31 Aug
2017
31 Aug
'17
5:26 p.m.
In the mid 80's when I took Programming II as part of my CS degree, I used
every Pascal compiler I could get my hands on: Waterloo Pascal on VM/CMS
(mainframe), Turbo Pascal, UCSC p-System on an Apple II, and Kyan Pascal on
my Atari 800XL.
Fun times!
On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I did a lot of programming in Turbo Pascal (because it
was so fast
to compile) and I liked the language OK.
I was taught data structures in Pascal and later taught using Pascal
and it was a fine teaching language. I agree with the comment that
it is easier to use right, more guard rails.
But as you grow up, you want to take off the guard rails once in a
while and Pascal didn't let you do that. C does that routinely,
which one could argue isn't that great, but it sure is handy.
On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 06:13:39PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
--
Eric Wayte
On Wed, 30 Aug 2017 06:34:54 MDT
arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com
http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
Brian Kernighan was kind enough to find for me
everyone's favorite
Computing Sceince Technical Report, CSTR 100, "Why Pascal is Not
My Favorite Programming Language".
If I may comment on the paper itself....
I used Pascal heavily for about 5-6 years and was also
involved in implementing a variant of Pascal for a couple of
years. And I have used C since 1981. I have to say I was
quite happy using Pascal. Some of bwk's criticism (e.g. re:
sets) applies to pascal compilers, not the language. There is
also some misunderstanding (e.g.
type apple = integer; orange = integer;
This is renaming, not a new type). The array problem got
fixed somewhat in the 1985 standard, while arrays are not
even first class objects in C. Most implementations added
separate compilation as well (1985 standard considers this an
implementation issue but does allow you to declare external
references).
Things I missed in C that were in Pascal:
- enumerated types (type color = (red, blue, green))
- subranges
- nested functions (even if limited)
- first class arrays (even if limited)
- sets
- lexical non-local goto
- bounds checking
- arrays that didn't start at 0.
- function argument checking (K&R C)
- tagged variant records
All in all, both languages are quite comparable. Each
language had their strong points and weak ones. Basically Pascal
was easier to use /right/ and C more flexible. Pascal code is
easier to read than C code (even today). It was harder to
"cheat" in Pascal but the same is a useful feature of C for
low level work. To be frank the *main* thing that attracted
me to C was its conciseness :-) If Unix was written in Pascal
I would've happily continued using Pascal!
--bakul