Over-regulation is bad. Selling a bottle that is 100% not what it says on the label, is a reasonable expectation. Call it what you want - false advertising, fraud, etc. It's clearly something that shouldn't be permitted. I don't think you'd get much argument from either side of the isle.
With enough experience Sanskrit is readable. But readable to who? People you deem experienced enough? Which is judged how? By their ability to read your code?
Yes, there really is a good reason. To get the universe back into balance. Back in the day, people bought into their developments tools on the basis of cost and quality. Then companies like MS and Oracle followed the long established lead of the likes of IBM and charged managers through the nose for the 'most advanced technologies'. But the weren't really, and all of us techies knew it.
Turbo Pascal was a full participant in the PC revolution. It brought advanced capabilities - much more advanced than IBM or MS were offering at a hobbyist price. But it continued, until cheaper and better wasn't good enough. It had to be free.
There are some really great free products out there. But none of them are of a quality that can compete with the high end companies who are developing their programs for their paying customers rather than for themselves.
Companies like Borland found themselves in the middle of this. The ill-fated Kylix is the proof. Partially free didn't work. Now our choices are limited to Free or $10,000.
Mmmm. PASCAL was designed by Wirth as an introduction-to-programming instructional language. It was supposed to teach the logic, methodology and 'best practices' of programming as they were defined then.
And it did.
Then it got adopted as a production language... and God knows why...
Oh, I don't know....maybe it represented the logic, methodology and best practices of programming
and went through a few iterations to iron out the bugs and add some features and utilities that a serious production/development language would require (including, most importantly, killing that one shot compiler).
And evolved into seriously great products like Turbo Pascal and Delphi.
As a result it has very few strengths compared to purpose designed languages/environments
It remains a great choice precisely because it isn't designed to a particular purpose, but is quite adaptable..
No, Kylix was a complete failure. It was an attempt to lure the next generation Turbo Pascal users, But that next generation was made up of Linux fans that didn't want to pay for *anything*.
Subsequent to that they started targeting cross-platform development on the latest devices.
Turbo Pascal was quite successful into the IBM PC years. Iin fact I'm wondering if it even existed before the IBM PC)..
But I've use the UCSD-P system, Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and never had the problems you describe. Sure, some were more evolved than others, but I can't ever recall anything more than preferring a specific implementation.
Borland's Turbo Pascal was my introduction to serious programming with the Object Windows Library (OWL), before getting on to the multiple disk nightmare and wonder that was Turbo C++.
Pascal lasted exactly long enough to be completely destroyed by C++ at one end taking the object oriented approach, and Modula-2 being the "language of explanation" for CS.
Even that died the death when Visual Basic stomped everything in its path in the commercial arena, with Visual C/C++ taking everything elsewhere. Somewhere along the way Delphi shone very brightly for a few months....
Well, years anyway. There was actually a Microsoft program manager that was quoted as saying something like that Microsoft should thank God for Borland every day. As someone who used both VB and Delphi, I could see all of the things MS was lifting from Delphi. Until they finally lifted its architect.
I'm an old 50+ developer who has had to reinvent myself several times throughout my career. And while a lot of really good new developments for, um, developers have come our way, a lot of valuable things from the past have been lost. For instance, I continually cringe when needing to write SQL code within some other language. There was a time when database access was actually a fundamental part of the language. 4th generation languages, for instance, are largely forgotten - but they really were useful. Same goes for ISAM data access. It is insanely efficient compared to what we typically do today.
Yes, SQL is great for some tasks, but most of that functionality is merely overhead for the sorts of common tasks and application has to perform on a daily basis. If I have the primary key to a table, it's wasteful to generate a query when I can just say 'get me this'.
This is where NoSQL proponents might pipe in with new solutions. But those aren't usually good solutions for general purposes. I've seen too many over-normalized databases over the years, and talked to their proponents. They propagate an ideology of theory over practical considerations.
The thing is though, Pascal excels (or can excel) at all of these things. I'm really referring to Delphi here. The component library available is huge and varied, By your choice it is 100% open source, or completely proprietary, or a mix. In fact, the only major problem I've ever had with Delphi is rebuilding your development environment on a new machine, because you've installed so many tools over the years.
With Delphi, I could drop a terminal emulator on a form and have it working in five minutes. Or I could resort to in-line assembly language if needed. I could, off the top of my head, develop web apps in at least three totally different ways.
I saw a comment further up the pages that asked why we need Pascal when we have C++, Java and Python. Well, seeing as how Pascal predated all of these, and will do everything those do, why do we need the newer languages?
I really encourage younger developers to give it chance. You can install and use Lazarus for free. I feel that Delphi is better polished and reliable, But if you're really an open source advocate, then contribute to Lazarus and/or Free Pascal.
Having had some experience with most of these other technologies, I think you might be surprised at how much you're missing.
You know, I generally dislike Anonymous and just about everything they stand for. However, in this case they've stumbled into an area where we are in agreement and I think I support their actions. Yes, it is ironic. Shutting down voices to protest shutting down voices. However, if I must choose, I'll side with the less violent, freedom seeking suppression over the violent, repressive intimidation.
#NousSommesTousCharlie
My only concern is that, while they may succeed to some extent to the blocking extremist message, the may interfere with the intelligence tracking of those allied (in this case) people with the capability to do far more than Anonymous could ever dream of.
Plausible deniability. If the government accuses me of not censoring what they think is inappropriate material, I can deny ever having seen the option.
What?!?! That makes no sense. The government is requiring ISPs to offer you a choice of filtered or unfiltered internet. If the government ever accuses you of 'not censoring' because, say, you're looking at child porn (one of the only cases the public might be expected to self-censor that I can think of), they won't be using your response to a voluntary opt-in/out ISP feature to convict you. They'll use your actual traffic history.
As I understand it, they are required by law. The reasons behind the law are not particularly relevant to them. For those, you would need to ask your legislative representative or research the history of the particular law.
The ISPs only have to decide on the manner with which they comply. Personally, I'd rather they do it this way rather than, say, call me on the phone. My only problem with it is the page could be served to, and answered by, my hypothetical six-year-old.
I don't know, but I suspect not. But why in God's name would you not answer the question? It's an opportunity to ward off a possible future 'default' setting.
Slashdot Mirror
Over-regulation is bad. Selling a bottle that is 100% not what it says on the label, is a reasonable expectation. Call it what you want - false advertising, fraud, etc. It's clearly something that shouldn't be permitted. I don't think you'd get much argument from either side of the isle.
Yeah, I refuse to believe this until I see a photoshop image proving it.
Words like 'begin' and 'end' look too similar to user-defined variables
Funny, I've never had that problem. Maybe that's a beginner problem.
With enough experience Sanskrit is readable. But readable to who? People you deem experienced enough? Which is judged how? By their ability to read your code?
Dude, have you even seen what's available in Delphi? The list was quite impressive even before Java existed.
The people who bought Delphi were Windows users. They didn't need a Linux version.
Yes, there really is a good reason. To get the universe back into balance. Back in the day, people bought into their developments tools on the basis of cost and quality. Then companies like MS and Oracle followed the long established lead of the likes of IBM and charged managers through the nose for the 'most advanced technologies'. But the weren't really, and all of us techies knew it.
Turbo Pascal was a full participant in the PC revolution. It brought advanced capabilities - much more advanced than IBM or MS were offering at a hobbyist price. But it continued, until cheaper and better wasn't good enough. It had to be free.
There are some really great free products out there. But none of them are of a quality that can compete with the high end companies who are developing their programs for their paying customers rather than for themselves.
Companies like Borland found themselves in the middle of this. The ill-fated Kylix is the proof. Partially free didn't work. Now our choices are limited to Free or $10,000.
It sucks.
Mmmm. PASCAL was designed by Wirth as an introduction-to-programming instructional language. It was supposed to teach the logic, methodology and 'best practices' of programming as they were defined then.
And it did.
Then it got adopted as a production language ... and God knows why ...
Oh, I don't know....maybe it represented the logic, methodology and best practices of programming
and went through a few iterations to iron out the bugs and add some features and utilities that a serious production/development language would require (including, most importantly, killing that one shot compiler).
And evolved into seriously great products like Turbo Pascal and Delphi.
As a result it has very few strengths compared to purpose designed languages/environments
It remains a great choice precisely because it isn't designed to a particular purpose, but is quite adaptable..
I want every programming tool with which I interact to have some special thing that it teaches.
Why, for God's sake, would you want that?
No, Kylix was a complete failure. It was an attempt to lure the next generation Turbo Pascal users, But that next generation was made up of Linux fans that didn't want to pay for *anything*.
Subsequent to that they started targeting cross-platform development on the latest devices.
Turbo Pascal was quite successful into the IBM PC years. Iin fact I'm wondering if it even existed before the IBM PC)..
But I've use the UCSD-P system, Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and never had the problems you describe. Sure, some were more evolved than others, but I can't ever recall anything more than preferring a specific implementation.
Pascal has some syntactical annoyances, although I hardly see how separate header files improve things in that respect.
Borland's Turbo Pascal was my introduction to serious programming with the Object Windows Library (OWL), before getting on to the multiple disk nightmare and wonder that was Turbo C++.
Pascal lasted exactly long enough to be completely destroyed by C++ at one end taking the object oriented approach, and Modula-2 being the "language of explanation" for CS.
Even that died the death when Visual Basic stomped everything in its path in the commercial arena, with Visual C/C++ taking everything elsewhere. Somewhere along the way Delphi shone very brightly for a few months....
Well, years anyway. There was actually a Microsoft program manager that was quoted as saying something like that Microsoft should thank God for Borland every day. As someone who used both VB and Delphi, I could see all of the things MS was lifting from Delphi. Until they finally lifted its architect.
Pascal is overrated, actually.
Even as a teaching tool, Pascal is overrated.
What an astounding amount of insight you've shown. Why, reading your logic, I wonder how I ever could've been fooled.
But then came the USCF P-System and Turbo Pascal, And nobody's asking about Modula.
Yes, because those are so popular now.
I can write [1,2,3,4,5].map {|x| x + 100 } in Ruby.
I think I've just written off Ruby.
...these days, what's the point of yet another language?
These days? Pascal predated all of 'these days'. What was the point of all of those other languages?
I'm an old 50+ developer who has had to reinvent myself several times throughout my career. And while a lot of really good new developments for, um, developers have come our way, a lot of valuable things from the past have been lost. For instance, I continually cringe when needing to write SQL code within some other language. There was a time when database access was actually a fundamental part of the language. 4th generation languages, for instance, are largely forgotten - but they really were useful. Same goes for ISAM data access. It is insanely efficient compared to what we typically do today.
Yes, SQL is great for some tasks, but most of that functionality is merely overhead for the sorts of common tasks and application has to perform on a daily basis. If I have the primary key to a table, it's wasteful to generate a query when I can just say 'get me this'.
This is where NoSQL proponents might pipe in with new solutions. But those aren't usually good solutions for general purposes. I've seen too many over-normalized databases over the years, and talked to their proponents. They propagate an ideology of theory over practical considerations.
The thing is though, Pascal excels (or can excel) at all of these things. I'm really referring to Delphi here. The component library available is huge and varied, By your choice it is 100% open source, or completely proprietary, or a mix. In fact, the only major problem I've ever had with Delphi is rebuilding your development environment on a new machine, because you've installed so many tools over the years.
With Delphi, I could drop a terminal emulator on a form and have it working in five minutes. Or I could resort to in-line assembly language if needed. I could, off the top of my head, develop web apps in at least three totally different ways.
I saw a comment further up the pages that asked why we need Pascal when we have C++, Java and Python. Well, seeing as how Pascal predated all of these, and will do everything those do, why do we need the newer languages?
I really encourage younger developers to give it chance. You can install and use Lazarus for free. I feel that Delphi is better polished and reliable, But if you're really an open source advocate, then contribute to Lazarus and/or Free Pascal.
Having had some experience with most of these other technologies, I think you might be surprised at how much you're missing.
So, deep learning will result in shallow thinking?
You know, I generally dislike Anonymous and just about everything they stand for. However, in this case they've stumbled into an area where we are in agreement and I think I support their actions. Yes, it is ironic. Shutting down voices to protest shutting down voices. However, if I must choose, I'll side with the less violent, freedom seeking suppression over the violent, repressive intimidation.
#NousSommesTousCharlie
My only concern is that, while they may succeed to some extent to the blocking extremist message, the may interfere with the intelligence tracking of those allied (in this case) people with the capability to do far more than Anonymous could ever dream of.
Plausible deniability. If the government accuses me of not censoring what they think is inappropriate material, I can deny ever having seen the option.
What?!?! That makes no sense. The government is requiring ISPs to offer you a choice of filtered or unfiltered internet. If the government ever accuses you of 'not censoring' because, say, you're looking at child porn (one of the only cases the public might be expected to self-censor that I can think of), they won't be using your response to a voluntary opt-in/out ISP feature to convict you. They'll use your actual traffic history.
As I understand it, they are required by law. The reasons behind the law are not particularly relevant to them. For those, you would need to ask your legislative representative or research the history of the particular law.
The ISPs only have to decide on the manner with which they comply. Personally, I'd rather they do it this way rather than, say, call me on the phone. My only problem with it is the page could be served to, and answered by, my hypothetical six-year-old.
Fine.
Are customers required to answer?
I don't know, but I suspect not. But why in God's name would you not answer the question? It's an opportunity to ward off a possible future 'default' setting.
Why do they even have to ask ?
From the summary:
"Sky,TalkTalk and Virgin Media are required to ask all their customers if they want web filters turned on or off"