[TUHS] Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language - Unearthed!

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
 |Without reliving the Pascal/C war of the day, I have to admit that \
 |I too loved Brian’s piece when we wrote it and love it still.   But \
 |you have to 
 |understand the context.   
 |
 |>>  If Unix was written in Pascal I would've happily continued using Pascal!
 |
 |>Amusing in the context of Brian's piece, which essentially says if Unix
 |>could have been written in Pascal, then Pascal wouldn't have been Pascal.
 |
 |Doug amen.
 |
 |There really are a few pieces of information that I think are lost \
 |from history.    Pascal was and is still as difficult to match as a \
 |teaching 
 |language.   Brian says exactly that in is piece – it is like a ‘Piper \
 |Cub.’   I still use it for just that when I teach scouts, nieces, nephews \
 |or 
 |anyone else that asks me, where to start.  Today’s "Free Pascal" system \
 |is pretty hard to beat - runs on anything and "just works."

So, please, let me disagree absolutely.  I had only experience of
some Microsoft Basic in the 80s before i had to (should) learn
some Pascal (i dropped that qualification), and i still hear
myself asking the teacher "What?  A language without goto?"  Even
with closures or inner functions and/or whatever may exist i think
it is a grace that the simplicity of goto: can also be used in
a higher level language.

Despite anything else, my brain also works that way.  It also did
not like sitting still in school at 10 o'clock in the morning or
in the afternoon, of course, but if it is like that?  That became
better over time, but it was not like that in school.  Now the
following is perl(1) which warns since some version on goto: into
a loop, but i would not want to teach young human beings such in
school, it is weird enough that people lseek(2) an O_APPEND
descriptor to SEEK_END because they became socialized with stdio,
in my humble opinion.

      my $ogoditisanewperl = 0;
      if(defined($nl = $self->begin_line)){
         $self->begin_line(undef);
         $self->seen_endl(1);
         $ogoditisanewperl = 1 #goto jumpin;
      }
      while($ogoditisanewperl || ($nl = readline $self->infh)){
         if(!$ogoditisanewperl){
            ++${$self->__lineno};
            $self->seen_endl($nl =~ s/(.*?)\s+$/$1/)
         }
         $ogoditisanewperl = 0; #jumpin:

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)