Castle Engine – Free open-source cross-platform 3D/2D game engine using Pascal

Post by spookie » Mon, Feb 19, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

mirpa wrote: post #38

vintagedave wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words can be helpful for people who don't like symbols? C is very terse, Pascal verbose. It's like C vs Python. Single-character symbols can be hard to parse for some people in the same way words are for you. A good IDE / code structure will make the structure and code easy to differentiate anyway.

I see no difference in learning symbols in order to read source code and learning alphabet in order to read words/sentences.

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Feb 19, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #2

https://castle-engine.io/why_pascal I'm gonna have to put a damper on things, here. Most of the reasons listed are things available in any other modern language (safety, cross-platformness, libraries...) but one of the things cited is readability. I work on Pascal code 8 hours a day, and it is not more readable then conventional C syntax ; I'd argue it's much less. The fact that you need to use entire words to denote…

Post by lelanthran » Mon, Feb 19, 2024, 11:31 AM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #42

lelanthran wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that you need to use entire words to denote syntax makes it much harder for your brain to parse things : Instead of immediately seeing "this is code structure" and "this is actual code", you need to actually read the words to make that distinction. It is very counter-productive and a bad design solution, imo. While I agree that it gets slightly tedious to read daily, I have to say that there is no language…

In my experience, Python, C and JavaScript* all have this property; whereas I have to relearn Pascal, Haskell, sh and (to an extent) Rust every time I go away from them for a bit. I think this is more a property of you or I than of particular languages. *: excluding `for (… of …)` and `for (… in …)` – I can never remember which is which. `for (… of …)` is the one you can use with Arrays and other iterables.

Post by jameshart » Mon, Feb 19, 2024, 12:47 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #45

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Python, C and JavaScript* all have this property; whereas I have to relearn Pascal, Haskell, sh and (to an extent) Rust every time I go away from them for a bit. I think this is more a property of you or I than of particular languages. *: excluding `for (… of …)` and `for (… in …)` – I can never remember which is which. `for (… of …)` is the one you can use with Arrays and other iterables.

> *: excluding `for (… of …)` and `for (… in …)` There's more that will trip you up in JS if you leave it for too long. Off the top of my head: 1. Which function definition (`function` or `=>`) do I need to use in order to make the `this` keyword point at the correct object in an event handler/anonymous function/foreach parameter? 2. I see code with both `!==` and `!=` - what is the significance of using both? 3. Lon…

Post by mirpa » Mon, Feb 19, 2024, 12:55 PM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #44

mirpa wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no difference in learning symbols in order to read source code and learning alphabet in order to read words/sentences.

Most probably you already learnt the alphabet in the past, and there is 0 cognitive load for your brain to parse it. Unless you come from a language using another alphabet, but then unfortunately you need to bow to Latin alphabet rule over programming languages in any case.

  if ((input = 'y') or (input = 'Y')) then
    begin
      writeln ('blah blah');
    end
  else if ((input = 'n') or (input = 'N')) then
    begin
      writeln ('blah');
    end
  else
    begin
      writeln ('Input invalid!');
    end;

  if input == 'y' || input = 'Y'
  {
      writeln ('blah blah');
  } else if input = 'n' || input = 'N'
  {
      writeln ('blah');
  } else
  {
      writeln ('Input invalid!');
  }