think C, C++ and Java
are all equally lousy. Pascal is distinctly better, Python better
again. YMMV

Pascal is the second language I ever learned, after BASIC (at age ~14).

Pascal is also the second _worst_ language I ever learned, after BASIC.

I was never so happy as I was the day I found C and knew I would never have to go back. Today, I think I would almost rather program in BASIC than in Pascal.

As you say, YMMV.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

But Pascal has no practical value at all. Besides, learning to tame a
devil is more important than believing in a "good" tool.

Good and ethical programming, to be exact, is a practice and discipline,
NOT a tool! It's the programmer that matters, not the tool!!!

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[Man-wai Chang]

Pascal is the second language I ever learned, after BASIC (at age ~14).

Pascal is also the second _worst_ language I ever learned, after BASIC.
I was never so happy as I was the day I found C and knew I would never have to go back. Today, I think I would almost rather program in BASIC than in Pascal.

As you say, YMMV.

Because we still have Visual Basic .Net now. You can really tell Window$
to do things your way!

Where is the standard Pascal now, after Delphi?


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[Nick Keighley]

But Pascal has no practical value at all. Besides, learning to tame a
devil is more important than believing in a "good" tool.

few things have /no/ practical value. I think if Pascal helps people
to learn to program then it has shown that it has a practical value.
It's very constraints encourage a clean programming style.

Taming a devil can be a dis-spiriting process. Let people solve easy
problems first then go on to learning harder ones. "The first journey
begins with but a single step"

 

[Nick Keighley]

Pascal is the second language I ever learned, after BASIC (at age ~14).

Pascal is also the second _worst_ language I ever learned, after BASIC.

Richie (I think) wrote "Why Pascal is Not My Fovourite Language".
Straight ISO-Standard Pascal was a bit of a git. But most Pascal's had
extensions that made them bearable (strings!). DEC Pascal, various Mac
pascals and Turbo were all ok- though different!

I was never so happy as I was the day I found C and knew I would never have to go back.

C looked like line noise when i first saw it (but I've seen perl since
then) and all those headers were sure confusing!

 Today, I think I would almost rather program in BASIC than in Pascal.
gak!

As you say, YMMV.

indeed. I'd point people at Python for a beginners language now,
though part of me thinks Strong Typeing would be good for 'em.

 

[Man-wai Chang]

Taming a devil can be a dis-spiriting process. Let people solve easy

problems first then go on to learning harder ones. "The first journey
begins with but a single step"

How about letting them know about the Dark Side first, then let them
find their favorite tool?

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[Quint Rankid]

Are schools and universities in the States still teaching Pascal?

I don't know, but a visit here http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.pascal/topics?hl=en
where the last post is dated from 2004, suggests that it probably is
not taught, or at least not very much. If it were taught there would
probably be more posts from students asking for help. Although usenet
is losing popularity. Posts that pop up after a search for pascal at
www.stackoverflow.com suggest that Delphi is being used more.

Isn't C++ as good as Pascal?

I suppose it depends on how you define "good".

 

[Man-wai Chang]

Isn't C++ as good as Pascal?

I suppose it depends on how you define "good".

As good and simple as dBase/Clipper/Foxpro?

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[Quint Rankid]

indeed. I'd point people at Python for a beginners language now,
though part of me thinks Strong Typeing would be good for 'em.

Maybe some other things would be good for them too.
http://www.codingthewheel.com/game-dev/john-carmack-script-interpreters-considered-harmful

I'm not trying to start a language flame war, honestly. I'll let this
guy do it for me. http://xkcd.com/353/

Python has some interesting features, but I tend to think that some of
that might be difficult for beginners. For example, I agree with you
that strong typing is a good thing.

If Python is "good", whatever that means, then why isn't Lisp,
"better"? http://xkcd.com/224/

 

[Dombo]

Op 29-Feb-12 17:49, Nick Keighley schreef:

Richie (I think) wrote "Why Pascal is Not My Fovourite Language".

The other one (Kernighan):
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

Maybe some other things would be good for them too.
http://www.codingthewheel.com/game-dev/john-carmack-script-interpreters-considered-harmful

Pretty misleading URL. The article boils down to

"... scripting languages weren't really designed for large-scale
development efforts involving millions of lines of code."

which I suspect many c.l.c++ readers would agree with.

/Jorgen

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

I don't know, but a visit here http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.pascal/topics?hl=en
where the last post is dated from 2004, suggests that it probably is
not taught, or at least not very much.

There is no comp.lang.pascal on my news server. There are a handful of
comp.lang.pascal.*, so it was probably split in the early 1990s.
Google has probably picked up an obsolete group, so it's no surprise
it's empty.

/Jorgen

 

[Donkey Hottie]

29.2.2012 14:02, Man-wai Chang kirjoitti:

Are schools and universities in the States still teaching Pascal?

Isn't C++ as good as Pascal?

"Standard" Pascal is not much. Microsoft had Pascal, and it was strange
with all thos QQ.. names in it. It died.

Pacal has evolved. Object Pascal as in Delphi and others is quite good.
I think Java learned much about Borland about language and library.

Ada was maybe the next generation of Pascal, but it is quite huge, and
it's golder era is in history. It never really took right with Objects
and OO. It is said to be OP, not OO. Ada still lives in Oracle offerings
as a subset called PL/SQL.

I have done coding in Delphi, and PL/SQL. I really enjoyded those times.

Pascal was the second language for me, right after Basic. I never
understood its complexities like pointers. Only after learning and using
C programming language with its measly 28 keywords I understood
pointers, and Pascal finally.

I have not much coded in C, maybe 1 major project. Somewhere in -92 I
switched to C++ and wrote own portable class library, which I used with
great success next 10 years. I also made couple of projects with Delphi
1.0, and I enjoed the tool(s). The products were quiet succesful too.

Nowadays I do mostly Java EE only. Also some C# when integrating Java
based WebServices with .Net.

 

[Asger Joergensen]

Hi Quint

I don't know, but a visit here http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.pascal/topics?hl=en
where the last post is dated from 2004, suggests that it probably is
not taught, or at least not very much. If it were taught there would
probably be more posts from students asking for help. Although usenet
is losing popularity. Posts that pop up after a search for pascal at
www.stackoverflow.com suggest that Delphi is being used more.

I think its more or less the only Pascal there is used now and it have
a lot of users and a thriving community:

https://forums.embarcadero.com/category.jspa?categoryID=12

Spoke to soon I just came to think about Free Pascal the last stable
release of that compiler is dated: January 1, 2012; 57 days ago, on wiki
and it supports all major platforms, so I guess somebody must be using it.

Best regards
Asger-P

 

[Brian Drummond]

29.2.2012 14:02, Man-wai Chang kirjoitti:
"Standard" Pascal is not much. Microsoft had Pascal, and it was strange
with all thos QQ.. names in it. It died.

Pacal has evolved. Object Pascal as in Delphi and others is quite good.
I think Java learned much about Borland about language and library.

Ada was maybe the next generation of Pascal, but it is quite huge, and
it's golder era is in history. It never really took right with Objects
and OO. It is said to be OP, not OO. Ada still lives in Oracle offerings
as a subset called PL/SQL.

Incorrect on several points. Ada is huge compared with Pascal, but fairly
small, clean and simple compared with C++. Since 1995 it has been as
fully object-oriented as C++ can claim to be, though you may have been
thinking of the 1983 dialect which (as you say) never took right with
objects. The 2005 dialect allows more familiar-looking expression of OO
programming (object.method notation) and so on.

Most rational objections to Ada are based in the 1980s - an Ada compiler
can bring a 1980's workstation to its knees, and who needs things like
multi-tasking at the language level, it's not like there are any multi-
core CPUs around (except the 370) right? And Ada compilers are too
expensive...

Now that any self-respecting build of gcc includes Ada, things are a bit
different.

As to when its golden age was, is, or will be, it's probably too soon to
say.

- Brian

 

[Nick Keighley]

Maybe some other things would be good for them too.http://www.codingthewheel.com/game-dev/john-carmack-script-interprete...

I'm not trying to start a language flame war, honestly. I'll let this
guy do it for me. http://xkcd.com/353/

Python has some interesting features, but I tend to think that some of
that might be difficult for beginners.  For example, I agree with you
that strong typing is a good thing.

If Python is "good", whatever that means, then why isn't Lisp,
"better"?http://xkcd.com/224/

I'm-not-starting-a-language-war-but
Lisp has:-
- unusual syntax
- it's a very big langauge
- little out-of-the-box support for modern programming (GUIs,
web, etc.)

 

[Nick Keighley]

Pretty misleading URL. The article boils down to

    "... scripting languages weren't really designed for large-scale
    development efforts involving millions of lines of code."

which I suspect many c.l.c++ readers would agree with.

must things entitled "X is evil" are nonsense