"Eating quiche" used to be slang for a sexual act. It's when the joke is most funny that we need to recognize mechanisms of exclusion.
Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
31–40 of 58 posts
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#32"Eating quiche" used to be slang for a sexual act. It's when the joke is most funny that we need to recognize mechanisms of exclusion.
The reference is pretty clearly to "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" (1982), which was itself a satire of exclusionary masculinity.
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#33This is the post referenced in the opening of The Story of Mel; which may also be of interest. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
Both are great epics of hacking history. I just wonder whether there are any more?
Sure; the 500 mile email comes to mind (it gets reposted here periodically):
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#34Although it's meant to be sarcastic, I believe it nicely exposes typical things developers used to argue about back then, not that different from modern arguments about JS vs compiled-to-js, elixir vs erlang, GC vs manual memory management, etc.
Anybody knows some more serious piece from those times that would show the actual arguments of, say, PASCAL opponents?
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#35Although it's meant to be sarcastic, I believe it nicely exposes typical things developers used to argue about back then, not that different from modern arguments about JS vs compiled-to-js, elixir vs erlang, GC vs manual memory management, etc. Anybody knows some more serious piece from those times that would show the actual arguments of, say, PASCAL opponents?
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/bwk-on-pasc...
By Brian Kernighan
This was written in 1981, so a lot changed after he wrote this.
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#36Although it's meant to be sarcastic, I believe it nicely exposes typical things developers used to argue about back then, not that different from modern arguments about JS vs compiled-to-js, elixir vs erlang, GC vs manual memory management, etc. Anybody knows some more serious piece from those times that would show the actual arguments of, say, PASCAL opponents?
I'll give you an argument, PASCAL was ... ... ... ... ... slow
Academics were big kahunas with unrestricted accounts on mainframes, everyone else got tiny tiny slices of time. How tiny? A trash 80 gave you more processing power than an student account on the VAX.
Academics thought PASCAL was the bees knees. Everyone else could see it was unusable for practical work.
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#37One of the programs closest to my heart which I use multiple times a day, "Beyond Compare" is written in PASCAL, Delphi more specifically. I know very little about PASCAL, but I know that Beyond Compare is rock solid.
Total Commander is also written in Delphi.
Such a great program I would still be using if I was on windows.
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#38This is the post referenced in the opening of The Story of Mel; which may also be of interest. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
Both are great epics of hacking history. I just wonder whether there are any more?
Another one is the Unix Recovery Legend: (also posted here periodically)
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/recovery.html
It's also included in the Unix Administration Horror Stories, which was posted here recently-ish. But it's more just tails of people screwing up in creative ways. http://www.yak.net/carmen/unix_horror_stories
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have actual nightmares about developing in Delphi. I can't believe there's a Delphi project that people speak this highly of.
The one thing Delphi really did wrong was to make GUI programming too easy. It was just too simple, too tempting, to just put all your code into your MainForm.pas, making it grow to over 10'000 LOC. If (and only if) the programmers took care to avoid code duplication and cared about writing good, solid code, Delphi rocked. Just like Lazarus ( http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ ) does today. One of my weapons of choice nowad…
The only thing I wish it had is more documentation for those of us who never did any Pascal. I love Lazarus too, but it's quite a lot to take in when you're used to other languages. I basically have to "Guess" how to write code, which can become a lot more work with Delphi / FreePascal.
Re: Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL (1982)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have actual nightmares about developing in Delphi. I can't believe there's a Delphi project that people speak this highly of.
Delphi's still around. You can even write mobile apps in it. http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi
I am actually surprised by the number of clients I've dealt with developing products in some form of Delphi and other archaic languages.