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30th Anniversary of Pascal

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-yer-code-on dept.

GrokSoup writes "UC San Diego is holding a public symposium on Friday, October 22nd, honoring the 30th anniversary of the Pascal programming language. Oh the memories of undergraduate bubble-sorts ..."

9 of 587 comments (clear)

  1. What do they teach in undergrad now? by Moby+Cock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I too recall the heady days of Pascal in undergrad. Trying to explain to my lab partner how one could have an array of arrays... But that was a long time ago and I pose the question. What language is the "teaching language" now? Do they have Pascal?

    1. Re:What do they teach in undergrad now? by ucblockhead · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I find it unfortunate that Universities usually use "professional" languages like Java or (before that) C++ rather than a language specifically designed to be clear to new programmers. Unfortunately it means that students end up spending more time learning the oddities of the language than on programming in general.

      It's like teaching people to drive with semi-tractor trailers.

      --
      The cake is a pie
    2. Re:What do they teach in undergrad now? by ornil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The language guranteed to fuck you up if you've by some strange chance of fate actually programmed before getting to the school.

      If a language can do that to you, it is a language worth knowing. Most modern languages (read scripting, like Perl, Python, Ruby, etc) support many functional paradigms, like map, lambda functions, etc. They are incredibly useful, if you know how.

    3. Re:What do they teach in undergrad now? by telbij · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The language guranteed to fuck you up if you've by some strange chance of fate actually programmed before getting to the school. Why a school, with over 50,000 people attending (second largest in the US now) and a fairly large IT department does that is beyond me. Oh wait... no it isn't. They need to employ their crazy AI professors who bust a nut using it.

      The reason they use it is because the program is based on MIT's highly-esteemed CSCI curriculum.

      If Scheme fucked you up then you didn't really know anything about programming. LISP is a pretty questionable language for real world programming, but for the little tasks they make you do in Intro to CS it's perfect. It lets you learn about recursion and the fundamental sameness of code and data without a bunch of syntactical overhead.

      Then later when they dump you head first into C for Machine Architecture and Operating Systems you can at least write good algorithms while you grapple with pointers and memory management.

      It's a hell of a lot better then teaching kids Java's class libraries or a million magic ways to do things in Perl. A CSCI degree should not teach you things you wanted to know before, it should introduce you to all the things that make a good programmer. Study hard kid.

  2. Memories of Pascal by Eberlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It has been ages since I've done anything in pascal...but my programming language progression went from BASIC, QBASIC, then Pascal. I've moved to other languages from there but it was quite the eye-opener. Variables had to be declared, the "uses CRT" was quite the drastic change from what I had been used to (if I remember correctly), and the overall approach was enlightening.

    Now there are other languages to learn with (and a few of those aren't just for educational purposes). Java, PHP, and C for example. Even Delphi has kept Pascal alive and relevant.

    Back then, I had to find...um...creative ways to be able to program and compile Pascal code. With all the freely available IDEs, compilers, debuggers, etc. around now for all these various languages (especially through OSS), things have become more accessible.

    Pascal was the language that brought me out of my BASIC habits...for that I'm definitely grateful.

  3. Re:ouch! by Fred_A · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I didn't feel old, I've just been young longer than most /. readers.

    --

    May contain traces of nut.
    Made from the freshest electrons.
  4. Re:ouch! by samjam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Borland Pascal for Windows may have been a bit freakish but I don't see how you can say Delphi is or ever was.

    I used Turbo Pascal for DOS to write real-mode device drivers that loaded before windows did that communicated and made callbacks to windows applications written in Delphi (using the DPMI 0.9 API)

    There really was nothing that could not be done or hacked with Turbo Pascal (and assembly) and Delphi (and more assembly as needed).

    Borland DID get windows, more than MS did.

    None of MS widget wrappers around the raw windows API compare in any degree to Borlands excellent VCL (Visual Class Library) that encapsulated and extended windows in a most wonderful way.

    I've seen people program in Delphi who only know how to program in C and it looked like it. Ugly, nasty code.

    I've seen Delphi code written by people who understand object Pascal and it is a dream to behold. (I've done some good stuff too).

    The reason Delphi didn't catch on enormously is partly to do with it not being a cross platorm language (object pascal I mean) butmostly for the same reasons smalltalk, scheme, EISA and so on didn't catch on. I wish I knew what that reason was.

    Sam

    --
    blog.sam.liddicott.com
  5. Re:ouch! by FireAtWill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The reason Delphi didn't catch on enormously is partly to do with it not being a cross platorm language (object pascal I mean) butmostly for the same reasons smalltalk, scheme, EISA and so on didn't catch on. I wish I knew what that reason was.

    I think the reason Delphi hasn't become mainstream is the same reason many other excellent products haven't. Microsoft cloned it with VB and kept just close enough behind that it was acceptable to choose the un-FUD'd development environment.

  6. Even more serious by fm6 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    In the PC world, x86-series processors implement the call stack in a way that makes Pascal-style nested procedures easier to implement. Back in the 70s, Intel thought that Pascal was the high-level language of the future. They didn't anticipate the C/Unix mindset taking over so thoroughly.

    And in certain circles, Pascal is still the language of choice. Lots of people who hack out basic native-code Windows software prefer Borland's Delphi IDE to any alternative. One reason is the programming language, which is actually an object-oriented extension of Pascal.

    I spent 3 years at Borland, documenting their component libraries, which are mostly written in Delphi. I came to appreciate its simplicity and power. My job required me to go back and forth between Delphi and C++ (the same libraries are used in Borland's C++ products) and it was an object lesson (forgive the pun) in how painfully baroque C++ has become.

    It's a pity that Pascal/Delphi has so thoroughly lost the language wars. But it has. Even if C++ hadn't thoroughly taken over native-code programming, Borland's bizarre and insular corporate culture would keep from spreading beyond a few fierce loyalists.