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

[imp@bsdimp.com (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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