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My first language in high school was actually Pascal (as in - Delphi) but now I love C, C++, Lua and Python and barely can write Pascal at all, especially since
by _dcwr 9y ago
My first language in high school was actually Pascal (as in - Delphi) but now I love C, C++, Lua and Python and barely can write Pascal at all, especially since it's so separate from the C inspired syntaxes and semantics. For job reasons I'll also probably learn something 'proper', mainstream, industrial, etc., but not relearn Pascal. But for trolling, having fun or some private GUI work (especially that, thanks to Lazarus) it's just great.
When I got to university they (the university, not the high school, no idea about them) dropped it from the curriculum so my Pascal skill makes me quite unique in that sense.
I only used it once or so during university to troll one doctor leading a class, an old homework grading system still had Pascal available in it in addition to C and C++ so I submitted a Pascal program. In a twist of irony the next class after that assignment was led by another person, a really smart professor who usually teaches in Warsaw who also happened to be quite a good sport about jokes and such, who quickly sarcastically remarked to my Pascal program: we've got a connaisseur in here.
And this whole joke was actually in response to story the person usually leading that class told, about how once during a competitive coding competition (allowing C, C++ and Pascal) where everyone was using C or C++ he was first to submit a correct program and it was in Pascal to which the live judges commented that Pascal is making a grand return, since even back then it was on its way out.
Recently I picked it up again when I needed to do something quite graphical for statistics class on a short notice that would be dealing with graphs and I didn't want to fight Qt, GTK+, HTML5 or whatever into submission and having recently discovered Lazarus I knew it can do it. I quickly whipped up the program, the graphing components were great with API and all but were poorly documented (or not at all). Sadly there were no funny comments from the doctor on that one.
Part of using Pascal for anything at all or even knowing it is actually the funny comments and reactions of others. Some people seem to think Pascal is properly dead, as in - no longer usable, no longer worked on, no longer coded in, at all. Like COBOL or something but with no 'old bank software' and such to save it. When looking for a job I actually even forgot to put Pascal on my CV as being one of my 'very weak' skills but I imagine it didn't hurt my chances... I even share the first name with Blaise Pascal (the French mathematician the language was named for) so that makes my use of Pascal even more appropriate and allows for even more jokes.
After that I also did few UVA[0] tasks but sadly Pascal seems to be broken for many tasks so I gave up (I get an error saying 'mv failed: program.pas and program.pas are the same file').
Later, to not waste and forget what I relearned for the graph program homework and since GUI in Lazarus is so easy to do, I also (shameless plug) wrote a notes program[1] for myself and it was a breeze thanks to Lazarus and the LCL components. Now I use that program daily for my various notes, todos, etc.
[0] http://uva.onlinejudge.org/ http://uva.onlinejudge.org/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436840