From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1696ae,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid1696ae,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal? Date: 1996/07/23 Message-ID: <4t1mbu$cb2@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 170446326 references: <4rs76l$aqd@ccshst05.uoguelph.ca> <4sdlco$rtl@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.dos.programmer,comp.lang.ada nntp-posting-user: ok Date: 1996-07-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: >Gabor Egressy (gegressy@uoguelph.ca) wrote: >: Here is a quote from Brian W. Kernighan of "The C Programming Language" fame. >: He is also an internationally respected lecturer who has been there since >: the inception of UNIX and C. >: "I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond its >: original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy language, suitable for >: teaching but not for real programming." >: Draw your own conclusions. I have read that paper, and have often recommended it to people. But by now it is an OLD paper, so it is important to understand that Kernighan is basically talking about ISO 7185 Level 0 Pascal. - Turbo Pascal is a completely different language - Delphi is a completely different language - ISO Pascal Extended (with or without the Object-Oriented Extensions to Pascal) is a completely different language It would be very easy for someone familiar with ISO Pascal Extended to write a paper "Why C is not my favourite programming language" pointing out that unlike (the current international standard entitled to the name) Pascal, C - does not have modules - does not have type-safe separate compilation - does not have Ada-style "type schemas" - does not have syntax for string concatenation, comparison, substring - does not have support for arrays whose size is not known until run time - does not have nested procedures - does not have complex arithmetic The only thing is, after studying ISO 10206 I can see little reason for using Pascal instead of Ada; Ada has everything that Pascal has and then some. As for the 1993 Object Oriented Extensions to Pascal, I greatly prefer the object model of Ada 95 (having to *manually* destroy every object because objects are really pointers does *not* appeal to me). My answer to the question that is the Subject of this thread is - don't learn Pascal first - don't learn C first either - do learn Scheme first (try "The Little Schemer", then "Simply Scheme") - or learn Ada first. -- Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ??? Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.