6 Jul
2021
6 Jul
'21
7:05 p.m.
Exactly my point - *theory vs practice*. It can be a petri dish, but that
is *not necessarily* a bad thing. Different extended Pascal/Mod-2* et al *all
'fixed' the string data type in some manner (not even saying the
different solutions are good or bad). But it always comes back to what was
(*is*) theory *vs*. practice. As others have pointed out. In the case of
Strings, you either made them more like C strings or you made them
basically useless - because, in practice, the null-terminated string works
pretty darned well for production code and can be made to be secure, but
the programmer can not be lazy.
Hey, I personally look like Pascal for what it is and I still think it's
the best teaching tool, particularly with Clancy and Cooper's book for
beginning programmers. I personally learned both languages around the same
time, but I had already been writing in a number of assemblers, BASIC,
Fortran, Algol-W, SAIL, and BLISS before I saw either. I've more written
way more C code than any other language --- why because it works and as a
professional, I know how to properly use it.
As bwk says in that same document which I pointed to earlier, "comparing C
and Pascal is the same as trying to compare a jetfighter with a Piper
Cub." As my former Marine pilot B-I-L reminds me, he did not start pilot
training in Whidbey Island on jets - he worked his way up and showed he was
competent before the Navy made it easier for him to kill himself (and those
around him). BTW: the Navy does not tend to try to land small prop planes
on the USS Kennedy either. As my B-I-L says for all of his day and night
landings on same, he always somewhat scared the cr*p out him but he was
always careful to remember what he had been taught (and he says he never
had to use the 3 wire).
The bottom line becomes learning to pick and then using the proper tool for
the job and respect what is for and the constraints associated with using
it.
Clem
ᐧ
On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 12:35 AM Dan Stromberg <drsalists(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 2:29 PM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 4:16 PM Dan Stromberg <drsalists(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think language designers since Pascal have learned from Pascal's mistake
there.
Supposedly even Borland's TurboPascal had better strings than vanilla
Pascal.
A null-terminated array of char is a petri dish.
A proper string type
is more like a disinfectant.
Hrrmpt.... maybe (in theory), but I can say that never seen it really
work in practice -- bwk in Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming
Language <http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html> describes much
of the practical realities of this sort of choice: