Re: [TUHS] Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!

On Wed, 30 Aug 2017 06:34:54 MDT arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote: 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