11–20 of 118 posts
Hmm, I started reading the Wikipedia article on the Pascal programming language. I was reading about the pointer types and saw a 'with' statement... Where did I see something like that before?... Yes, JavaScript! Where it is highly discouraged to use. How is it like in Pascal?
I really wonder how Pascal and the Pascal family of languages, including modula/oberon and ada, how they became niche and how java and c++ took over the world?
I remember that Janus Ada for DOS cost thousands for a license. Java and GNU C++ were free.
Now Microsoft has the Community edition of Visual Studio for free C#, Visual BASIC.Net, C++ and other languages.
The first software "product" that I sold was created using Turbo Pascal running on DOS. I was in high school at the time. It was designed for an Orthodontist who wanted to input (using a tablet with a cross-hair "mouse") about 20 points from an X-ray of a patient's head, then perform some calculations on the geometry to predict how the jaw bones and teeth were going to develop as the patient gets older. To this day I…
Your comment comes as a kick in the gut to me. I feel the same but didn't realize it until I read your comment.
Hmm, I started reading the Wikipedia article on the Pascal programming language. I was reading about the pointer types and saw a 'with' statement... Where did I see something like that before?... Yes, JavaScript! Where it is highly discouraged to use. How is it like in Pascal?
It is discouraged in Pascal as well. Can give really nasty surprises with scoping / debugging. Well to me it is mostly gossip as I refuse to use WITH in my Pascal code so no practical experience.
This is the environment where my programming really took off from amateur to, well, less amateur. It was so fast to compile and so ergonomic compared to the alternatives. Great stuff.
MS just released Windows XP, I was in high school. Back in those days, people used Basic, Pascal, and C for programming competitions.
Already had some experiences with Basic, and found C to be too "low level" for my taste, I picked Pascal. Next year, I jumped into Delphi: learning Win32 GUI basics and some database programming with MySQL. Probably pretty advanced for a high school kids, since most of my friends were interested in music or games :)
I never used Pascal/Delphi for work though, because Java has been a major player in mobile development scene (J2ME -> BlackBerry -> Android....).
One of the things I appreciate about Pascal compilers is: blazing fast compile time. And I think it still applies to FPC (Free Pascal Compiler).
You can rebuild the whole compiler + basic libraries from scratch under 5 minutes. Can't say the same thing about GCC. Well the last time I did this was in 2014 (or 2015?), though.
Now, if I want a native compiler with fast compilation speed, I'd pick Go or Nim.....
Hmm, I started reading the Wikipedia article on the Pascal programming language. I was reading about the pointer types and saw a 'with' statement... Where did I see something like that before?... Yes, JavaScript! Where it is highly discouraged to use. How is it like in Pascal?
It is discouraged in Pascal as well. Can give really nasty surprises with scoping / debugging. Well to me it is mostly gossip as I refuse to use WITH in my Pascal code so no practical experience.
Pascal was one of my earliest exposures to programming. MS just released Windows XP, I was in high school. Back in those days, people used Basic, Pascal, and C for programming competitions. Already had some experiences with Basic, and found C to be too "low level" for my taste, I picked Pascal. Next year, I jumped into Delphi: learning Win32 GUI basics and some database programming with MySQL. Probably pretty advance…
But I do share a similar Pascal story, just a decade earlier. :)
[0] - People keep forgetting there are AOT toolchains (and JIT caches) for them.
The first software "product" that I sold was created using Turbo Pascal running on DOS. I was in high school at the time. It was designed for an Orthodontist who wanted to input (using a tablet with a cross-hair "mouse") about 20 points from an X-ray of a patient's head, then perform some calculations on the geometry to predict how the jaw bones and teeth were going to develop as the patient gets older. To this day I…
Your comment comes as a kick in the gut to me. I feel the same but didn't realize it until I read your comment.