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

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

[Doug McIlroy]

>  If Unix was written in Pascal I would've happily continued using Pascal!

Amusing in the context of Brian's piece, which essentially says if Unix
could have been written in Pascal, then Pascal wouldn't have been Pascal.

doug\

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

[Bakul Shah]

> On Aug 31, 2017, at 10:49 AM, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
>> If Unix was written in Pascal I would've happily continued using Pascal!
> 
> Amusing in the context of Brian's piece, which essentially says if Unix
> could have been written in Pascal, then Pascal wouldn't have been Pascal.
> 
> doug\

My point being that perhaps the success of Unix had more to do
with the success of C than anything else.  And I believe Unix
success had more to with the set of s/w tools it came with
than C. 

For most user programs either language would be been fine. 
Given its evoltion C had the necessary features to implement 
an OS kernel but I believe Pascal could've been easily (&
minimally) extended to something equivalent. Note that Per
Brinch Hansen & his students did write an OS (Solo) in 
Concurrent Pascal[1].

Also note that C itself went through a few iterations while
Pascal was basically the same language that prof. Wirth
defined until 1985.

--bakul

[1] Solo was a university project + it lacked the greatest
strength of Unix (a set of s/w tools).  So it stayed a uni
project. Concurrent Pascal was a significant extension over
sequential Pascal but PBH explained his rationale by way of
his excellent book on Operating System Design!

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

[Wesley Parish]

No, such a Pascal would've been more of an Ada if developed like C++; more of an Oberon or Modula-2 
if minimalist.

I (officially) learned programming with Turbo Pascal. However, I'd already read both Comer's and 
Tanenbaum's books on operating system design and implementation, and likewise Brinch Hansen's 
book on Solo and Concurrent Pascal.

It didn't take long to work out that you could put together larger projects even with Turbo C than you 
could with Turbo Pascal, and the Turbo Pascal efforts towards handling large projects were a fudge.

I liked Oberon - I think Wirth came closer to the minimalism of C with Oberon.

Wesley Parish

Quoting Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu>:

> > If Unix was written in Pascal I would've happily continued using
> Pascal!
> 
> Amusing in the context of Brian's piece, which essentially says if Unix
> could have been written in Pascal, then Pascal wouldn't have been
> Pascal.
> 
> doug\
>  



"I have supposed that he who buys a Method means to learn it." - Ferdinand Sor,
Method for Guitar

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- Samuel Goldwyn

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

[Larry McVoy]

> I liked Oberon - I think Wirth came closer to the minimalism of C with Oberon.

I went and looked it up and left when I say BEGIN END.  Really?


	IF (expr)
	BEGIN
		blah
		blah
		blah
	END

I'm sorry but I'm with whoever it was that said { } are better than
BEGIN END.  Seems trivial but it's not to me.

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

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2017-08-31 17:47, Larry McVoy wrote:

> 	IF (expr)
> 	BEGIN
> 		blah
> 		blah
> 		blah
> 	END
> 
> I'm sorry but I'm with whoever it was that said { } are better than
> BEGIN END.  Seems trivial but it's not to me.

IMO, that's taking 1 part of a large coherent whole and judging by that.
I am terrible with metaphors and similes, but maybe a bit like saying "I
don't like the GPL because it restricts what I can do with my code."

Here's another construct from C:

for (i = n; i > 0; --i) {
    blah();
}

In a language like Pascal (really Algol), that is

FOR i = n TO 0 DO
    Blah()
DONE

That's much closer typing-wise, isn't it?  That's because of the melding
of the brackets with the control structure keywords.  But you can't do
that _and_ have braces.

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
Do obvious transformation on domain to reply privately _only_ on Usenet.

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

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 8:45 PM, Ian Zimmerman <itz at very.loosely.org> wrote:

> On 2017-08-31 17:47, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> >       IF (expr)
> >       BEGIN
> >               blah
> >               blah
> >               blah
> >       END
> >
> > I'm sorry but I'm with whoever it was that said { } are better than
> > BEGIN END.  Seems trivial but it's not to me.
>
> IMO, that's taking 1 part of a large coherent whole and judging by that.
> I am terrible with metaphors and similes, but maybe a bit like saying "I
> don't like the GPL because it restricts what I can do with my code."
>
> Here's another construct from C:
>
> for (i = n; i > 0; --i) {
>     blah();
> }
>
> In a language like Pascal (really Algol), that is
>
> FOR i = n TO 0 DO
>     Blah()
> DONE
>
> That's much closer typing-wise, isn't it?  That's because of the melding
> of the brackets with the control structure keywords.  But you can't do
> that _and_ have braces.
>

Today  I might agree with you because of the fancy IDEs coupled with the
huge screen size makes this a little easier to read.

When I learned, screen space was at a premium (24x80) so I had to make
every line count and pack in as much as I could. And any short cut to
typing also helped me write things faster, so I gravitated to C as soon as
it was available at an affordable price... It also was easier to do via
dialup at 1200 or 2400 baud.

But then again, I still write in 'C' because I find it easiest to grok
after 35 years of use... I'm also teaching python to my son and haven't
introduced C and compilers and makefiles. python just runs and the
indenting thing, though it offends my aesthetic, isn't a big deal with a
decent editor.

Warner
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[TUHS] Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language Unearthed!

[Larry McVoy]

+1

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 09:53:15PM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 8:45 PM, Ian Zimmerman <itz at very.loosely.org> wrote:
> 
> > On 2017-08-31 17:47, Larry McVoy wrote:
> >
> > >       IF (expr)
> > >       BEGIN
> > >               blah
> > >               blah
> > >               blah
> > >       END
> > >
> > > I'm sorry but I'm with whoever it was that said { } are better than
> > > BEGIN END.  Seems trivial but it's not to me.
> >
> > IMO, that's taking 1 part of a large coherent whole and judging by that.
> > I am terrible with metaphors and similes, but maybe a bit like saying "I
> > don't like the GPL because it restricts what I can do with my code."
> >
> > Here's another construct from C:
> >
> > for (i = n; i > 0; --i) {
> >     blah();
> > }
> >
> > In a language like Pascal (really Algol), that is
> >
> > FOR i = n TO 0 DO
> >     Blah()
> > DONE
> >
> > That's much closer typing-wise, isn't it?  That's because of the melding
> > of the brackets with the control structure keywords.  But you can't do
> > that _and_ have braces.
> >
> 
> Today  I might agree with you because of the fancy IDEs coupled with the
> huge screen size makes this a little easier to read.
> 
> When I learned, screen space was at a premium (24x80) so I had to make
> every line count and pack in as much as I could. And any short cut to
> typing also helped me write things faster, so I gravitated to C as soon as
> it was available at an affordable price... It also was easier to do via
> dialup at 1200 or 2400 baud.
> 
> But then again, I still write in 'C' because I find it easiest to grok
> after 35 years of use... I'm also teaching python to my son and haven't
> introduced C and compilers and makefiles. python just runs and the
> indenting thing, though it offends my aesthetic, isn't a big deal with a
> decent editor.
> 
> Warner

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

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

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> On Aug 31, 2017, at 8:53 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
> But then again, I still write in 'C' because I find it easiest to grok after 35 years of use... I'm also teaching python to my son and haven't introduced C and compilers and makefiles. python just runs and the indenting thing, though it offends my aesthetic, isn't a big deal with a decent editor.

Wasn't Logo supposed to be the teaching language for the young ones?  "to turtle" still sticks in my mind, even though I never actually used the language.

--lyndon

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

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote:
 |> On Aug 31, 2017, at 8:53 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
 |> 
 |> But then again, I still write in 'C' because I find it easiest to \
 |> grok after 35 years of use... I'm also teaching python to my son \
 |> and haven't introduced C and compilers and makefiles. python just \
 |> runs and the indenting thing, though it offends my aesthetic, isn't \
 |> a big deal with a decent editor.
 |
 |Wasn't Logo supposed to be the teaching language for the young ones? \
 | "to turtle" still sticks in my mind, even though I never actually \
 |used the language.

Never really having used it, but turtle and Smalltalk come
together in my mind?

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)