41–50 of 58 posts
This 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?
I am outraged by all this quiche-shaming.
Although 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Compilers with array bounds checking (...) stifle creativity, (...) and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Absolute classic. The words to live by.
Earlier 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…
Today this is true for a more obvious reason; Pascal is legacy.
Our codebase is one of the cleanest I have worked with, and it compiles very fast. We are using freepascal, and even though I would not use it for my hobby projects (which I try to do mostly in scheme or factor) I would say it is one of the more pleasant languages I have worked in.
This 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?