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Why I use Object Pascal

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Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#161

Post by mixmastamyk »

ksec wrote: post #59
dehef wrote: post #14

In my university (in Paris) we used to learn programming that way for the licence degree 1st year -> pascal only 2nd year -> c only 3d year -> java only That was a very nice learning curve for the core course of programming.

For absolute beginners, I still think Pascal, or Turbo Pascal is best to start. It has a syntax that doesn't scare people away, and very readable. Deploying is also 1 trillion times easier then what ever we have today, ( C , Python , Ruby , Node.js ... ) I would have picked Ruby if it could compiled into a single executable file, and if the Dev environment actually work on Windows. P.S: It does work on Windows, but n…

Absolute beginners don’t deploy though, they write lessons down and then hit run. “Scripting” langs work great for this.

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#162

Post by emodendroket »

chubot wrote: post #146
StillBored wrote: post #88

As I get older, I'm strongly swinging into the camp that thinks languages should have strongly restrictive syntax. Object pascal is one of those languages which is both low level enough to cleanly map to efficient code, as well as high level enough not to feel really restrictive. Its a language that is completely misunderstood because far to many people read a couple critical essays, and believed everything they read…

I don't think anyone really disagrees with you -- most people have problems with the syntax of Perl, C, and C++. Sure, they can get used to it, particularly with C because it's small, but the syntax isn't why they use the language. Somewhat surprisingly, I think Perl's syntax is one of the reasons that Python became popular. Perl can do pretty much everything Python can, and it came significantly earlier. Yet people…

> Somewhat surprisingly, I think Perl's syntax is one of the reasons that Python became popular. Perl can do pretty much everything Python can, and it came significantly earlier. Yet people gravitated toward Python.

Surely the ugliness of OO Perl and having to deal with references/dereferences/data structure flattening by default is the biggest reason. Otherwise, why would Ruby have become popular around the same time despite not necessarily being very readable?

e: Also the Perl 6 debacle like the other guy said.

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#163

Post by mixmastamyk »

wiz21c wrote: post #18
dehef wrote: post #14

In my university (in Paris) we used to learn programming that way for the licence degree 1st year -> pascal only 2nd year -> c only 3d year -> java only That was a very nice learning curve for the core course of programming.

Pascal is definitely a very good language for teaching the basic of procedural/imperative programming. It has several good properties : it teaches you structured data (which helps to understand formalization), is strongly typed (which helps to reduce the uncertainty about the behavior of a program which in turn helps student to understand what they do precisely); you don't have to face pointers (which in my own exper…

I learned pointers in my first semester of CS with ^Pascal, and glad I did because the syntax was more readable.

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#164

Post by ckok »

tekacs wrote: post #85

Folks interested in Object Pascal might also be interested in http://www.elementscompiler.com/elements/oxygene/ (no affiliation, but as an observer it seems relevant and interesting).

I am obviously biased, thanks for mentioning it :)

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#165

Post by whatyoucantsay »

jandrese wrote: post #145
whatyoucantsay wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be 50... and you're still on HN! Are you still an engineer? If so, what stack are you using now?

You are off by about a decade. FreeBSD 2.0 was released in the mid 90s. I still skim Slashdot too. Most of the time I'm working on ancient versions of RHEL that are never connected to the internet so I don't exactly get to use "stacks" or anything that wants to pull code from Github. If it doesn't come on the RHEL 5.5 disk it's not available. You might be surprised how much you can do with a modest CGI script, a touc…

I clearly misjudged the time of Pascal's popularity and have never heard of RHEL but thanks for the response!

What is Slashdot's strength from your POV?

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#166

Post by emodendroket »

krylon wrote: post #25

I feel kind of sheepish to admit that "Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language" had a huge impact on me and caused me to avoid Pascal until I was forced to deal with it because a coworker quit and dropped maintenance of an in-house application in my lap. I was happy to realize that most of the criticism in that essay no longer applies to relatively recent versions of the language/IDE (Delphi 7 in my case).…

Despite that article being a venerated classic I felt kind of put off when I first read it because the part about arrays and strings having sizes seems... well, I guess it's aged poorly.

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#167

Post by kibwen »

wainstead wrote: post #150
kibwen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perl can do pretty much everything Python can, and it came significantly earlier. Yet people gravitated toward Python. I don't think syntax is the main culprit here, and Perl is only four years older than Python. For about 15 years Python tried, unsuccessfully, to compete with Perl as the premier language for shell scripting and sysadmin tasks. It wasn't until around 2005 that Python finally caught on, its rise coi…

I have long thought Perl can do anything Python can, and then some. I still use Perl one-liners to find/change strings in code bases: perl -pi -e 's/somestring/newstring/g' $(ag -l --python Foo) Does Python have an equivalent? I think the fabulous Python libraries for data science have really propelled the language to the top of the list, in terms of users.

Agreed that Python still isn't as good at Perl at command-line scripting (which isn't a denigration; Python is good at it, but Perl was born for it). Also agreed that Python's current trajectory is buoyed by data science (compare Ruby, whose ascent via the web went hand-in-hand with Python, but which never took off for other domains and faded as new languages entered the web space). But that's a separate phenomenon, and probably has even less to do with comparisons between Python's and Perl's syntax (for years the data science crowd has been demanding more syntax from Python, e.g. a dedicated operator for matrix multiplication).

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#168

Post by jandrese »

jandrese wrote: post #145
whatyoucantsay wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be 50... and you're still on HN! Are you still an engineer? If so, what stack are you using now?

You are off by about a decade. FreeBSD 2.0 was released in the mid 90s. I still skim Slashdot too. Most of the time I'm working on ancient versions of RHEL that are never connected to the internet so I don't exactly get to use "stacks" or anything that wants to pull code from Github. If it doesn't come on the RHEL 5.5 disk it's not available. You might be surprised how much you can do with a modest CGI script, a touc…

RHEL is RedHat Enterprise Linux. RHEL 5.5 came out in 2010, to give you an idea of the speed of the IT department in some places.

Slashdot picks up stories that Ars and HN miss sometimes. It just adds some breadth to my tech news sources.

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#169

Post by bpyne »

whatyoucantsay wrote: post #139
jandrese wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My High School programming class was taught in Pascal (Turbo Pascal version 3 IIRC). I remember liking it just fine, but when I went to the university I switched to C because everything interesting was written in C. Also, there were no Pascal compilers in the FreeBSD (2.0) ports tree back then. I had a notion that Pascal was a "toy teaching language" too, but for what I was doing that didn't really matter.

You must be 50... and you're still on HN! Are you still an engineer? If so, what stack are you using now?

I'm 50, still on HN, and still an engineer (although I do a lot more ops and analysis nowadays).

As far as stacks go, I use whatever suits the application I want to write. I use: - PL/SQL (mandated by my employer) for generating large batch files in an ETL process - Python for validating the files mentioned above - I'm evaluating the OCaml compiler set for a language I'd like to create - I'm interested in Elixir for back end processes - R for ML - Prolog for prototyping a rules engine that may become the seed for a product - I'd like to get familiar with a JS-based web framework like Angular 2 or React or one of the other ones I've been reading about - I'm looking at Flash to develop a game with my daughter, who seems interested in coding.

I think it's important for older developers to assure younger ones that you remain interested in trying new tools and technologies as you get older. The curiosity and passion for creating don't abate. But, after you stay with an employer for a while and develop critical applications for it, then you get caught in maintaining it in that technology. Essentially, you get frozen in time in a technology stack due to the success of the app you wrote.

You also begin spending more time on ops and support.

But, you pick and choose times to introduce newer technologies, which you largely have to evaluate on your own time.

You don't have to leave the field or slink into irrelevance just because you're older.

Re: Why I use Object Pascal

#170

Post by emodendroket »

wainstead wrote: post #150
kibwen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perl can do pretty much everything Python can, and it came significantly earlier. Yet people gravitated toward Python. I don't think syntax is the main culprit here, and Perl is only four years older than Python. For about 15 years Python tried, unsuccessfully, to compete with Perl as the premier language for shell scripting and sysadmin tasks. It wasn't until around 2005 that Python finally caught on, its rise coi…

I have long thought Perl can do anything Python can, and then some. I still use Perl one-liners to find/change strings in code bases: perl -pi -e 's/somestring/newstring/g' $(ag -l --python Foo) Does Python have an equivalent? I think the fabulous Python libraries for data science have really propelled the language to the top of the list, in terms of users.

> I have long thought Perl can do anything Python can

I mean, yes, they're both Turing-complete languages, so one can be used to do anything the other can. I guess the actual question is whether it makes those things easier to do, and I think the same properties that make Perl great for one-liners make it harder for long-lived, large projects.

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